THE FIRST OVERSHOES

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Oct 4, 1899

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 25, No. 40.

THE FIRST OVERSHOES.

THE first pair of arctics brought into the United States were imported from Rio de Janeiro in 1830. They were a rough pair of india-rubber "gunboats," painted and gilded like a Chinese pagoda, and were sent as curiosities to a New York gentleman by a representative of a wholesale house doing business in what was then the great American Empire. Friends of the gentleman, when inspecting his odd rubber shoes, expressed a desire to own a pair of such oddities; and in 1832 twenty-seven pairs were imported by New York and Boston people. The next year the importations numbered 500 pairs, and in each following year the trade continued to increase.—St. Louis Republican.