19-year-old Helena Muffly wrote exactly 100 years ago today:
Sunday, October 11, 1914: Went to Sunday school this morning. Carrie was over this afternoon, and we had our pictures taken under an apple tree and sitting on the pasture bare.
Her middle-aged granddaughter’s comments 100 years later:
It must have been a lovely October day if Grandma and her friend Carrie Stout decided to have someone (her sister Ruth?) take their picture.
I’m a little confused by the phrase “sitting on the pasture bare.” The modern literal interpretation of the phrase makes no sense within the context of the times. Is the pasture bare. . . of grass? . . . of cows? . . . of fallen apples?
A Hundred Years Ago 
My question is, does the picture still exist?
me too! I googled it – nothing.
Diana xo
I would say that from the context that she means that they were sitting directly on the ground. i.e. riding bareback on a horse.
They didn’t have a rug to sit on, perhaps?
As I so often do, I agree with Gallivanta’s comment – I think Grandma just meant they were sitting on the grass. Don’t we wish we had that picture???
No blanket..
I agree with ‘sitting on the bare ground’.
When I was a kid, whether I was playing with friends or on a picnic, the admonition always was that we shouldn’t sit on “the bare ground.” We’d spread a blanket or quilt. I suspect the meaning’s about the same.
If she’d added a comma between “pasture” and “bare,” we would’ve had our collective mind blown! 😉
Maybe Helena just meant to be poetic. I sure would love to see that photo! 🙂
“The flock unsheltered and the pasture bare.” A poem called “Ode” by Charles Kingsley. 1862
I love seeing the suggested current interpretations of the word “bare.” And I laughed at the “comma” remark.
I would also speculate that they were sitting directly on the ground without a blanket, rug or Macintosh squares.
I agree, sitting on the bare ground, with no blanket.
I’m just pleased grandma is writing again.
Yeah, I suspect it’s sitting directly on the grass.
How titillating to think that they may have posed nude!
I agree with so many of the previous comments: sitting on the bare ground; where is that picture?, and finally, I too am glad she is writing again 🙂
oh I raced to see if you had a photo of the very apple trees she sat under. The pasture would be fairly bare in October as animals would have it grazed almost bare as temperatures dropped and growth slowed down. Also I believe it was common to allow pigs to graze in orchards and they certainly would have bared the ground. Here where I live in the southwest of Ireland the family cow was kept in the same orchard attached to the smallest of houses. I just love this blog!
Curiouser and curiouser said Alice.
🙂