Another Memorial Day is upon us. Here are a few photos from the Local History Room collections which provide a glimpse of one of Kingston’s Memorial Day parades sometime before 1961.*
*This date is based on a flag carried by the color guard, which reads “U.S.S. Des Moines.” This heavy cruiser was launched in 1946 and decommissioned in 1961.
Who was Peanut Jack? There’s nothing in the Local History Room to help identify him, but the 1890 Plymouth and Kingston Directory gives us this.
The 1909 Plymouth Directory has almost the same ad, but the proprietress in that version is a Mrs. M. D. Costa, exactly what we see printed on the tarp or wagon cover right next to Peanut Jack in the photo. So it seems likely that Peanut Jack was one of the “teams making regular trips to all places in the vicinity.”