17-year-old Helena Muffly wrote exactly 100 years ago today:
Monday, November 25, 1912: Today, don’t remember.
Her middle-aged granddaughter’s comments 100 years later:
Sounds like a slow day for Grandma. Since she didn’t write much I’ll share a hundred-old-recipe for Mock Cherry Pie that I made for Thanksgiving.
The pie is made with cranberries and raisins. It’s enticingly tart–yet sweet–and a nice addition to my repertoire of Thanksgiving pies; but it tastes (surprise, surprise) more like a cranberry raisin pie than a cherry pie.
Mock Cherry Pie
Pick over and wash three cupfuls of cranberries, and cook in half a cupful of water until broken. Add one cupful of sugar and one cupful of raisins. Bake between crusts in 9-inch pan.
Adapted from recipe in Good Housekeeping (November, 1912)
17-year-old Helena Muffly wrote exactly 100 years ago today:
Sunday, November 24, 1912: Didn’t even get to Sunday School this morning because it was raining, then it changed to snow. And today became the first day of the snow fall.
Source: Farm Journal (October, 1912)
Her middle-aged granddaughter’s comments 100 years later:
What did Grandma do on rainy Sunday mornings like this one? Did she ever doodle or draw pictures to while away the time?
Maybe Grandma saw these directions for making fifteen line pictures in the October, 1912 issue of Farm Journal:
Draw a picture with fifteen straight lines. Just fifteen, and no more. Take any subject, landscape, animal, bird, fruit, flower, a household article, or even a human being. The object is to produce a striking picture in fifteen lines. This is lots of fun and in a short time you will be surprised what you can do.
I’ve become hooked on 15 line drawings. Ever since I read this suggestion, my doodling has become more purposeful, and I enjoy the mental challenge of trying to make really cool 15-line drawings.
There was a follow-up article about how to do 15 line drawings as a child’ party activity in the November 1912 issue of Farm Journal.
Here’s how to have a picture party: Give each boy and girl a pencil and three sheets of paper. Tell them to draw something in fifteen straight lines; a different picture on each sheet of paper. Let them work for fifteen minutes, then collect the papers and fasten them on the wall. and have the entire party vote for the best drawing. The one whose drawing received the most votes is the prizewinning one.
17-year-old Helena Muffly wrote exactly 100 years ago today:
Saturday, November 23, 1912: Was pretty busy today. That’s usually the way on Saturdays.
Source: Wikimedia Commons
Her middle-aged granddaughter’s comments 100 years later:
Since not much happened a hundred y ears ago today, I’m going to go back to a post from two weeks ago—
Sometimes I post an entry—and then find additional information and think—I could have written a better post if I’d known that.
Well, that’s what happened after I posted the November 10, 1912 diary entry. Grandma had written:
. . . This afternoon I went over to see Margaret. Such a time as I had getting there a crawling under fences and so on.
I thought it seemed really odd that she crawled under fences rather than walking on the road. But it apparently it was common a hundred years ago to take short-cuts through under fences and through fields. I recently was browsing through the December 1912 issue of Good Housekeeping, and it contained this tip to make it easier to traverse fields with barbed wire fences.
Cork the Barbs
In taking cross-country walks, provide yourself with a couple of dozen, medium-sized corks. When coming to the inevitable barbed-wire fence, protect each barb with a cork until you are safely under the fence. The corks may be returned to your pocket and used a good many times. The cork-safety device may be used to good effect on the barbed-wire fence between country neighbors. We have found it a most grateful saving of torn garments.
Whew, it sure is easier today to just hop in the car when we want to visit friends.. .
17-year-old Helena Muffly wrote exactly 100 years ago today:
Thursday, November 21, 1912: Nothing doing for today except that I got rather sad.
Her middle-aged granddaughter’s comments 100 years later:
Maybe Grandma was sad because she got her General History test back and was unhappy about the grade. The previous day, she’d written:
Had an exam in General History and although I looked over it some last evening, I got some questions that I was unable to answer correctly.
I’m still browsing through the hundred-year-old history book that I quoted yesterday. Here’s how the book defines history:
What History Is—History is an ordered account of the growth of human societies. It treats principally of political events, and must tell also about many other things which have influenced the progress of nations. Religion, science, art, literature, education and commerce are important in the history of every country.
Outlines of General History (1909) by V.A. Renouf
I wonder how a historian today would define history. . . and how the modern definition would differ (or not differ) from the hundred-year-old definition.
17-year-old Helena Muffly wrote exactly 100 years ago today:
Wednesday, November 20, 1912: Had an exam in General History and although I looked over it some last evening, I got some questions that I was unable to answer correctly.
Picture of Roman Fleet and Harbor in the the hundred-year-old textbook
Her middle-aged granddaughter’s comments 100 years later:
What was the test on?
Well . . . <<<drum roll please>>>>. . . . Grandma might have been studying the downfall of the Roman Empire.
Here’s how I figured it out:
I found a General History textbook published in 1909. (I bet Grandma’s book was at least a couple of years old). Since it’s about one-third of the way through the school year, the class was probably about one-third of the way through the book.
Hmm. . .. the book’s 476 pages long, so a third of the way through the book would have been around page 159. Page 159 is in a chapter titled, The Decay of the Roman Republic and the Growth of One-Man Power.
The chapter begins:
Political and Social Conditions of Rome After the Punic Wars.—The republican constitution of Rome was made for the government of a small city state. When the great part of the Mediterranean countries fell under the sway of Rome, her municipal government proved quite inadequate for the task of ruling so vast an empire. The earliest political result of the foreign wars was that the senate assumed almost exclusive control of the government. The popular assemblies could not understand the difficult questions of foreign policy, and were glad to leave their settlement to the senate, which was made up of experienced statesmen and generals . . .
17-year-old Helena Muffly wrote exactly 100 years ago today:
Tuesday, November 19, 1912: Poor little Jimmie got sick last night and had to miss his first day of school.
Jimmie Muffly
Her middle-aged granddaughter’s comments 100 years later:
Poor Jimmie— He was Grandma’s 7-year-old brother. It’s no fun to be sick—especially when you’re little. I wonder what was wrong. It sounds like whatever it was came on suddenly. I’m leaning towards him having the stomach flu.
And, poor Grandma’s mother—
Grandma had written in her diary the previous day:
. . . I was afraid I’d have to miss school when Pa had his threshing done. They started today . . .
November 18, 1912
This suggest that the threshers were still there. Grandma’s mother was probably trying to prepare food and serve it to a threshing crew—while also taking care of a sick (vomiting?) child.
