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—

16-year-old Helena Muffly wrote exactly 100 years ago today: 

Thursday, June 8, 1911: I got my camera this morning which I had sent for about a week ago. I have a kind of cold that is not to my liking.

Her middle-aged granddaughter’s comments 100 years later:

I didn’t realize until I read this diary entry that relatively inexpensive, easy-to-use cameras apparently were widely available a hundred years ago.

I was also surprised that Grandma received the camera only about a week after she ordered it. It often takes almost that long today to receive items that I order off the internet.

Grandma probably needed to go into Watsontown to pick up the package that contained the camera since rural parcel post didn’t begin until 1913. According to Wikipedia: “On January 1, 1913, parcel post service began, providing rural postal customers with package service along with their regular mail and obviating a trip to a town substantial enough to support an express office.”

Local merchants across the US had strongly opposed parcel post because they thought that it would give catalog companies an unfair advantage and drive them out of business, but policies were finally changed and it was implemented.

*Photo Source: Camera-Wiki.org (Photo by Steve Harwood)

16-year-old Helena Muffly wrote exactly 100 years ago today: 

Sunday, June 4, 1911: Went to Sunday school this afternoon. Carrie Stout was over this evening. Somehow she happened to stay so late that her mother came after her. Guess she got a spanking and maybe a growling also.

 Her middle-aged granddaughter’s comments 100 years later:

Even though there have been previous diary entries about mothers using corporal punishment to discipline teens (see the February 25 entry where Grandma’s mother chased her with a stir stick)—I’m still in shock that parents apparently spanked teen-aged children a hundred years ago. And that the teens apparently accepted the punishment.

16-year-old Helena Muffly wrote exactly 100 years ago today: 

Saturday, June 3, 1911: Went over to Stouts this forenoon to telephone to Besse. The carpenters went away tonight.

Her middle-aged granddaughter’s comments 100 years later:

It’s interesting how the telephone has gone from being a new curiosity that Grandma was afraid to try less than a month ago to a tool that she uses to call her married sister Besse.

The carpenters were building the addition on the barn—and Grandma seemed to think that two of them were cute (see yesterday’s entry). But why does their leaving merit mention in the diary?  Did they come from a distance and typically stay overnight at the Muffly’s? (It may have been considered acceptable  hundred years ago for transient laborers to sleep in the barn.)  Maybe the carpenters left because the next day was Sunday and they won’t be working.  .  .

16-year-old Helena Muffly wrote exactly 100 years ago today: 

Sunday, May 28, 1911: Ma and Pa went away to store all day. Tweet was here all night and staid till evening. Went to Sunday school this morning. Carrie was over this afternoon. Heard this evening of the arrival of a girl cousin born on May the 18th.

Her middle-aged granddaughter’s comments 100 years later:

From reading the diary—I now know that “Tweet”  was Helen Wesner–with a nickname like Tweet she must have been a blast as a teen.  I just knew her as an elderly woman who had never married.

Grandma and Helen would see each other on Sunday’s for much of their lives. After Grandma married, she attended Messiah Lutheran Church in McEwenville which was the church Helen attended.

When I was a child in the middle of the 20th century, the children’s Sunday School classes were in the basement, but the adult classes were spread out in various corners of the main church sanctuary. I remember that sometimes my Sunday School class would end before the adult classes, and I’d come up the stairs into the narthex and peek through the doors into the sanctuary.

There were four adult classes: the men’s class, the women’s class, and the old ladies’ class, and the old men’s class. (Maybe the classes had another name—but I always called them the old ladies’ and old men’s classes).

I can remember Grandma and Helen sitting in the old ladies’ class. It was a small class—maybe seven people on a good Sunday—most Sunday’s there probably were about 5 people. My memory is that all had gray hair, wore loose-fitting dresses that seemed to lack any sense of style, and were bent over in weariness.

After reading the diary—I now wonder what those elderly women talked about on those Sunday mornings.

What do people talk about who’ve known each other for most of their lives? The good old days? . . their families? . . . gardening? . . . their health? . . . their deepest secrets (which may not really be secrets to people who’ve known each other for 50, 60, or 70 years)?

16-year-old Helena Muffly wrote exactly 100 years ago today: 

Friday, May 26, 1911: I’m through watching cows for the present time—at least. That was my duty for one wk.

Her middle-aged granddaughter’s comments 100 years later:

Why is the duty of watching cows over? What did it involve? Weren’t there fences around the fields? (Somehow this entry brings back vague memories of  Johanna Spyri’s book about Heidi watching cows in the Alps.) Was the task rotated between the siblings in the family?

According to Wikipedia barbed wire was widely used by the last quarter of the 19th century. I would have thought that the Muffly family would have had sturdy barbed wire fences around their fields—but maybe they didn’t.

16-year-old Helena Muffly wrote exactly 100 years ago today: 

Tuesday, May 23, 1911: It was most too hot today any work today, so I lingered around in cool shady nooks so that I might not become overheated.

Her middle-aged granddaughter’s comments 100 years later:

It probably was hotter on May 23, 1911 in McEwensville than it is today. Weather Underground’s forecast for today (May 23, 2011) for McEwensville is for a high of 76 degrees with a 50% chance of thunderstorms.

The May 23, 1911 issue of the New York Times contained an article about the unseasonably hot weather in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on the previous day. Since Pittsburgh is about 150 miles west of McEwensville—similar weather patterns were probably seen on the 23rd in central Pennsylvania.

The New York Times article said:

PITTSBURG, May 22.—The stretch of two weeks of torrid heat was broken in Pittsburg at 6 o’clock tonight, when an electrical storm brought relief after the official thermometer had registered 92 degrees late this afternoon for the third successive day.

The record of continuous maximum temperature for all months for five years was broken, and all records known, extending forty years back for May heat are shattered.

The thirtieth death from heat in four days was reported this afternoon when Gustave Yenney, a jeweler, dropped dead in the Criminal Court room, the third person to topple over in the same court since last Friday, though the other two courtroom victims are recovering. Following the fatality, two branches of court adjourned to await cooler weather. Business offices all over the city closed for the afternoon.

It’s interesting how offices closed due to hot weather before the advent of air conditioning. I guess that back in those slower times there were both “snow days” and “heat days”.

An aside—Note that prior to World War I Pittsburgh was spelled without an h at the end—i.e., Pittsburg. During the War the h was added to make the name look less German.