Oh, to Be a Minstrel!
Gone is the tailor’s smock, stained from scouring hides. White gloves cover his hands. Alvin Lloyd has vaulted into his consuming adventure, into the world of black and white minstrels populated by energetic and talented performers and curious, aberrant beings, a milieu that lent itself to—at times, encouraged—a disregard for law and order. It was a lusty, brawling circus life, always on the move from town to town, carefree bachelors or married men with no wives in attendance, temptations running riot at every whistle-stop town they played in and even more so in the big cities. It was a demi-monde, where lived the fakirs and the fakers, the traveling freaks, the hypnotists, sham doctors and hair-restorers, fortune-tellers, and peddlers of the elixir of life.
“‘Col.’ Alvin Lloyd was first brought to the notice of the show world by being connected with a troupe called the Sable Harmonists, in 1847.” So says Burnt Cork and Tambourines, a seminal book on the history of black and white minstrelsy in the United States. So recorded T. Allston Brown in his “Early History of Negro Minstrelsy,” a series that ran in the New York Clipper newspaper in 1912–13, and which itself—the chapter on Lloyd, anyway—is a rehashing of an August 1, 1891 Clipper article on the history of the New York Theatre, also written by Colonel Brown: “Mr. Lloyd had been a manager of a minstrelsy band known as ‘The Sable Harmonists’ in 1847.”36
T. Allston Brown, who was as much a colonel as Alvin Lloyd was, wrote the classic, authoritative, but not always unerringly accurate History of the American Stage (1872) and History of the New York Stage (1903). In 1863 he became editor of the New York Clipper. As early as 1858 he had begun collecting data on theatrical performers in the United States, many of whom he knew personally.37
Alvin joined the Sables in late 1846 as their advance man, their factotum. The Sable Harmonists, a band of nine minstrels, had started off in St. Louis in 1844 under the direction of well-known British singer William G. Plumer, late of the Opera Troupe. The other eight original Harmonists were Huntley the accordionist; James B. Farrell; Joe Murphy; singer, composer, and pianist Nelson Kneass; J. Tichenor; William Roark; Tom F. Archer; and a man named Cramer.38
In 1845 the Sables did a lot of touring—Nashville, Louisville, Cincinnati, Boston—and 1846 grew even busier the more well-known they became; so well-known, indeed, that other troupes started taking their name. Within a short space of time, this particular group was forced to identify itself in the Eastern press as the Southern Sable Harmonists, or the Western & Southern Sable Harmonists, just so confusion could be avoided. It is not known exactly when and where Alvin joined the Sables. It was probably Louisville in the fall of 1846, but it might have been in Nashville, where they played on October 21 and 22, or in Jackson, Mississippi, on December 10. He was part of the troupe when they opened at the American Theatre in New Orleans on December 19, 1846.39
It appears that Alvin was with the Sable Harmonists at this time, but how was it determined that he was an advance man? In 1849 he would become a minstrel director with the very same troupe, the Sable Harmonists, but that was still two years away. However, he would have received his training somewhere, and that training certainly wasn’t as a manager; otherwise his name would have appeared in the press in 1846 and 1847. And he wasn’t a performer at that time. Even though in much later years, when he was touring his famous Lloyd’s Minstrels, he would occasionally assume a role or two on stage, a performing role was just not feasible for Alvin Lloyd in 1846–47, or he would have garnered press notices. That leaves the role of advance man: A promo man. A hype specialist. First of the troupe into a new town, setting up the venue, dropping in on the editor of the local paper to persuade him to do some sort of editorial mention in exchange for buying ads for the Sables, and even, sometimes, paying for those ads. Drumming up interest before the players arrived. It was a job tailor-made for W. Alvin Lloyd, a lifelong salesman, to the con born.
Back in 1846 advance men got no mention at all in the ads of touring minstrel groups. By the 1860s, that would change. W. Alvin Lloyd would be one of the first minstrel chiefs to give prominent billing to his advance men, and that was probably because he harbored a soft spot for advance men, knowing what it was like to work very hard and get no recognition.
There is another reason of record that proves he was with the Sable Harmonists at this stage of his life, and that is the “List of Letters.”
The Harmonists played the last night of their New Orleans run on Christmas Eve, 1846. The following morning their name, “Harmonists Sable,” appeared in the Times-Picayune newspaper, in the “List of Letters.” Another name that appeared in that very same list was “Wm A. Lloyd.”40
In census records for the United States in the period 1845 to 1869, there are many William Lloyds, not to mention the ubiquitous abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison. When one sees the name William Lloyd in a newspaper, the chances of it being Alvin are remote. However, when the name William Alvin Lloyd appears, or W. Alvin Lloyd, there is no doubt that this is the man, and Alvin Lloyd was in the papers a lot. It’s the Alvin part that gives it away. In that gray area between William Lloyd and Alvin Lloyd come the variants: “W. A. Lloyd” and “Wm A. Lloyd.” When you see “Wm A. Lloyd” in New Orleans in late 1846, with a letter waiting for him, it’s got to be Alvin, without question.
Back in those days, most houses didn’t even have a street number, but that was changing, a change demanded by the rapid and sudden urbanization throughout the country, especially in the west, and the correspondingly huge increase in mail traffic. If you were in, for example, Louisville, Kentucky, and you sent a letter to “Wm A Lloyd, Poydras Street, New Orleans, Louisiana,” you could be sure it would get there, especially if you put a stamp on the envelope. However, if you didn’t know exactly whereabouts Mr. Lloyd would be staying in New Orleans, you’d simply address it “Wm A. Lloyd, New Orleans,” and it would wind up in the poste restante section of the post office there. And it would wait in a box until Wm A. Lloyd came to pick it up. There was no charge for this service, not at that point in the process anyway. If Mr. Lloyd failed to pick up his mail the post office would advertise it for a month in the local daily newspaper with the largest circulation—“List of Letters.” If, at that point, Mr. Lloyd saw the ad and came to collect his mail, he would be obliged to show some sort of identification and would incur a small charge. If he didn’t come, the letter would eventually find its way to the dead letter office in Washington, DC. Even then, Mr. Lloyd could still get his letter if he wanted it badly enough, but, of course, the charge would be a lot higher.
Most of the time, letters advertised in this way suffered the fate of the dead letter box, and that’s because the addressee had moved on, hadn’t yet arrived in town, or had simply failed to pick up his letter for one reason or another. Just because the Sable Harmonists were in New Orleans in the week before Christmas doesn’t mean that their advance man was. He was almost certainly away in another town, setting up the next appearance. That’s why he didn’t pick up his letter.
That next town they played was most likely St. Louis. That’s where the troupe is of record again in early 1847, and then it was on to Louisville, and from there, to Nashville for a two-night stand at the Odd Fellows Hall on February 16 and 17, 1847. Then it was on to play the Melodeon in Cincinnati for a good run into April.41
One night a young man in the Melodeon audience became so entranced by the show that when he went home, he wrote a song for Tichenor, the lead singer, and presented it to him the following day. He read the opening line, “I came from Alabama wid my banjo on my knee,” and hummed it. Tichenor especially liked it when he got to the chorus, “Oh, Susanna.” He decided to use it in his act the following night. At least that’s the way the story has been circulated in some quarters. Some say it was first presented by a quintet in Andrews’ Eagle Ice Cream Saloon in Pittsburgh on September 11, 1847.42 Stephen Foster would go on to write a few songs for the Sable Harmonists, including “Old Uncle Ned” for William Roark and “Louisiana Belle” for Joe Murphy. They would be collected together in the Sable Harmonists’ Songbook of 1848.
In April 1847 the Sables opened in New Orleans again, this time for a very long run, and by September were back at the Melodeon in Cincinnati. Then it was up to Cleveland to play the Empire Hall. Their last night there was September 25, 1847, and then they reorganized. Part of the shuffle was Alvin Lloyd who, for whatever reason, left the minstrel business and, it is assumed, went back to tailoring in Louisville, just in time to get his information into the upcoming 1848 City Directory. 43
The 1848 Louisville City Directory lists several Lloyds, including “Tos. G. Lloyd, renovator, cnr 5th, between Main and Market; home the Marion House.” It also lists his wife, Mrs. Elizabeth Lloyd, at the Marion House, between 3rd and 4th. That’s all to be expected. What is unique in the history of Louisville city directories are the two entries James T. Lloyd, “at Geo. W. Noble’s,” and “Wm A. Lloyd, renovator, at 4th, between Jefferson and Green.” Alvin’s younger brother, J. T., was working for George Noble, the Louisville printer and bookseller, learning his trade: One of Noble’s young advertising promoters.44
Alvin had now set up shop on his own account, independent of his father. It is curious that a young man of his temperament, an exciting year on the road under his belt, was now forced to fall back on his old trade of tailoring, facing the drudgery of the average working tradesman. This couldn’t last.
And his father, the alcoholic tailor, now a reformed evangelist and presumed teetotaler, was writing to the press, convinced that a snake-oil remedy saved his life. On January 31, 1848, T. G. Lloyd of Louisville wrote an open letter extolling the Keely cure:
“This will certify that I have for eight years been laboring under a most afflicting neuralgic affection. It was with difficulty at times that all the exertions of an attentive family could keep life in me. Many nights I have been in spasms, from want of circulation of the blood, with my flesh very cold. Many of the most eminent physicians have attended me, and have exhausted their skill in vain in endeavors to restore me. It affords me pleasure to say that, to the exertions of Mr. Keely, I am indebted for complete restoration, the misery in my head and spine having entirely disappeared—in short, I feel like a new man.”
This was Isaac I. Keely, the Indianapolis magnetizer (hypnotist) who enjoyed a vogue back then—“No cure, no pay”—just as Leslie Keeley, another charlatan with a similar name would do in the 1890s. As the long-suffering patient was raised to his feet by the extraordinary “Doctor” I. I. Keely, and then, prompted in a suitably commanding way to walk away unaided, there always happened to be a clutch of “close relatives” at hand to weep uncontrollably at the patient’s good fortune. No affliction was too great for Dr. Keely—the blind, deaf, lame, the hopeless.45
That Alvin only appears in one Louisville city directory in 1848 suggests that he left Louisville for good in that year. The same goes for his brother. However, Alvin’s absence from the city directory does not necessarily mean he was not tailoring there for a short time. But like a wind-walker, Alvin Lloyd soars into double incarnations: tailor and minstrel. The Sable Harmonists kept touring and in September 1849, the troupe arrived in St. Louis, a city then of forty-five thousand people and still reeling from its great fire.
Every city has its great fire. St. Louis had one on the night of May 17, 1849. It started on the steamboat White Cloud, lying at the head of the levee, and before it could be brought under control the following morning, it had swept through the hemp and tobacco lying on the wharves, taken six hundred buildings and twenty-five river steamers, and engulfed fifteen square blocks of the city’s downtown district. By the time the Sable Harmonists hit town, the most massive and determined efforts were in progress to eliminate all traces of the catastrophe.46
This from the Daily Missouri Republican of Sept. 18, 1849: “Sable Harmonists. A company of sable harmonists are giving a series of concerts in the saloon of the Planter’s House. They come highly recommended by the cities in which they have performed.” The following day, the same paper wrote: “Sable Harmonists. The entertainments, generally of this talented company, at the Planter’s House Saloon, attracted a large and fashionable audience. The manner in which the pieces are executed is sufficient evidence that they are musicians of the highest order.”
The Planter’s House, fronting on Fourth Street, immediately north of the Court House, was then only eight years old, but already one of the famous hostelries of the West. On the night of September 20, 1849, while the Harmonists were playing the saloon there, William A. Lloyd entered into a partnership with James Oliphant to run the troupe. They performed there again the next night, the twenty-first, and again on the twenty-third. That day, William A. Lloyd, director, took out a lengthy ad in the Daily Missouri Republican.47
The troupe got to New Orleans on October 18, 1849: “They have arrived. Lloyd’s great troupe of Sable Harmonists. . . . This fine band of minstrels . . . bring with them a brilliant reputation from the North and West, and we anticipate a rich treat.”48
On Sunday night, October 21, they opened at the Concert Room on Perdido Street. At that precise point in time, the lineup was Mr. Wm N. Chambers, Mr. William Roark, Mr. A. Weston, Mr. J. Milton Foans, and the violinist Mr. William Whitney.49
They played at the Concert Room again on the twenty-second, and on the Tuesday, Alvin and J. T. arrived in town on the steamer Portland from St. Louis. That night, the Harmonists played their third night on Perdido.50
The next day, the twenty-fourth, at a meeting of the troupe, Mr. Roark was called to the chair, and “Mr Jas T. Lloyd,” Alvin’s brother, then only nineteen, was appointed secretary. That night, still in New Orleans, the Harmonists played the St. Louis Hotel Ballroom. They played at the ballroom on the twenty-sixth, and, although their contract there had specified six nights, the twenty-seventh was their last before moving over to the Commercial Exchange Hall on St. Charles Street for the night of the twenty-eighth, which was a benefit for Alvin Lloyd.51 The following night, Monday, they again played the Exchange with a wide variety of new songs, choruses, refrains, and duets. Admission was fifty cents, and front seats were available for ladies.52
On November 2, 1849, Lloyd and Oliphant dissolved their partnership. Mr. Roark took over the management, and the troupe was joined by G. G. Temple. The Harmonists continued on at the Exchange, without Mr. Lloyd, of course, until December. Alvin had been a minstrel chief for precisely forty-two days.53
Another side of Alvin Lloyd—dodgy, daring, and often dangerous—was blossoming. The Clipper article of 1913, the one reproduced in the book Burnt Cork and Tambourines, reports that Lloyd was said to have run away from the Sable Harmonists while in the west, leaving them without paying any salaries, nor their board bills: “Several of them, having no money, were arrested and locked up, where they were compelled to work out their indebtedness.” But T. Allston Brown is confusing this event with one that would happen in 1867, with the second and final incarnation of the troupe known as Lloyd’s Minstrels. In 1849, Alvin’s association with the Sable Harmonists seems to have been a simple dissolution at the end of that year, and there certainly seems to have been no undue trauma in the parting of ways.54
There is no mention of Alvin from November 2, 1849, when he leaves the Harmonists, to January 1, 1851, when he suddenly arrives in New Orleans as the director of the Empire Minstrels. As he is wont to do, he slips from view completely in 1850 and there is no record of him in the 1850 census. Nor are found his wife and children, or his in-laws, the Daileys.
Alvin’s brother, J. T. Lloyd, also left the Sable Harmonists at the end of 1849 when Alvin left. In fact J. T. left the world of minstrelsy forever. It wasn’t for him. He drifted back to St. Louis, where he got a job as a steamboat agent, living on Tom Sprout’s steamboat. That summer of 1850 he took a room in Joseph R. de Prefontaine’s house on the south side of Myrtle, near 7th.55 Prefontaine was at that time editor of the St. Louis Union, and he had a daughter, Mary Ann, just a year younger than J. T. Within a few months the youngsters had married, and J. T. had gone to work for his new father-in-law as a riverboat reporter. There would be a child, the marriage wouldn’t last, and Prefontaine, his daughter, and the child would all go to San Francisco in 1852. From there Mary Ann would divorce J. T. in 1855.56
On December 19 and 20, 1850, the Empire Minstrels played Spengler’s Saloon in Jackson, Mississippi, and the day after Christmas they opened, with nine players, at the Institute Hall in Natchez. It is assumed that Alvin was their manager by then.57
Richard H. Sliter was the none-too-savory star of the group. Alvin, like all the others—Christy, Kneass—claimed to present wholesome family fare. It was not, in fact, true. Beneath the haze of sanctimony lay bunches of very talented ruffians.58
Sliter had organized the Empires in Buffalo back in 1848, and they’d been a raging success ever since. Money flowed in, but it didn’t always flow out where and when it should. In addition to being a famous minstrel group, Richard Sliter’s outfit was a small, all-cash business, like all of them were. How that ingress and egress were handled came down to the ethics of the manager. Until Alvin took over, the Empires were in the exclusive and tyrannical hands of star dancer Dick Sliter.59
By the end of 1850, Sliter was under pressure from some of his men—the sly, droll Cool White, and G. G. Jones, the bones man—to relinquish either his managerial role or his turn in the limelight. He decided to acquire a professional to direct the group. That professional was W. Alvin Lloyd.60
On New Year’s Day, 1851, when Alvin Lloyd arrived in New Orleans, billed as the manager of the Empire Minstrels, the troupe was still in Natchez, about to give their final performance. They would join their manager in the Crescent City on January 4, arriving on the steamer Brilliant. On the sixth they opened at the Commercial Exchange Hall.61 On January 13, there was a benefit performance for Alvin Lloyd, and then, money in hand, he quit the Empire Minstrels, leaving town for destination unknown.
Eight months later Lloyd unmistakably comes into frame. This ad was placed in the Natchez Courier on September 5, 1851: “At the Institute Hall. Lloyd’s Sable Harmonists, will give two of their unique and fashionable Ethiopian Soirees, at above, commencing on this evening, Friday, Sept. 5, 1851. Cards of admission 50 cents. Doors open at 7 o’clock. Concert to commence at 7½ precisely. Lloyd, director.”
For the rather shadowy period in Alvin’s life between the dissolution of this last minstrel group in September 1851 and his re-emergence as a newsworthy figure in the middle of 1854, T. Allston Brown offers this mention: “For ‘reason’ he served a long sentence in a Kentucky penitentiary, but escaped, was caught (having his chains on at the time) and was returned to his quarters; but his health became so bad that he was discharged.”62
Colonel Brown, reworking this piece in 1913, says: “For committing some crime he was shortly thereafter arrested and served out nearly his time in the penitentiary in Kentucky, when he escaped, but was pursued by the jailer and overtaken, having his chains on at the time. He was severely beaten by his captor, and once more safely caged, but his health becoming so bad that, fearing that he would die, he was set at liberty.”63
Both Clipper articles agree that this prison term was between his time as a minstrel and his Cincinnati experience, placing it in the period 1851–54. Even though Alvin certainly spent time in a Confederate jail in Savannah in 1861–62, it is possible that Brown’s report was confused with Alvin’s Civil War durance. Lloyd-the-prisoner, his time as a prisoner, is fact. But though he does not appear in the records of the Kentucky State Penitentiary, at least in those that are extant and legible, and many are not, he may well have been there, wrongly indexed or listed on a page that cannot be read. Alvin Lloyd was, in fact, imprisoned for bigamy several years later. So a good look at the Kentucky State Penitentiary is not unwarranted.
The prison had been going since the late 1700s, always a drear and harsh place. In the early 1850s, life as an inmate there was hell. There was even a move afoot in 1851 and 1852, whether it was seriously intended or not, to mark or condemn for life the inmates so that they would be instantly recognizable if they escaped—to literally brand them.64
If Alvin was truly in the Kentucky State Penitentiary, and if he can be spotted crouching over a waste bucket, or gnawing on an offal bone, then what was his crime? It could be any one of several things ranging from bilking to assault and battery, or even killing a man. But the most likely is bigamy. Alvin was a confirmed and chronic bigamist, a cruel crime by any standards.
In pursuit of fresh victims, a bigamist almost always left his string of wives, one after another. Consider the plight of nineteenth-century women. Those were the days when a woman would have a very difficult time making it on her own, unless she came from money. And if she was left with a child, or children, and had no income source, no one to take her in and provide for her, the situation was often perilous.
Every state had a bigamy minimum and maximum if convicted, and the offender served his time in the state penitentiary. Kentucky’s 1852 revised statute made it a three- to nine-year sentence. That was about the norm throughout the country. Sometimes there was a heavy fine as well; in other states you would be at hard labor, whereas in Kentucky, as in many other states, offenses such as sodomy or bestiality were punishable by much less time.
However, there were loopholes, ways you could get off a bigamy charge, especially if you’d done it more than once. One, and the most commonly used, was that there was a statute of limitations of three years on bigamy. So, unless you were caught within three years, you’d not be punished—at least in theory. Another argument was this: A man left his first wife and married another. However, the second marriage was not legal; therefore he couldn’t be accused of marrying twice. If it was that simple, then why did any bigamists go to jail? The answer is because a jury was involved, and jurors judged bigamists harshly. There was always at least one bigamist in the Kentucky State Penitentiary at any given time, and, occasionally, such as on November 1, 1851, when there were 166 inmates in all, there were two bigamists inside. These two remain nameless statistics, but it’s not such a stretch to suppose that one of them may have been named William Alvin Lloyd.
Another possibility to account for this period of Alvin’s life is offered by Alvin himself. In a letter he wrote to Robert E. Lee on February 25, 1862, while languishing in jail in Savannah, he says, “Myself and Brother . . . were connected with Major J. P. Heiss, publishing the Delta in 1852 & 1853.”65
And that may be, that Alvin was with the Delta, at least for part of those two years. In New Orleans, there were two Deltas. There was the Delta and there was the True Delta. Only the first was the true Delta and that is the paper Alvin claimed to have been associated with.66
However, the truth about Alvin’s lost years may be much more mundane, although with Alvin mundaneness is most other people’s exciting. Unknown to T. Allston Brown, and certainly never talked about by Alvin, was the historical truth. After the September 1851 minstrel episode in Natchez, Mississippi, Alvin went back home, to Louisville, to a family that may or may not have shunned him.
On January 30, 1852, his first Louisville ad appeared, and it was, of course, on the bold side, a proud entry in the Daily Democrat: “Notice to the Ladies. White Crape Shawls cleaned in a beautiful style at Lloyd’s Renovating Establishment. Second street, near Main.” The Daily Democrat even gave him a blurb in their January 31 edition: “Good news for the ladies. Mr. Wm A. Lloyd, at his establishment on main street, near Second, is prepared to cleanse white crape shawls and other silkes in beautiful style.” [Lloyd’s spelling.]
So, here he was a tailor again, a trade he could always fall back on. When that ad ran out, he took a new one, a much bigger one. “We call the attention of our readers to the advertisement of William Lloyd, in another column. His dyeing, renovating, and repairing establishment is on Second street, near Main, where he is at all times prepared to renovate in a style to appear as when new.”67
An early glimpse of the kind of scathing verbiage Lloyd would use to blackmail, impugn, and agitate time and time again is seen in this ad:
“The Place.” Lloyd’s Dyeing, Renovating and Repairing Establishment is on Second Street, near Main. The only place of the kind in the city where ladies and gentlemen, having their wearing apparel out of order, can have them renovated in a style and finish to appear as when new. White Crape Shawls cleaned; Silk Dresses cleaned; Piano covers cleaned; carpets cleaned, and Window Curtains cleaned. Look out for humbugs, as they are numerous. They will spoil your goods if you trust them with them. I have work brought to me every week from these pretenders to be done over. “Have a quick eye to see; they have deceived others and may do thee.”
Here, it seems, Alvin is referring to a competitor, but appealing to a reading audience, a jumbled audience of the high-minded, the literate and near-literate.
The one who got some person to write an advertisement for him, in which he tries to appear before the citizens as a “timid Master Modas,”68 . . .
. . . and says he does not expect to make a decided hit; I would inform the Modus that he hasn’t the common sense to make any kind of a hit, except a “Baker” hit. Again the youth says he employs the best of an agent. That of paying the printer is all gas from a small meter.
And again he says he does not expect to get perfect in the “black art.” If he refers to Niggerology, I would inform him that he tried that once to his sorrow; a reference to a small affair a year ago would suffice upon that subject. Again; “Gaseous”; will the Modus give the definition himself? Any person or persons calling at my establishment can have the names of those, even within a week back, who have had their goods nearly ruined by the humbug. And again, Modus says, if persons will call and look at his work, he will “gain applause.” Well, if a certain young lady on Jefferson street was to call Modus would get applause over the—head, or be off to Ohio for six months.
Lloyd clearly has an unknown agenda here.
And here is Lloyd’s pitch:
But to business: Lloyd’s Establishment is “the place,” if you want your work done in good order and with dispatch. Bring or send it, and it will be attended to. Look for the shop. Keep away from the “sign shops”; you will save trouble by it, as I am sick and tired of doing botched work over, which is brought from impostors. A word to the wise. Lloyd of Lloyds, Second street, near Main.
Like his first one, this ad ran for a month. We don’t know whether he paid or not because there seem to be no extant issues of the Democrat after March 4, 1852, at least not for several months, until July, and then Alvin vanished again.
On January 19, 1853, an ad appeared for the first time in the St. Louis paper the Missouri Daily Republican. It had been placed by Lloyd’s Dying, Scouring & Repairing Establishment [sic], located at “The Place,” on Third Street, St. Louis: “Gentlemen may rest assured that whatever repairing or renovating done to their clothing will be done in a style unequalled in the city. The process of renovating is done entirely on chemical principles. Gentlemen may depend that no soap will be used in cleaning their garments, as soap injures the cloth, attracts dust, and in a few days leaves their clothes worse than though they had not been treated.” The dyeing department was entirely under the supervision of Mr. Lloyd. He explains that he is fully conversant with chemistry and has invented a chemical mixture that refreshes the cloth and gives an additional luster. This ad ran until July 13, 1853. Then, in a blast of scourer’s acrid dust, Alvin Lloyd disappeared.