16-year-old Helena Muffly wrote exactly 100 years ago today:
Friday, June 16, 1911: Please excuse me for I have forgotten what I did today. It’s hardly worthwhile to keep a diary, when you can’t remember anything.
Her middle-aged granddaughter’s comments 100 years later:
I’m still enjoying reading a 1911 book by Dr. Mary Galbraith called Personal Hygiene and Physical Training for Women. Last week I told you how about how obesity was defined in 1911. Today, I’ll give you an old-time suggestion for reducing weight and maintaining good health: thoroughly chew (or masticate) each bite of food before swallowing:
Obese patients grow fat because they overeat, but with a thorough mastication of the food their appetites would be satisfied with far less food than they have been accustomed to eat and the superfluous fat would drop off.
Personal Hygiene and Physical Training for Women (1911)
A hundred years ago, many people followed the beliefs of a food faddist named Horace Fletcher. He argued that for good health, it was very important for everyone to completely chew each bite of food before swallowing.
In 1911 people often talked about Fletcherizing (thoroughly chewing) their food. Depending upon the food, Fletcher argued that it should be chewed 32 times, 45 times, or even more before swallowing.
Also, it wasn’t considered healthy to eat too many soft easy-to-eat foods because that encouraged bolting of food, over-eating, and indigestion.
16-year-old Helena Muffly wrote exactly 100 years ago today:
Thursday, June 15, 1911: Wanted to go to Milton today and get some things to wear but mommie wouldn’t go.
Old real picture post card of Milton--Grandma wanted to shop here a hundred years ago today, but she didn't make it. (Postcard source: Milton Historical Society)
Her middle-aged granddaughter’s comments 100 years later:
Since Grandma mentioned several times in previous diary entries that she went to Milton by herself, I’m surprised that she didn’t just go alone when her mother won’t go. I suppose that her mother would only pay for whatever Grandma wanted to buy (clothes?) if she went along.
16-year-old Helena Muffly wrote exactly 100 years ago today:
Wednesday, June 14, 1911: There is nothing to write about for today.
McEwensville
Her middle-aged granddaughter’s comments 100 years later:
Since Grandma had “nothing to write about” a hundred years ago today, I’m going to get on my soapbox.
A hundred years ago this building was the Reader Hotel.The building with the porch once housed a restaurant. When Grandma was writing these diary entries the other building was Armstrong’s General Store.
Sometimes I read other genealogy blogs. Jennifer in Climbing My Family Tree visited some small towns in Iowa where her ancestors had lived. She wrote about towns “that reached their peak a hundred years ago,” and then wondered what caused some towns to struggle or disappear while others thrived. I’ve often pondered similar issues regarding the towns in central Pennsylvania–
McEwensville Community Hall is the white building in the center of the photo. It would have been the center of community activities a hundred years ago.
I find the world within a 10 mile radius of the farm where Grandma grew up to be fascinating.
One hundred years ago the nearby towns were filled with shops and restaurants. Neighbors helped each other. A good Saturday night would involve doing things with friends and family—visiting the neighbors for ice cream, maybe playing a few cards—or on a big week-end there might be a box social or the high school students might put on a play that the entire community would attend. The local newspaper would report whose grandmother had come to visit-and who’d attended a picnic.
One hundred years ago the villages, towns, and small cities were thriving. Some regional economists today assert that many small towns no longer serve a purpose. When transportation and communication are poor that there is a need for more local and regional centers. But according to these economists when people can easily travel further to work and shop the need for many small communities begins to vanish.
Fred’s–the one and only restaurant in McEwensville today.
Yet I somehow don’t want to give up on the small towns—and want to believe that they still have an important role in the 21st century. Personally I find the small towns in central Pennsylvania to be wonderful, friendly, relaxing places and believe that they are in the process of re-inventing themselves for the 21st century.
Many of our youth today participate in study abroad programs and know all about remote villages half way around the world. Our kids can tell us about the foods, agricultural practices, and cultural norms of tiny villages in Asia, Latin American and Africa (which I totally support and think is incredibly cool)—yet they are clueless about the awesome history and culture of the small towns outside their backdoor.
One young man I know recently told me that when he was growing up his parents regularly took him on trips to Europe—but they never bothered to show him America.
Last year he and some of his friends went on what they called a Rust Belt Tour—and explored and photographed towns in Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania that once had been thriving but now are really struggling. He talked with the people—and learned about the unique history, culture, and foods of each locale. And he discovered some wonderful places and people.
His perspectives and interests are unique in many ways, yet I’m thrilled that there might be a resurging interest (however small) in rediscovering some really cool places.
16-year-old Helena Muffly wrote exactly 100 years ago today:
Tuesday, June 13, 1911: I have a sore neck, and I’m not trying to write anything very pleasant, so there. Said good-bye to H.W. Wonder when I will see him again. He came over for some tools this morning.
Her middle-aged granddaughter’s comments 100 years later:
Grandma probably has a sore neck from stooping to pick strawberries (see yesterday’s entry).
I assume that H.W. refers to one of the carpenters who had been building the barn addition. On June 2 she’d indicated that she thought two of them were cute. And, on June 6 there’d been the barn raising—so the carpentry work is probably finished. It’s hard to be a teen sometimes . . .
16-year-old Helena Muffly wrote exactly 100 years ago today:
Monday, June 12, 1911: Started to pick strawberries this morning. Of course it will mean some early rising and loss of sleep, but just look at what I can earn.
Her middle-aged granddaughter’s comments 100 years later:
It sounds as if Grandma got paid for picking strawberries. I wonder if she worked for a neighbor who raised the strawberries, hired workers to pick them, and then sold them in town—or if her parents raised berries for sale (and paid their own children to harvest them).
Regardless of who owned the berry patch, I bet that the Muffly family enjoyed eating strawberries.
I don’t know how Grandma’s family served strawberries, but when I was a child we ate shortcake muffins with strawberries and milk almost daily during June. I would guess that they also ate strawberry shortcake a hundred years ago.
We ate strawberry shortcake for supper—and it was part of the main meal (not a dessert). The menu consisted of shortcake, and meat or fried potatoes.
It seems a little strange today—but back then on those hot June days we’d typically have a heavy meal for lunch (we called it dinner) and a relatively light meal with strawberry shortcake in the evening. In June on the farm we’d being baling hay—and there was lots of hard, hot labor required to get the hay baled and then stacked in the barn—so it seems even more amazing to me now that we ate a relatively light meal (that many today would consider a dessert) in the evening.
Here’s a traditional recipe for strawberry shortcake:
Strawberry Shortcake
1 1/4 cups flour
1 1/4 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoons salt
1/4 cup butter, softened
Scant 1/2 cup milk
Sliced strawberries
Additional milk (optional)
Preheat oven to 420 degrees. Stir the flour, baking powder, and salt together. Cut the butter into the flour mixture . Add milk and stir just enough to combine using a fork. Grease muffin pan and fill each about 3/4 full. Cook about 18-20 minutes or until lightly browned. Serve with strawberries and milk (optional).
16-year-old Helena Muffly wrote exactly 100 years ago today:
Sunday, June 11, 1911: Went to Sunday school this morning and managed to get there when it was almost over. Carrie and I went up to Rhone’s this afternoon. A thunderstorm is raging now.
Her middle-aged granddaughter’s comments 100 years later:
Interesting that Grandma mentions that Sunday school was held in the morning—on April 9 she indicated that it was held in the afternoon. This provides further support that the church Grandma attended was part of a parish that had one minister who served several churches. The church service and Sunday school times probably regularly rotated between more and less desired times so that members of all of the churches in the parish felt like they were being treated fairly.
16-year-old Helena Muffly wrote exactly 100 years ago today:
Saturday, June 10, 1911: The carpenters went away today and I sort of miss them, especially in my stack of dishes. Heard this morning that we will have the same old teacher back that we had last year. Mrs. Edith Reynolds was here a little while this afternoon. Came with her Harry.
Her middle-aged granddaughter’s comments 100 years later:
I wonder if Grandma ever got to know the two carpenters she thought were cute who were helping build the barn addition.
Grandma’s friend Edith and her fiancé Harry got married in April—on the same day that Edith graduated from high school. I wonder how the marriage was going two months later. The April 1, 1911 issues of Ladies Home Journal had this advice for recently married women:
Marriage
One thing the bride must try to remember: If things seem awry, if the home you have gone to isn’t like you thought it would be, and life begins to seem like a disappointment, it is your love, not his, that is inadequate. In the first glow of love you believed that his presence would glorify a hut; if the glory is gone it is yourself that has changed—not he. Can you understand this? You will some day.
Happily for us all, the boy and girl once married have courage to face facts that they do not quite understand; they have some sense of the sanctity of a vow taken under the auspices of religion and law; and, better still, they love each other deeply and truly, even while they misunderstand. This will tide them over until the child comes, and with its coming, if they are decent young folk, comes the utter irrevocableness of their union. They are parents. As such the dignity with which childish eyes will soon invest them begins to hang visibly about them. They dare not fail then in “their great task of happiness.”
“The Ideas of a Plain Country Woman,” Ladies Home Journal (April 1, 1911)
Whew, in 1911 they sure put a lot of the responsibility for a happy marriage on the woman—
A Hundred Years Ago 