How the eclipse was reported in the 19th century
The people along the Ohio River swelled with anticipation awaiting darkness to fall. Armed with smoked and colored glasses, they awaited the total solar eclipse to pass through Evansville Aug. 7, 1869.
"We watched the moon cutting its path exactly through the sun's center until the very faintest rim of light was visible. Then removing our smoked glasses and turning to every quarter of the heavens we beheld the utmost glory that heart and mind could conceive."
The eclipse, the last total solar eclipse to pass through Evansville, was described in the Evansville Courier in 1918 from the perspective of a man who wrote a letter to the editor in 1869.
Monday's total solar eclipse passing through Southern Illinois and Western Kentucky is the closest Evansville's been to the path of totality since then.
Evansville Courier & Press newsroom microfilm archives only go back to 1871, and the Evansville Vanderburgh Public Library online archives only go back to 1875. So then 1918 republication of the letter was most-detailed report of the eclipse at the time.
"We had expected to see a black cloud pass between us and the sun, to send its shadow over the landscape as the shadow of a spring cloud sweeps over fields growing grain," the man wrote. "But it was quite another sight that we saw; strange, grand, hushing all into wondering silence. This, the most awe-inspiring and sublime feature of a total eclipse of the sun is one no subtle delicacy of language can depict.... From every group of wondering men and women come exclamations: 'Glorious!' 'It is worth a lifetime!' 'Beyond all I ever expected.'"
News writing is a bit different now than it was in 1875, when this brief story about a partial eclipse appeared in the September 1875 Evansville Daily Courier:
"Those long-haired idiots who persist in getting up at sunrise and do not oversleep themselves on Tuesday next will have the pleasure of witnessing the phenomenon of an eclipse of the sun, clouds and fog permitting."
An 1897 Courier article described the "uncanny" peculiarity of a partial eclipse visible in the region, but also remarked on how the "ignorant and superstitious" would react.
"Even for those who understand fully the cause of an eclipse there is something uncanny in this partial blotting out off the sun at broad noonday, at a time when to all appearances, its path through the heavens is entire free from obstacle and hindrance. It is not to be wondered at that the occurrence should be terrifying to the ignorant and superstitious. A solar eclipse is one of those terrestrial terrors of which science, happily, has relived the civilized nations, though the savage still sees in it the effort of a demon or a dragon to devour the glorious sun-god."
In February 1970, A University of Evansville professor told the Sunday Courier & Press that a "moon-between-the-earth-and-sun situation isn't all that rare," which he said includes the next time an eclipse passes through Evansville in 2024.
For the 2017 solar eclipse Monday, the Evansville Courier & Press will have its news team in Hopkinsville and at University of Southern Indiana.