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Sometimes a single event can provide us with rich information about the ways people lived in the past.
In May 1890, Sophia Pierce fell into a deep hole on Pontiac Street. It was 2:00 in the morning, and she was leaving the house of Eli Moore. Pierce was badly injured and filed a petition with the Ann Arbor city council, asking the council to pay for her injuries. The city of Ann Arbor had created a 25 or 30 foot ditch near the Moores' house, but there were no signs or lights to warn pedestrians.
As you read the petition, consider these questions:
In the 1890s, people understood health and medicine very differently from how they do today. Ann Arbor newspapers were full of advertisements for pills, extracts and elixirs that promised to cure everything from colds to cancer. Sick people called on doctors, but they also depended on their own home remedies, midwives, spiritualists, and other healers. In her petition, Sophia Pierce referred to herself as a "regular registered physician." However, in the 1890 directory for the city of Ann Arbor, Pierce called herself a "clairvoyant" and "magnetic healer."
