A Hundred Years Ago

18-year-old Helena Muffly wrote exactly 100 years ago today: 

Tuesday, April 22, 1913:  Just one more day and then my school days will be ended. I believe I’ll feel rather sorry when they are all past. I hope it will be nice tomorrow and everything goes off all right in the evening.

Cope’s dinosaur which March claimed had the head on the wrong end. (Source: Wikipedia)

Her middle-aged granddaughter’s comments 100 years later:

One more day until graduation! The exhilaration Grandma felt the previous week about the end of school now seems tempered with the realization that those days were behind her and that there were things about school that she’d miss.

Grandma sounded a bit nervous about the graduation ceremony. She probably hoped that her speech on The Relics of the Earth’s Past would go well.

Yesterday’s post explored her speech topic. Vanbraman wrote a comment, and suggested that it might have been about the Bone Wars or been inspired by a book published in 1912 by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle called The Lost World.

I had never heard of either the Bone Wars or the book, so I did a little research.

A hundred years ago there was an incredible amount of  interest in dinosaurs and dinosaur bones.

The Bone Wars refer to a period in the late 1800s when there were several major expeditions that searched for dinosaur bones. There was a rivalry between two paleontologists, Orthniel Charles Marsh and Edward Drinker Cope, to discover additional bones. They both were very secretive, and accused the other of stealing bones and exploration sites. Each claimed that the other was not a credible scientist. For example, Marsh claimed that Cope put the head on the wrong end of a dinosaur.  However,  the field as a whole benefited from their many discoveries and the feud increased the interest of the public in dinosaurs.

According to Wikipedia, The Lost World by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is a superb piece of science fiction about an expedition to the rain forests of Brazil in search of living dinosaurs.  The book was republished in 2012 in honor of the hundredth anniversary of its original publication.

As happens so often, I’m ending up with more questions than answers. Was Grandma’s graduation speech about evolution (pro? . . or .  . con?) like I thought yesterday. . . or was it about paleontology and dinosaurs? . . .. or something else?

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18-year-old Helena Muffly wrote exactly 100 years ago today: 

Sunday, April 20, 1913:  Went to Sunday School this afternoon.

Raymond Swartz 

 Her middle-aged granddaughter’s comments 100 years later:

Three more days until graduation! Since Grandma didn’t write much a hundred years ago today, I’m going to continue to dive deeper into the information provided by her commencement ceremony program.

Six students, including my grandparents—Helena Muffly and Raymond Swartz— graduated from McEwensville High School in 1913. Both spoke at the commencement.

The title of Grandpa’s speech was Motion Pictures as an Educational Factor.

This was the era of silent films and lots of melodrama. When I researched this topic, I was surprised to learn that in 1913 many people thought that movies were a bad influence on young people.

According to Laura Wittern-Keller in her dissertation:

Movies with themes that challenged traditional values, shown in the dark to a mixed audience with larger-than-life figures, spawned a “moral panic.”

Hmm–Grandpa spoke on a controversial topic. He apparently took the side that his high school class mates would have approved of—but that  their parents might have objected to.

How did Grandpa build his argument that movies were educational? . . . Maybe he argued that  they enabled people in rural Pennsylvania to see  “see the world” . . . or that some of the movies were about historic events. . . or that they were works of art.  . .or . . . .

In my imagination, I picture his classmates giving him a standing ovation, while their elders tried to frown but their lips turned up in slight smiles of approval.

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18-year-old Helena Muffly wrote exactly 100 years ago today: 

Saturday, April 19, 1913:  Did quite a lot today. Am a little tired. Ma gave me a two dollar bill.

Her middle-aged granddaughter’s comments 100 years later:

$2 bills from the late 1800s (I couldn’t find any pictures of bills from the early 1900s.) (Source: Wikipedia)

The $2 bill was the third graduation gift Grandma received. The previous day she received a gold hat pin and a handkerchief. 

This diary entry raises more questions than answers for me.

Today we seldom see $2 bills—and they often seem special when we get one. Were they also unusual a hundred years ago—or were they readily available?

Why did Grandma say the gift was from her mother instead of from her parents? Why is her father so seldom mentioned in the diary? He was a farmer—and it seems like he should have been mentioned more often than he was.

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18-year-old Helena Muffly wrote exactly 100 years ago today: 

Sunday, April 13, 1913:  Went to Sunday School this morning. Took dinner with Carrie.

Source: Ladies Home Journal (July, 1911)

Her middle-aged granddaughter’s comments 100 years later:

Which meal did Grandma eat with her friend, Carrie Stout?

I’m almost sure that it was the noon meal—but today it seems like most people are refer to the evening meal as dinner.

When I was a child growing up we always called the mid-day meal dinner. But, I’m never sure if other people understand what I mean when I say dinner–so my family eats breakfast, lunch and supper.

What do you call the meals?

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