EMERSON, N.J.—We go back 125 years for a strange tale out of Etna—an earlier name for Emerson—that appeared in newspapers all over the country.
Little rural Etna had fewer than 400 residents at the time, but in the autumn of 1894 the borough’s name made it into the Boston Globe, Philadelphia Inquirer, and into papers as far away as Kansas, Montana and Iowa with a bizarre tale of a black cat that caused a quarrel between neighbors.
ALL BECAUSE OF A BLACK CAT
Business partners fight—One has the other arrested
A black cat is admitted to be the cause of a quarrel between two business partners of Etna, N.J., which has already resulted in the arrest of one.
Mrs. Thomas F. Land and Mrs. D.G. Steinecke quarreled about the black cat and accused their husbands of cowardice because they kept out of the fight, until, at last, the business partners and former friends punched each other on the barn floor.
“It is all because Mrs. Land is superstitious about a black cat,” declared Mrs. Steinecke. “Our husbands were in business together, and we thought it would be nice for our two families to live together. Everything went well until Mrs. Land learned that I had brought a black cat here with me, when she became frightened. It is all nonsense to have any such idle fears, but she has got them. I’ve got the cat and I guess it will break up our happy home.”
She continued, “Mrs. Land has done everything she can to make us get rid of the cat. She said it killed her chickens. Why, I would be willing to put it in a cage with a little chicken and bet that it wouldn’t hurt a feather.”
“The cat does kill chickens, and Mrs. Steinecke must get rid of the cat or else get out of here,” was all that Mrs. Land said.
Land and Steinecke, besides being in business together under the title of Land & Co. Steamfitters, are running a big farm in partnership. They had a drove of 25 New York truck horses to pasture and were making a good thing out of their farming scheme, as well as out of their steamfitting business.
Their business affairs prospered until Mrs. Land declared that the black cat or the Steinecke family had to go. Every time an accident happened Mrs. Land declared that it was because of the presence of a black cat.
The climax came when a valuable horse died. Mrs. Land was on hand with her black-cat theory and her husband became so enraged that he went at his farming partner without gloves on the threshing floor of the barn. To offset his arrest for assault he has had Steinecke sued for ejectment.
