17-year-old Helena Muffly wrote exactly 100 years ago today:
Monday, September 30, 1912: Our class had a meeting this evening after school. I had the misfortune to be elected secretary. But better, or rather it suits me better to have been that, than president or treasurer would have suited me.
Her middle-aged granddaughter’s comments 100 years later:
Where did the class members meet? At the school? . . . at the home of one of the students? . . . at a restaurant? I believe that this building was a restaurant a hundred years ago. Maybe they met there.
It’s awesome that Grandma got elected class secretary—though she seemed slightly annoyed.
Maybe I’m trying to read too much between the lines, but was Grandma really hoping that she won’t be elected to any position–or had she hoped to be elected president or treasurer?
17-year-old Helena Muffly wrote exactly 100 years ago today:
Sunday, September 29, 1912: Rained so that I didn’t go to Sunday School. Miss Bryson was here today having come down on the train last night.
Her middle-aged granddaughter’s comments 100 years later:
I wonder if it was an all-day storm or just a brief shower. In general, the weather across the US was pretty good on September 29, 1912–though many cities got a little precipitation.
TEMPERATURE AND PRECIPITATION
SEPTEMBER 29, 1912
Source: Minneapolis Morning Tribune, September 30, 1912
—
Miss Bryson refers to Blanche Bryson. She was a friend of Grandma and her sister Ruth. The Susquehanna, Bloomsburg, and Berwick railroad tracks crossed the Muffly farm, and there was a whistle stop at a nearby feed mill. I’m not sure where Blanche lived in 1912, but I think that she was a teacher and probably lived outside the immediate area.
17-year-old Helena Muffly wrote exactly 100 years ago today:
Saturday, September 28, 1912: Mater went to a sale today. I got busy this afternoon and went for to gather some butternuts. Was rewarded by getting almost a bushel, any way it was dreadful heavy to carry, but I got them home at last.
Butternut (Photo source: Wikipedia)
Her middle-aged granddaughter’s comments 100 years later:
I never heard of butternuts until I read this diary. What are they? What does a butternut tree look like? Are there still any butternut trees around?
Butternut: Also known as White Walnut, this relative of Black Walnut is slower growing and much less frequently encountered than its well-known cousin. Butternut prefers moist bottomlands and ravines like Black Walnut, but its lightweight wood is beige-pink in color and is not nearly as sought-out for making veneer and furniture. Its kernel within the fruit gives it the common name of Butternut, as it is sweet and very oily.
Butternut trees have oval nuts; black walnuts have round nuts.
I now realize that maybe I can’t tell the difference between butternut and black walnut trees—and that I’ll need to look more carefully the next time I see a walnut tree to figure out which type it is.
An aside—
Last week-end my husband and I gathered black walnuts. We hulled them and set them out to dry. I can hardly wait until they are dry enough to crack and use. I absolutely love their wonderful complex, sharp, rich, nutty taste in cakes and cookies.
Here are the links to the posts I wrote last year about black walnuts:
17-year-old Helena Muffly wrote exactly 100 years ago today:
Thursday, September 26, 1912: Excuse me, but you know there is an old saying: Don’t talk when you’ve nothing to say, so I’ll just change it to: don’t write, when you’ve nothing to write.
Source: Wikimedia Commons
Her middle-aged granddaughter’s comments 100 years later:
17-year-old Helena Muffly wrote exactly 100 years ago today:
Wednesday, September 25, 1912: Was rather surprised at the mark I made yesterday. Didn’t think I would hardly get that. Twas the kind that dummies get.
What did Grandma consider a bad grade? . . . D? . . . F?
Her middle-aged granddaughter’s comments 100 years later:
Whew, I’m surprised that Grandma did poorly on this geometry test. She never worried about the upcoming test during the days preceding the test, and the previous day she’d merely written, “I had a test in geometry.” and then moved on to other topics.
Usually Grandma had a pretty good sense of how she was doing in classes, and if she needed to study—though sometimes she never actually got around to studying.
17-year-old Helena Muffly wrote exactly 100 years ago today:
Tuesday, September 24, 1912: It is raining now. I guess or was. Had an exam in Geometry. Took up Arithmetic today. Didn’t have to but I chose to do so.
Her middle-aged granddaughter’s comments 100 years later:
High school courses apparently were only a month of so long a hundred years ago.
I wonder why Grandma decided to take Arithmetic if it wasn’t required. Maybe she enjoyed doing mental math.
Here are two mental math tricks for adding fractions that I found in a hundred year old textbook:
Example 1: Add two fractions whose numerators are 1.
Solution: Add the denominators, and place the sum over the product of the denominators.
Example 2: Add two fractions whose numerators are alike and greater than 1.
Solution: Add the denominators and multiply the sum by the numerator of either of the fractions, and write the product over the product of the denominators.
Source: Kimball’s Commercial Arithmetic (1911)
If you like math, you might also enjoy these previous posts:
17-year-old Helena Muffly wrote exactly 100 years ago today:
Monday, September 23, 1912: Walked the muddy way to school this morning. Don’t have much to write these days.
Recent photo of the road that went between McEwensville and Watsontown in Grandma’s day. . . Once dirt, then brick, and now paved. . .
Her middle-aged granddaughter’s comments 100 years later:
With all the mud, it’s a good thing that Grandma got new rubber overshoes the previous Saturday. September, 1912 must have been a rainy month. On September 18 Grandma also wrote about the muddy walk to school.
1912 was the last year that Grandma had to walk the entire way on dirt roads. She lived between McEwensville and Watsontown, and a brick road was apparently under construction that would replace the old dirt road.
According to George Wesner in History in McEwensville (1976):
The brick road leading from McEwensville to Watsontown was one of the first of its kind to be built in Pennsylvania. Construction was begun at McEwsville in 1912 and completed the following year. . .
It was built by the construction firm Fiss and Christiana of Shamokin, Pennsylvania. In grading, the ground was moved by horse-drawn dump wagons which were loaded by manual labor. While some local people were employed most of the laborers were Italian immigrants. Very few could speak English. They were quartered in a labor camp which was located in a ravine on the farm of Isiah Elliot, now owned by Samuel Raup. All the materials, sand, gravel, brick and cement were hauled by teams and horses. The only mechanical equipment used was a steam roller. . .
On an occasion when a period of bad weather had caused the operation to run behind schedule, the contractors, in an effort to catch up, requested that they work on Sunday. . . .
I wonder if the wet days that Grandma wrote about during September 1912 were when the road-building crews got behind schedule.
Grandma would have walked this road to school every day while it was being transformed from a muddy dirt road to fancy brick one. It sounds like a major activity to me, yet she never thought it worth mentioning in the diary. Sigh. . .
Where did the class members meet? At the school? . . . at the home of one of the students? . . . at a restaurant? I believe that this building was a restaurant a hundred years ago. Maybe they met there.
