Old Farmer's Almanac - 19th and 20th Centuries

19th and 20th Centuries

In 1851, Jenks made another change to the Almanac when he featured a "four seasons" drawing on the cover by Boston artist Hammatt Billings, engraved by Henry Nichols. Jenks dropped the new cover for three years, and then reinstated it permanently in 1855. This trademarked design is still in use today.

In 1858, Abraham Lincoln may have used a copy of The Old Farmer's Almanac to argue the innocence of his client, William "Duff" Armstrong, who was on trial for murder in Beardstown, Illinois. Lincoln used an almanac to refute the testimony of Charles Allen, an eyewitness who claimed he had seen the crime by the light of the moon on August 29, 1857. The book stated that not only was the Moon in the first quarter, but it was riding "low" on the horizon, about to set. However, because the actual almanac used in the trial was not retained for posterity, there exists some controversy as to whether The Old Farmer's Almanac was the one used. In 2007, a competing almanac, the Farmers' Almanac, based in Lewiston, Maine, ran an article claiming that the almanac in question may have been theirs.

In 1861, Charles Louis Flint became editor and provided his readers with a heavier emphasis on farming. The next two editors, John Bobies Tileston and Loomis Joseph Campbell, served short terms and made no format changes.

Robert Ware took over as the book's sixth editor in 1877 and served for 13 years before his brother, Horace, was named to the position in 1900. During Horace Everett Ware's 19 years as editor, he began to orient the book toward a more general audience by replacing the scientific agricultural articles with general features on nature and modern life.

The eighth and ninth editors, Frank B. Newton and Col. Carroll J. Swan, kept the Almanac tradition alive through wartime and the Depression.

Roger Scaife was appointed editor in 1936. His term coincided with the only time in the history of the Almanac that its distribution declined and the book's financial stability fell into question. The 1938 edition had a circulation of less than 89,000, compared with 225,000 in 1863.

During his tenure, Scaife also committed the greatest of all blunders in Almanac history: In the 1938 edition, he dropped the weather forecasts. In their place, he substituted temperature and precipitation averages. The public outcry was so great that he reinstated the forecasts in the next year's edition, but the decision had already destroyed his reputation.