17-year-old Helena Muffly wrote exactly 100 years ago today:
Sunday, April 21, 1912: Went to Sunday School this afternoon. Wish I had my new hat. I’d wear it if I had.
Her middle-aged granddaughter’s comments 100 years later:
Did Grandma want a hat like one of these hats that were featured in a hundred-year-old issue of Ladies Home Journal?
With the coming of summer one turns instinctively to the flowers, and there is an overwhelming desire to have them around us, in our gardens, and even on our persons. The desire to be personally adorned with them can find best expression in the use of the artificial. In these hats are shown what lovely artificial flowers can be had and at small cost.
“When Flowers Look Well on a Hat”, Ladies Home Journal, June 1911
16-year-old Helena Muffly wrote exactly 100 years ago today:
Thursday, January 4, 1912: Such a time as we had this morning. Ma was going to Milton and oh she had to make her train. Thought I might possibly be late to school with all her flying around, but I got there in plenty of time. I must be one of these early birds that you don’t like to hear so much about. I thought maybe she’d get me a nice surprise, but she didn’t.
Her middle-aged granddaughter’s comments 100 years later:
What was Grandma was hoping that her mother would bring her? Might it have been a dress pattern and fabric to make it?
A 1912 Ladies Home Journal article showed examples of dresses that could be made for one dollar. (Yes, you read that right! $1. Money was worth a lot more a hundred years ago.)
Well-chosen material, neat sewing, and the careful adjustment of a dress are more to be desired than expensive material badly made up and carelessly adjusted.
This is easily demonstrated in the simple dress of blue dimity above, and you can readily duplicate it for one dollar. Pattern No. 6624, which is ten cents, requires in size 16 years five yards of 36-inch material at fifteen cents a yard, and buttons at fifteen cents. The lawn bow at the neck is not included in the cost, as every girl usually has such an accessory or can make one from fine lawn or net or from scraps of lace or embroidery in her scrap-bag. . .
“Would You Believe These Cost Only One Dollar?” (Ladies Home Journal, February 1912)
16-year-old Helena Muffly wrote exactly 100 years ago today:
Sunday, November 26, 1911: Went to Sunday School this morning. Carrie and I went for a walk this afternoon, which was the around about way to Watsontown and back. We went up to McEwensville this evening to attend the Thanks offering.
Her middle-aged granddaughter’s comments 100 years later:
It sounds like Grandma and her friend Carrie did a lot of walking a hundred years ago today. I wonder if they wore crocheted caps. The November, 1911 issue of Ladies Home Journal had lots of great cap pictures.
16-year-old Helena Muffly wrote exactly 100 years ago today:
Monday, November 13, 1911: A veritable winter day. Gee whiz! But it is cold. I wore my heavy green dress to school, which was oh so comfortable. Rachel was down this evening and Rufus served us with pop corn.
Her middle-aged granddaughter’s comments 100 years later:
I found this drawing of a green school dress in the September 1911 issue of Ladies Home Journal. I wonder if Grandma’s heavy green dress was similar to it.
A hundred years ago Ladies Home Journal readers could order patterns so that they could make the clothes featured in the magazine:
Patterns for the designs shown on this page can be supplied at fifteen cents for each number, post-free. The amount of material required for the various sizes is printed on the pattern envelopes. Order from your nearest dealer in patterns: or by mail giving number of pattern, bust measure, and age, and including the price to the Pattern Department, The Ladies’ Home Journal, Philadelphia.
Note where readers were directed to send their pattern order. It’s hard to believe that a hundred years ago just putting Philadelphia down as the address would get a letter to the right place.
Rachel and Rufus
In this post Grandma refers to her sister Ruth as Rufus. Rachel was their friend Rachel Oakes. She was the primary teacher at McEwensville.
16-year-old Helena Muffly wrote exactly 100 years ago today:
Tuesday, August 29, 1911: Did some fixing at one of my school dresses. I will soon need them for school starts next week. I’m so glad. I intend to be very studious and see if I can’t make a better record this coming year than I did last. Last year’s average was poor enough. I know.
Source: Ladies Home Journal (August, 1911)
Her middle-aged granddaughter’s comments 100 years later:
I wonder what repairs Grandma needed to make to one of her old school dresses. I bet that she wished that she had some stylish new clothes. The August 1911 issue of Ladies Home Journal showed the latest school clothes styles for young women.
For more pictures of 1911 clothes, see 1911 Dresses.
16-year-old Helena Muffly wrote exactly 100 years ago today:
Sunday, August 6, 1911: Went to Sunday school this morning. Carrie and I took a short stroll this afternoon. We had intended to take a longer one, but we decided that it would be too hot. We talked about getting up a picnic, and the thought may be carried into execution. Who knows.
Her middle-aged granddaughter’s comments 100 years later:
Grandma mentioned the hot weather several times during Summer 1911. The other times I could find articles in old newspapers which confirmed that the weather had been very hot on that date. But I can’t find anything in 1911 newspapers about unusually hot weather on August 6. Maybe the sun just felt really hot to Grandma and her friend Carrie Stout even though the temperature wasn’t particularly high.
In the process of looking for the weather in the August 6, 1911 issue of the New York Times I noticed an article that began:
Narrower Skirts Next Autumn—So Says Rumor, but No One Has an Idea What the Arbiters of Fashion Will Decree
Rumor is rife these days. It is said that skirts are to be narrower than ever in the Autumn; that all waists are to be excessively short; that divided skirts will be the rule . . . .
New York Times, August 6, 1911
Hmm—I’ve heard a rumor that the arbitrators of fashion are saying that narrower skirts are in for this upcoming autumn.
When I read the New York Times article, I remembered that I’d seen these drawings of a type of narrow skirt–the trouser skirt–in the June, 1911 issue of Ladies Home Journal.
16-year-old Helena Muffly wrote exactly 100 years ago today:
Thursday, August 3, 1911: Just got home from a party a little while ago. It was up at Amelia Seibert’s. I had a real nice time. As I thought, B.G. was there.
Her middle-aged granddaughter’s comments 100 years later:
Whew, to be young and at a party with a special guy. I bet Grandma spent hours getting ready for the party. Did she wear a special dress? How did she fix her hair?
She may have fixed her hair like this. (Photos from article titled “How Women Can Style Their Hair,” Ladies Home Journal, June 1911)
I can almost sense her excitement, her nervousness, and her fluttering heart. She may have been thinking—Does he think I look pretty? Will he talk to me? . . .
Or like this . . .
The diary entries for the past week have referred to a guy Grandma really liked. On July 29 she wrote, “He was there. B.” And the next day she wrote, “ Saw him today.” And now the diary entry provides another clue: the last initial, “G.”
I keep trying not to speculate who B.G. was. Grandma obviously made an effort to semi-disguise his name by using initials—and yet I somehow can’t help myself. I’m probably totally out in left field but the only B.G. that I can come up with is her sister Ruth’s future husband—Bill Gauger.
Is it possible that Grandma may have liked Bill before he became Ruth’s beau? William (Bill) Gauger lived on a farm near McEwensville and was born in 1894—so he would have been 17 in 1911. Grandma was 16. Ruth was 19. It almost seems like Bill would have still seemed like a young kid to Ruth in 1911. (And, according to the diary, in 1911 Ruth was dating Jim Oakes).
With the coming of summer one turns instinctively to the flowers, and there is an overwhelming desire to have them around us, in our gardens, and even on our persons. The desire to be personally adorned with them can find best expression in the use of the artificial. In these hats are shown what lovely artificial flowers can be had and at small cost.
