345. Social Media in 1913

Updated: Mar 23, 2022

Today’s generation feel that they are the ones who invented social media! Not necessarily true! Of course, they certainly have been the ones who created the advanced technology we see today. But they WERE NOT the precursors who originated people’s obsession to know what everyone else was up to! And our “need to know” was not limited just to the cities of Milton and Pensacola, but to those much further away. In the newspaper’s society pages were such places as Marianna, Mulat, Crestview, Milton, Lynn Haven, Cottondale, Chipley, Florida State College for Women, and Defuniak Springs. And furthermore, it went so far as to include many of our smaller communities within Escambia County as well. There was Bellview, McKinnonville, Wardville, Bluff Springs, Century, Davisville, Myrtle Grove, Klondyke (aka Klondike), Beulah, Millville, and the list goes on and on. Now, with all of this being printed on a weekly basis, you would think that would be enough social media for society to digest. But our ancestors apparently also needed to know who was coming into town and staying in our hotels. So, they devised a daily list of all visitors just in case they knew any of them! So, you can see that technology may change down through the ages, but human behavior does not! Attached is an example for your perusal as how far we took yesteryear’s social media in 1913.