During election time you often hear someone use the phrase “Who’s running on the ticket?’
Today we receive a barrage of mailings during election season. In earlier days things were much simpler. In the second half of the 19th century, candidates for the major political parties actually printed out “tickets” to hand out to voters. They could easily carry them into the voting booth and mark off their ballots for all candidates “running on a ticket”.
The Warren County Historical Society recently received some actual political tickets. One is for 1858 New York State election but includes some candidates for Warren County Offices. The rest are all from the Town of Queensbury, Warren County.
The political ticket above lists both State and County officials. It dates to the Fall of 1858 when Edwin D. Morgan ran for Governor of New York. He was elected and served a term from 1859 to 1862.
The ticket is printed on one side only and measures 3 inches wide by 5 inches tall. Almost all the other tickets are approximately the same size.
We have fifteen “tickets” in our collection. A couple are duplicates.
Here are some samples from the collection. Unfortunately they are all undated. See if you can spot any relatives? If you can identify any of the election years of the tickets, we’d welcome any information so we can update the collection.
We’ll have these “tickets” on display for the month of November at the Warren County Historical Society. Please stop by our museum and check out the full collection.
edited by Tom Lynch, Collections Manager
contact: [email protected]
Source: Eleanor Oudekerk Collection # 27 , Warren County NY Historical Society.