This Week in H’burg is a weekly column featuring photos and fun facts from local photographer Pierre Ratté. Each week we’ll feature a new photo from Ratté along with a fact about the subject matter of the photo.
Barn advertising was popular from the early 1900s to about the middle of the century. Barn advertisements were first sketched, then painted freehand. With the sizing and surfaces varying, these advertisements were often painted by a single person, who traveled from barn to barn, painting the same image. One such barn painter was Harley Warrick, who over a 55-year career, is estimated to have painted 20,000 barns for Mail Pouch Tobacco. The Real Tonic barn advertisement in this picture can be seen driving south on Highway 101 in the Asti area. Sometimes called the “Prince of Quacks,” Dr. Ray Vaughn Pierce reportedly graduated from the Eclectic Medical College in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1862. He wrote a manual called the “People’s Common Sense Medical Advisor” to help promote his products, which had a variety of homeopathic herbs and, until the 1890’s, opium. Whatever Pierce’s medical knowledge, he was an advertising genius. His medical advisory book went through 11 editions and sold more than 2 million copies before 1910. This barn, nearly 3,000 miles away from his Buffalo, New York headquarters, which shipped nearly 1 million bottles a year in the late 1800s, advertises a version of his “Golden Medical Discovery, the Ideal Spring Tonic and Blood Purifier – the Real Tonic.” Pierce passed away at 74 years of age in 1914, after serving as a New York State Senator, and a U.S. Congressman in the House of Representatives.
Pierre Ratté posts a daily picture on Instagram, Facebook and TodayinHburg.com. He can be reached at pj*****@ic****.com. His book “100 Days Sheltering-In-Place” can be purchased at Levin’s and Copperfield’s bookstores, TodayinHburg.com or Amazon.com.
