In April 1968, syndicated columnist James J. Kilpatrick delivered the Detroit Historical Society's annual Lewis Cass Lecture. The lectureship was then twenty years old, and Kilpatrick followed such distinguished historians as Bruce Carron and Sylvester K. Stevens. Unlike his predecessors, Kilpatrick was a journalist, and so he took his inspiration from Thomas Carlyle's belief that "Histories are a kind of distilled newspapers." Kilpatrick's thesis was that while historians must of course take notice of the great political and military events, the seismic activities of economic forces and the tragedies of natural disasters, historians must also include in their accounts the details of everyday life.
"It is thus possible," he lamented, "to read whole volumes of Elizabethan history and have no striking impression of how the streets of London smelled." For the residents of the Motor City who had never known streets full of unwashed horses and humans and various natural deposits, he added, "I suspect they stank something awful." Kilpatrick, resident of rural Virginia, spoke with authority. To bring his point closer to home, he observed that 1964 would be remembered for the defeat in the presidential election of his friend Senator Barry Goldwater. Yet, Kilpatrick reminded his audience, it was also the year in which began the fad of the topless bathing suit, soon followed by the topless waitress and others. Kilpatrick was concerned that historians would write only about Barry Goldwater and Lyndon Johnson and not Rudi Gernreich's bathing suit.
Kilpatrick listed various everyday items, some whimsical, others more practical, that he deemed worthy of historical note. He worried that the origins of paper towels and instant coffee, disposable diapers and the go-cart would slip into oblivion. Most relevant to readers of Cumberland County History is Kilpatrick's rhetorical question, "Who invented the Christmas Savings Club?" Herewith, nearly forty years late, is an answer for Mr. Kilpatrick.
In 1909, Merkel Landis (1875-1960), treasurer of Carlisle Trust Company, created the first Christmas Savings Club. He came from an old family in Carlisle, ancestrally from Switzerland, and his bank was one of three in Carlisle. In time it became part of Dauphin Deposit Bank, now defunct. Landis had come to banking through law; an alumnus of Dickinson College and the Dickinson School of Law, he had for two years practiced law with his father. Merkel Landis's father, John B. Landis, had served as a captain in the Union Army during the American Civil War, then for a year worked in a bank before studying law.
A quarter century after starting the first Christmas Savings Club, Merkel Landis wrote his recollections of the event. This memoir first appeared in his fraternity's journal, The Magazine of Sigma Chi; it was then reprinted in The Dickinson Alumnus. "Well do I remember, " he wrote, "that snowy Saturday evening in December of 1909 ,"when three men who worked at a local shoe factory came into his office. The men wanted to open a joint account in their names, and into that account they would deposit money collected each week from their fellow employees of the shoe company. The three men proposed to begin with each depositing, say, one cent a week, increasing the deposit by that same amount each week for fifty weeks. Then, just before Christmas, the money, having drawn interest, would go to the various depositors.
Landis "listened attentively," formulating as the three shoemakers spoke a larger idea than they were outlining. Landis saw the potential of other customers of the bank opening such annual savings accounts. Landis lost no time putting the plan into practice. Booklets of fifty coupons were printed, an advertisement appeared in the local newspaper, and the public with pennies to spare beat a path to Landis's door.
The advertisement appeared in the 18 December 1909, edition of The Evening Sentinel. ''At the request of a number of our savings depositors," it began, "we have formed a savings club which makes saving money easy and sure." The advertisement continued by saying that money from the account would be available to members of the club "the week before Christmas, just when a little cash is most welcome." The bank offered three percent interest on the account. By way of explaining the workings of the account, examples were given using pennies. So, for instance, a depositor beginning with one cent the first week would by the end of fifty weeks have $ 12.75, plus interest. Depositors could enroll in the club by 8 January 1910.
On April 6, 1784, in the county courthouse in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, the Board of Trustees of the fledgling Dickinson College met and asked two of its members, John Dickinson and Benjamin Rush, to devise a seal for the college.