Sophia Pierce Sometimes a single event can provide us with rich information about the ways people lived in the past. In May 1890, Sophia Pierce fell in 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 twenty-five or thirty foot ditch near the Moores' house, but there were no signs or lights to warn pedestrians. Click HERE to read Sophia Pierce's petition. As you read the letter, consider the following questions: What does this incident tell us about the streets of Lower Town in 1890? What kinds of materials were needed to create lighting and roads in the 1800s? What factors made it hard for Sophia Pierce to see the embankment? Why did Sophia Pierce think the city government was responsible for her injuries? If you fell in a hole in the sidewalk would you ask the city government to pay for the damages? 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." What does this page from the city directory tell you about Sophia Pierce's household? What were the occupations of the people she lived with? Why did Pierce choose to call herself a clairvoyant and magnetic healer in the city directory but not in her petition? What can you tell about how people understood illnesses from the advertisements? How are these advertisements similar to and different from ads for medicine today? Do you have any more questions?

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