17-year-old Helena Muffly wrote exactly 100 years ago today:
Saturday, May 4, 1912: They put me at cleaning the pantry. I’m not fond of house cleaning, and therefore did not like my work. Sewed some this afternoon. I intend to do a lot more often after school is out.
Source: National Food Magazine (May, 1912)
In
House Cleaning Time
When
Old
Dutch
Comes in
Dirt Goes
Out—
Try it on
Something
Hard to
Clean.
Many uses and full
directions on
large sifter can 10¢
Her middle-aged granddaughter’s comments 100 years later:
The pantry probably needed to be cleaned in anticipation of the upcoming canning season. The shelves likely were dusty and filled with disorganized mixture of empty canning jars, pots, and pans.
17-year-old Helena Muffly wrote exactly 100 years ago today:
Friday, May 3, 1912:Well examinations are over. I can say that I am glad. But I’m not glad the we only have one more day of school. Besse was out this evening. I sort of miss my lessons tonight.
Recent view of the building that once housed the McEwensville Schools. The high school was on the 2nd floor. Grandma’s 6-year-old brother Jimmie attended the primary school on the first floor.
Her middle-aged granddaughter’s comments 100 years later:
Yeah! I’m glad that Grandma’s exams are finished. She sure worried about them in the diary entries for the last week or so—
And, now –finally– it sounds like everything went okay (thank goodness!) —and that she’s already sad about the impending end of the school year.
Maybe Grandma was sort of like me. Sometimes I think that I worry about things to motivate myself to quit procrastinating and properly prepare for an upcoming event. It probably was the same with Grandma and her studies.
Besse
Besse was Grandma’s older married sister. This mention of Besse is so matter of fact. I wish that it conveyed a little more about Besse’s emotional state. This is the first time that Besse has been mentioned in the diary since the death of her newborn child in early April. Hopefully she was doing all right.
17-year-old Helena Muffly wrote exactly 100 years ago today:
Thursday, May 2, 1912: Exams began today. I am rather doubtful about what I made in Algebra.
Her middle-aged granddaughter’s comments 100 years later:
Sounds like the Algebra exam was tough. When my children were young, I used to bake cookies to cheer them up when they got home after a rough day at school. I now receive emails from the university my daughter attends asking if I want to buy a care package that will be delivered to her during finals week. Did Grandma’s mother have warm, fresh-baked cookies when Grandma arrived home from school to show she cared?
Here’s a recipe for Ginger Snaps that appeared in the April 1912 issue of Ladies Home Journal.
Ginger Snaps
½ Cupful of Molasses
½ Cupful of Sugar
½ Cupful of Butter
Set on the fire and boil for five minutes. Cool, then add
1 egg
1 Teaspoonful of Ginger
1 Teaspoonful of Soda
1 Tablespoonful of Vinegar
Flour enough to roll
I used approximately 2 cups of flour. I rolled the dough out until it was thin and then baked in a 400 degree oven for about 8 minutes.
The ginger snaps were excellent and perfect with a glass of milk.
An aside—I love how old recipes call for a teaspoonful of this and a cupful of that instead of just using the terms teaspoon and cup. It’s so much more descriptive.
17-year-old Helena Muffly wrote exactly 100 years ago today:
Wednesday, May 1, 1912:
April’s done and gone forever,
May springs forth in all her splendor
All the earth is clothed in beauty
When we do our loyal duty.
I am overshadowed by the gloom of a gathering cloud. All winter it has been growing bigger and bigger until now it is ready to burst upon me in all its fury. I must brave the consequences, yet I will retain a bit of hope. I’ve passed before. I hope to do so again. I may win after all.
Recent photo of a beautiful spring day in McEwensville. The old brick building that once housed the school is in the background.
Her middle-aged granddaughter’s comments 100 years later:
Grandma included a poem on the first day of each month. Some of them are a little better than others. I’m still uncertain whether Grandma wrote the poems for the first of each month or if she copied them from some source.
This month I’m leaning towards thinking that she copied them since there is such an emotional disconnect between the poem and her impending sense of gloom.
Grandma first mentioned the upcoming finals and her worries about whether she would pass on April 25—yet she hasn’t mentioned actually studying in any of the exams.
17-year-old Helena Muffly wrote exactly 100 years ago today:
Tuesday, April 30, 1912:Took my dress uptown to get made. Wonder when it will be done. Hope it will be satisfactory. I have a sore fore-finger, but can’t account for the cause.
Her middle-aged granddaughter’s comments 100 years later:
Hmm. . . I’m not sure what Grandma meant when she said that she took her dress uptown to get it made.
Three days earlier, she’d written that she and her mother went shopping in Milton and purchased a hat, several other items, and a white dress:
. . . I got a white dress . . .
Diary entry, April 27, 1912
Advertisement in Milton Evening Standard
Sometime a diary entry raises more questions than it answers.
— Had they really purchased cloth and a pattern, instead of a dress?
— Or did they buy a dress, but it needed alternations?
–Where was uptown? . . . somewhere in McEwensville? . . . in Watsontown? . . . (Uptown sounds like such a classy word to describe any section of the little towns near Grandma’s home.)
–And a lingering question—Do I worry too much about the details? In the bigger picture of Grandma’s story, does it really matter whether she bought a dress or had someone make it for her?
17-year-old Helena Muffly wrote exactly 100 years ago today:
Monday, April 29, 1912:It rained nearly all day. I wish it would get warm and stay so. Am beginning to think about final.
A recent rainy day in McEwensville
Her middle-aged granddaughter’s comments 100 years later:
I hope that Grandma was thinking positive thoughts about her upcoming finals. I found some surprisingly modern advice about positive thinking in a hundred year old book:
The Psychology of Success
There is nothing which tends so much to the success of volitional effort as the confident expectation of its success, while nothing is so likely to induce failure as the apprehension of it. . .
Lack of success may also be caused by indulgence or lack of courage, the individual preferring to sail along the chartered course of mediocrity rather than to strike out a new path for herself, involving risk, anxiety, and endless work . . . .
There are four mental requisites necessary to the achievement of success, namely: a clear view of the end; a judicious indifference to the sentiment around by the sweeping away of obstacles; an indomitable energy; and the power to resist the temptation to rest on the soporific plane of mediocrity.
Personal Hygiene and Physical Training for Women (Anna Galbraith, 1911)
If I could get in a time machine, I’d say, “Grandma—I hope you started to study. Then think confident thoughts. I’m rooting for your success.”
17-year-old Helena Muffly wrote exactly 100 years ago today:
Sunday, April 28, 1912: Went to Sunday School this morning. Jimmie went along. Carrie and I went for arbutus and wound up by taking a walk. Went to church this evening. Sported my new hat.
Trailing Arbutus (Mayflower)
Her middle-aged granddaughter’s comments 100 years later:
Carrie referred to her friend Carrie Stout, and Jimmie was her 6-year-old brother.
Trailing arbutus is a small white flower. A hundred years ago picking trailing arbutus apparently was a popular springtime activity.
I even noticed a short article about arbutus when I was recently looking through microfilms of the local newspaper. The April 8, 1912 issue of the Milton Evening Standard had the following article:
Arbutus must have a relatively long blooming season, since they still were in bloom on the 28th.
In 1911, Grandma also mentioned picking trailing arbutus—that time with her two sisters:
Besse was out this afternoon. We three kids went for arbutus and I got some this time. . .
