19-year-old Helena Muffly wrote exactly 100 years ago today:
Monday, August 24 – Thursday, August 27, 1914: For lack of something to write.
Her middle-aged granddaughter’s comments 100 years later:
Since Grandma didn’t write anything specific a hundred years ago today–and I’m focused on enjoying the last few days of summer—I thought you might enjoy some photos from a hundred-year-old issue of Ladies Home Journal showing an example of how some families enjoyed a summer vacation at a “camp.”
A Camp for the Family
This family camp, situated on an island in Lake Ontario, successfully carried on for some years past has brought happiness to all families privileged to join it, and its beneficial effects in promoting the harmony of home life are observable throughout the year.
Ladies Home Journal (June, 1914)
A Hundred Years Ago 
I love the old-fashioned “boom box” in the first photo! Ha!
I liked it, too. Today kids take cell phones and other personal devices to camp; back then they took their Victor Victrolas. 🙂
The camp photos are awesome! 🙂
I’m glad you liked them.
We used to go to a place in Minnesota that would qualify as a family camp, I think. Log cabin, fishing, swimming, all families on vacation. It was such fun! Oh — and canoeing!
What fun! It sounds like it was awesome.
I love the lady with the fish 🙂
She looks so pleased with herself. 🙂
Reminds me of my early childhood, down on my grandparents’ farm near Seneca, Missouri. I can remember more than one weekend like those in your pictures. Life was closer to nature then. We would go fishing and swimming in Grand Lake (Oklahoma), or sometimes swimming in a long-used place on Lost Creek (it was usually cold). On Sunday we would have a chicken dinner. That was more work then – someone would catch a couple of chickens in the yard, which was surprisingly easy, chop it’s head off, scald it with boiling water to make plucking the feathers easier, and pretty soon, there was chicken on the table. “Dinner” was the noon meal, supper was lighter fare in the evening.
Your grandparent’s farm sounds like a really fun place. My family still eats supper. I’ve never been able to call the evening meal “dinner.”
It’s always interesting to see how times have changed–in only 100 years.
Things sure have changed a lot–though I’m also surprised how little a few things have changed over the last hundred years.
I’ll have to pass on to my husband the “beneficial effects in promoting the harmony of home life”! I’m afraid that wouldn’t be how I’d describe our first experience of camping. Our overnighter in sub-zero temperatures almost ended in divorce! Maybe we’d have managed better if we’d have caught a big fish?!
Your story makes me smile. At least you had “Buttercup” on your most recent camping expedition.
Grandma must have used up a month’s worth of words writing about the Niagara Falls trip…!
🙂
Great photo’s I can imagine the peace and serenity of their picnics. No gadgets to distract the children, just the great outdoors.
It sounds wonderful!