17-year-old Helena Muffly wrote exactly 100 years ago today:
Sunday, April 22, 1912: I now have that wonderful oration the way it suits me. I finished copying it this morning. Jimmie started back to school today. So far I don’t have any symptoms of the whooping cough. Don’t want it for two weeks yet.
Jimmie Muffly, 1912
Her middle-aged granddaughter’s comments 100 years later:
Grandma was working on a speech that she needed to present on the last day of school. On April 16, she wrote that she was trying to find a topic; and, of the 17th she wrote that she’d found an interesting topic.
I’m surprised that Grandma’s 6-year-old brother Jimmie had apparently been out of school for almost a month with whooping cough. On March 24 she’d written:
Jimmie threatened with the whooping cough. I don’t want him to get it, nor do I want to get it myself. I would have to stop school if I do, and that I shouldn’t like to.
But, Grandma never again mentioned whooping cough, so until this entry I’d assumed that Jimmie hadn’t gotten it.
Whooping cough was a bad illness a hundred years ago. According to Wikipedia:
Symptoms are initially mild, and then develop into severe coughing fits, which produce the namesake high-pitched ‘whoop’ sound in infected babies and children when they inhale air after coughing. The coughing stage lasts for approximately six weeks before subsiding.
So even though Jimmie was out of school for a month—it’s sounds as if he recuperated more quickly than the typical person.
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
17-year-old Helena Muffly wrote exactly 100 years ago today:
Saturday, April 20, 1912:Locked Ruth out last night. I spent the afternoon cleaning house. It was my room. Rufus got stubborn and I had to do nearly all.
Picture of a bedroom in the April, 1912 issue of Ladies Home Journal. It probably doesn't look much like Grandma's bedroom--but it does provide an indication of what really nice bedrooms looked like a hundred years ago.
Her middle-aged granddaughter’s comments 100 years later:
When Grandma was upset she called her sister Ruth, “Rufus”.
This is the second day in a row that Grandma wrote about moving Ruth to another bedroom. They shared a room during the cold winter months—but had separate rooms during the remainder of the year.
Grandma apparently had the better bedroom because Ruth did not want to move—or maybe Ruth wanted to make her little sister do all of the work involved in the move.
17-year-old Helena Muffly wrote exactly 100 years ago today:
Friday, April 19, 1912:Dear me, I haven’t anything worth writing. I’m trying to get my sister to moved back to her own room.
Picture of a bedroom in April, 1912 issue of Ladies Home Journal.
Her middle-aged granddaughter’s comments 100 years later:
Grandma and her sister Ruth sometimes shared a bedroom—and other times didn’t.
Based on previous entries, I think that there probably was a double bed in Grandma’s room—and that they shared it during the winter months because there was no heat on the second floor of the house and it was very cold. But now it was spring, and Grandma wanted her sister to move back to her own room.
The previous year Grandma had similar problems getting her sister out of the room. For example, on June 29, 1911 she wrote:
I moved Ruthie’s belongings into another apartment and she herself is going to occupy that room for a time. Don’t know how long it will be though. I’m so tired now, I can hardly stand upright.
17-year-old Helena Muffly wrote exactly 100 years ago today:
Thursday, April 18, 1912:O– And I have it all written now, but I got it most too long. I know the introduction so I don’t want that to be changed very much.
Her middle-aged granddaughter’s comments 100 years later:
Grandma was working on a speech that she planned to give on the last day of school.
The previous day, she wrote in the diary that she’d selected an interesting topic, but provided no hints about what it was. Was it humorous? . . . . serious? . . . about a controversial topic? . . .
Recent early spring view of some flower beds on the farm where Grandma grew up. I bet that Grandma would have preferred to be outside on a nice spring evening instead of being stuck in the house writing a speech. (I just realized that I'm making an assumption--she actually could have been outside when she wrote the speech.)
17-year-old Helena Muffly wrote exactly 100 years ago today:
Wednesday, April 17, 1912: At last I have managed to get a subject that I think will suit me. I read it over this evening. It was very interesting to read.
Her middle-aged granddaughter’s comments 100 years later:
The previous day Grandma wrote that she was trying to find a topic for a presentation on the upcoming last day of school. What was the interesting subject that Grandma came up with? I wonder what types of topics were considered appropriate back then.
The school year was shorter a hundred years ago—and length varied a lot between one school and the next. For example, the school year at the one-room school-house where Grandma’s sister Ruth taught ended on March 27.
SCHOOLS IN THE COUNTRY
ARE NOW CLOSING
Schools in the rural districts of Northumberland county are closing for the vacation of several months, and will not resume until the fall. In the rural districts many of these schools closed this week, and the various teachers will be seeking employment elsewhere until time shall travel over a course of perhaps several months, when they will be found behind the teacher’s desk, instructing young minds and in some cases wielding the rod, urging some tardy loiterer along the paths of knowledge.
Seven months is the average school term in the rural districts, and at the close of March and the beginning of April the school boy looks for the close of the school, and incidentally helps his father in the preparation of the soil for the planting of the crops.
17-year-old Helena Muffly wrote exactly 100 years ago today:
Tuesday, April 16, 1912: Am fishing around for a subject to write a theme on. We are to commit these to memory and rattle them off on the last day of school.
Her middle-aged granddaughter’s comments 100 years later:
There are some interesting things directly related to what Grandma wrote that I could write about today– but I feel like I must share a newspaper article from a hundred years ago today.
I’ve seen so much about the 100th anniversary of the Titanic sinking on April 15, 1912 in the national news, so I’d like to tell you how Grandma probably learned about the sinking.
An article in the local paper, the Milton Evening Standard, on April 16, 1912 reported the sinking and included a local connection:
1525 DROWN AS TITANIC SINKS
625 WOMEN AND CHILDREN SAVED
MANY NOTABLES WERE ABOARD
Giant Ship Rams Iceberg on
Her Maiden Trip From Liverpool to New York
Special to the Standard
New York, April 15—Early reports of the loss of life aboard the White Star liner Titanic are not exaggerated.
Only 675 out of 2,200 comprising passengers and crew escaped.
1,525 persons, among them many notables, went down with the ship. How they met death will never be known, but it is believed the upmost order prevailed and the men aboard met their fate calmly as the Titanic sank after a four-hour struggle to keep afloat. . . .
And, now here’s the local angle–
MRS. BALDWIN SAFE; WAS NOT ON BOARD THE TITANIC
Mother Here Gets Message That
Returning Tourist and Daughter
Came on Another Ship
Anxiety over the fate of Mrs. Hasel Baldwin, daughter of Mrs. John McCleery, of 20 N. Front Street, and Mrs. Baldwin’s daughter, Mary Shaw, who it was feared might have been aboard the Titanic, was set at rest this morning by the receipt of a telegram from Mrs. Baldwin who stated that she and her daughter had reached New York safely this morning on board the S.S. President Lincoln. Mrs. McCleery upon learning of the Titanic fatality anxiously scanned the newspapers for the passenger lists, but Mrs. Baldwin’s name was not among them. The uncertainty which was cleared by the receipt of the telegram was added to by the fact that it was known that Mrs. Baldwin had had some difficulty in securing passage at Liverpool, owing to the crowds of tourists coming back for the summer season in America, and it was feared that passage may have been booked at a late hour aboard the Titanic.
Mrs. Baldwin and her daughter will reach here tomorrow. They have been touring France for a year and a half.
To add a bit of context–
According to the Milton History website, Mrs. Baldwin’s Father, John McCleery had been a prominent attorney in Milton and involved with the Milton Car Works which manufactured railroad cars. (It was later called ACF). He also was the founder of the Milton Trust and Safe Deposit Company.
A hundred years ago more prominent people probably lived in Milton than do today. Back then there were several large factories—and the businessmen and managers who ran those firms lived in the town.
I’m amazed how quickly news traveled a hundred years ago. Obviously people in Milton knew about the sinking of the Titanic the day after it happened. And, the article about Mrs. Baldwin suggests that people knew about it prior to this newspaper article. For example, the article says, “Mrs. McCleery upon learning of the Titanic fatality anxiously scanned the newspapers for the passenger lists . . . “ Maybe there were “Extras” of the paper that have not survived over time.
