18-year-old Helena Muffly wrote exactly 100 years ago today:
Monday, June 16, 1913: After having been absent about for a week Ruthie returned at last this evening. Now it won’t be so lonesome for me. She brought me a souvenir and ever so much to talk about.
Hail stones rained from the sky in great abundance after she got here.
Her middle-aged granddaughter’s comments 100 years later:
Grandma’s sister Ruth returned from a week-long trip to Washington DC. I can just picture Ruth sitting at the kitchen table, and happily sharing the story of her wonderful adventure.
What was the souvenir that she brought back for Grandma?
Do you know if either item happened to be dated?
No dates, I just thought they looked old, but they obviously could be from a different time period.
Sheryl – I don’t doubt the items are old. What surprised me when we lived in DC was that vendors didn’t like to sell tourist type items with dates on them because they were afraid of having a surplus and then they wouldn’t be able to sell the items the following year.
I wonder what types of souvenirs were popular a hundred years ago.
The plate you had in your post is a perfect example. I see many of them in antique shops. I also see tea cups and saucers (which I always find interesting). Christmas ornaments that were dated were quite expensive in shops in high end shops (the older the more expensive).
Yay she’s back and now Helena only has to milk half the cows! This diary is starting to remind me of a Jane Austen story – I just love it!
I’m glad you’re enjoying it. 🙂
Ah, so she really did miss her sister 🙂
She did. 🙂
Grandma sure was good at leaving out details…. Nice to know that she was happy to have Ruthie back home!
It was a relatively long diary entry for her–but even then she leaves out way to many details. 🙂
Whatever the souvenir, I think Helena was pleased that her sister thought of her while she was gone.
I agree!
Lovely that sisters recognize how close they are when they have been separated for a time.
Sometimes it takes some time apart to realize that you would miss someone if they weren’t there.
I’ll bet she treasured that souvenir!
So do I.
Helena was lonesome for her sister, she missed Ruth. Now they can get back to the cat fighting between the two.
You’ve probably got it exactly right. 🙂
Clearly being apart from each other, improved the sisterly relationship!
That is from all times….
How true. . . sisters have complex relationships.
How nice that now they have “ever so much to talk about”! 🙂
It’s interesting how Grandma worded it that Ruth “brought” ever so much to talk about about. As would be expected they probably talked more about what Ruth did in DC, than about about what Grandma did on the farm.
Your grandmother was really wordy today!
I thought that same thing. It seems like she had lot of thoughts running through her mind when she wrote this entry.
I don’t imagine there was much sleeping that night, especially if it was hailing out. It’d be fun to have that souvenir I guess, but maybe even more fun to speculate. Maybe a hankie or something girly but small. Did people collect spoons back then I wonder.
Your comment brings back memories of the souvenir spoon racks that many people had when we were children. I actually got a spoon rack and bought a few souvenir spoons when I first got married–and then decided that they were out of style.
She seems to call her “Ruthie” whenever she really likes/misses Ruth. Aw…