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

Monday, April 15, 1912:  I didn’t study hardly any at all this evening. I did have a very bad streak of laziness.

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

Since Grandma didn’t have much to say a hundred years ago today, I’m going to go off on a tangent.

Many families were larger in 1912 than they are today. I came across the following Letter to the Editor in the April 1912 issue of Good Housekeeping that is very illuminating regarding the discussion about family size and family planning a hundred years ago:

How Many Children?

Mr. Editor—While I have never suffered from ill-health, particularly, nor was it impossible financially to have children when we were first married, yet I think parents should be in such circumstances they can bring up children without feeling that they are a burden. Plenty there are who try to take care of three or four children, sometimes more, and do their own housekeeping, and I say, it’s an injustice to the children. One or the other suffers, usually the children.

It was several years before we were able to have a child, and three years later, when I had fully regained my strength, I had another. That is all we feel we can properly educate and support. Those who preach that each family should have four children are, to my mind, very wrong. Have a dozen if you can bring them up respectably—and if as poor as church mice, none.

New York                                                                   A.M.

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

Sunday, April 14, 1912: Went to Sunday School this morning. Miss Carrie came over this afternoon. We went for a walk which was not so very long nor yet so very short. We had quite a time getting home, as we stopped to talk much of the way.

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

Carrie refers to Grandma’s friend Carrie Stout. She lived on a nearby farm.  Who knows what the teens talked about—but I can picture earnest discussion interspersed with giggling.

They probably weren’t worried about food prices—but the local paper, The Milton Evening Standard, had an article about inflation in April 1912.

FOOD PRICES SHOW

STEADY INCREASE

For 1911 They Were Two Per Cent.

Higher Then Previous Years

Wholesale prices of food products increased two per cent  during 1911 over the previous year, although wholesale prices generally of 257 articles, declined 1.7 per cent. An investigation of the Bureau of Labor into wholesale prices, results of which were announced Thursday, disclosed these facts. . .

Some things never change. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics the wholesale (producer) food price increased 2.3% from March 2011 to March 2012.

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

Saturday, April 13, 1912:  I was so busy mending my numerous rips and tears and getting to something like they ought to be.

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

Grandma probably was mending the hole in her waist (shirt) that she got on April 10  when she fell and hurt her shoulder.

Since the diary entry that Grandma wrote a hundred years ago today is self-explanatory, I’m going to share an article in the local paper from a hundred years ago today.

The Civil War ended 147 years ago. The surviving veterans, and other heros and heroines, were very elderly. On April 13, 1912 the Milton Evening Standard reported Clara Barton’s death.  She’d died the previous day.

CLARA BARON,

RED CROSS FOUNDER,

DIES AT AGE OF 90

Washington, April 13—Miss Clara Barton, founder of the American Red Cross Society, died at her home in Glen Echo, Md.

The cause of her death was chronic pneumonia, with which she was stricken about a year ago. Her brother, Stephen Barton of Boston, was with her when she died.

Few names in all of the history of American philanthropy are better known than that of Clara Barton. Her life of ninety years, beginning with the happy significance on Christmas Day, in 1821, was given almost entirely to the cause of alleviating human suffering. Even in her old age she experienced no decline of faculties or activity, and almost to the very end declared that it was work which kept her young. . .

It was in the Civil War that Clara Barton first became a national figure. She faced all of the horrors of the campaigns in the south and was a pioneer in lending the healing touch of women’s hand to the wounded and sick of the battlefield. She was also of great service in the work of searching for the missing. In 1865, she laid out the ground of the National Cemetery at Andersonville. . .

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

Sunday, April 7, 1912: Had a long time deciding whether or not to go to Sunday School this afternoon, as I rather expected some company. At last I made up my mind to go regardless of the rain. Easter came today and didn’t bring me any goodies.

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

Was Grandma hoping that some relatives would stop by for Easter? Since the Muffly family didn’t have a phone they may not have always known whether or not someone was planning to visit.

I’m always surprised how little the Muffly’s celebrated holidays.  For example, on Thanksgiving, 1911 Grandma wrote:

Today is Thanksgiving. We didn’t have such a terrible sumptuous repast either. I would have liked to have had a piece of a turkey gobbler and a dish of ice cream, but we were far from that. I sat at home all day doing miscellaneous jobs which I didn’t relish any too well. . .

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

Saturday, April 6, 1912: Carrie and I went up to the cemetery to attend the funeral. I got a glimpse of my friend, nor do I think I’ll ever forget how she looked as she laid in her coffin. It seemed sad to die so young. She was about a year my junior.

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

On April 4 Grandma wrote in her diary that a friend from Sunday School  had died—but didn’t provide a name or details. After that post, readers suggested that I try to find the obituary to learn the name and more about the death. It’s a great idea and I plan to search old microfilms of the local paper soon. Keep your fingers crossed that I find it.

It’s so hard when someone young dies. I wonder if this is the first time that Grandma ever had to deal with the death of a friend.

I know that Grandma faced other difficult deaths over the years. For example, my grandfather died in a farm accident in the 1960’s. I can remember as clearly as yesterday, Grandma leaning over the coffin to say one final good-bye before it was closed.

—

Carrie refers to Grandma’s friend Carrie Stout.

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

Thursday, April 4, 1912:I heard today of the death of a girlfriend. She died last evening I have not seen her for a long, long time. She was a member of my Sunday School class.

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

I wonder what happened. It sounds as if the girl had been ill for awhile since Grandma hadn’t seen her in a long time.

My gut feeling is that the girl had juvenile diabetes. Insulin was not available until the 1920’s, and it was relatively common for youth to die of diabetes in the early 1900s. But it might have been an infection . . . or pneumonia . . .  or tuberculosis . . .  or . . .

I wish Grandma had included a name–though the girl probably wasn’t previously mentioned in the diary.