It was different back then...but not all that much.
Christmas Day, 1881. My great great grandmother Lydia Hulburt gave this to her daughter Harriet (Hattie) whom had turned 16 years old only 4 days before. Mother Lydia was almost 45.
I'm guessing that young Arthur from Sparta, Wisconsin mistakenly wrote the year as 1881....it was only January 7th and I'll bet that for 7 days he'd been mistakenly using the wrong date on every check that he wrote.
A Merry Christmas wish from Hattie's little sister Luella, almost 9 years old.
Check out this penmanship from Hattie's teacher....her 13 year old sister Emily with another Christmas wish.
That same 1881 Christmas, another holiday wish from her younger sister Julia Alona Hulburt.
Wonderful sentiments all from sisters, friends, teachers, etc. This entry is the most important one however. A young A. W. Cooper, a friend 2 years her senior wrote, "Place one link in memory's chain for if we part we may never meet again."
Five years later, they were man and wife.
Hattie at 38 years old......
Albert at 40 years old....
Lydia at 75, her daughter Hattie at 45, Hattie's daughter Josie at 22 and Hattie's granddaughter Pearl at 16 months.
Albert at 54, Hattie at 52, my grandfather Allen at 21, Josie 30 and Lorence 15
That's a great memory keepsake!
ReplyDeleteThe hard part is trying to determine which ones to keep.
Delete.. fashion leaders all.... especially Hattie at 38.. she's a hot chick.. and I do mean hot, what with undergarments (plural, I'm sure).. dress, heavy overcoat, various dead gritter's and a stylist hat.
ReplyDeleteand I read somewhere, people never smiled for the camera until around 1900's.
I wasn't sure about the time smiling was accepted or allowed. Lots of photos here, not many smiles.
DeleteLove the pictures..Mike say's I should have the hat...thanks for sharing.
ReplyDeleteWe'll make it our mission to find you one.
DeleteVery touching Doug.
ReplyDeleteI know a lot less about my ancestry. My great grandfather was a blacksmith in a place called Roxton Falls. I have a sketch of a genealogy going back to my great-grandparents, but that's about all.
1882 seems like a long time ago, but it isn't really.
I sometimes think along these lines: I had to request a law school transcript this week. I graduated from law school 38 years ago. Seems not that long ago really. I then imagine myself back in law school say 40 years ago, and think back 40 years earlier than that. That would make it 1937. The 25 year-old me in 1977 didn't even think that 1937 was even remotely relevant in human terms when I was studying a dusty 1937 Supreme Court ruling. It was just so, so, so long ago.
Really, I now realize the error of my ways. If 1977 is recent, then 1937 was only slightly less so.
1882, clearly they had photography! Hell that's modern times.
Our perception of time, "old", how important and modern we believe things to be now, all very interesting to me.
DeleteGramp was busy with genealogy in the '40's when it involved real effort; the correspondence he gathered and saved remarkable to me.
He found his mom's side going back to Scotland in 1590, dad's side to New Haven, CT in 1610. That's getting into "old" territory for me.
Now that is pretty darn cool. I remember autograph books, think I even had one way back in the day. the autograph books and photo albums are like lost art.
ReplyDeleteHow great that your family still had these gems. Thanks you for sharing.
I was clueless about autograph books and wouldn't have known what they were about.
DeleteIf you're willing to store some of this for us, I can certainly send it your way. :)