A look into my Great-grandmother's diary...
I went over to visit the aged uncle today because I was concerned about how he sounded on the phone -- he's almost 93, so the fact he sounds like anything at all is pretty amazing -- and was given an old suitcase full of my great-grandmother's diaries. This isn't the treasure haul it might be since she was a big believer in those five year diaries where you have about one inch by three inches to actually write in so there's not a lot of what anyone would call detail and some of it might as well be in code. It's still pretty cool -- although the must/mold may kill me before I can decipher much.
August 27th,
1943: Rain, cold. I went to B. on waggon, got new ration books and walked home - bought 1 basket peaches, 1 basket plums - $1.39, $1.10
1944: Cool. We read. The boys had no luck fishing.
1945: Windy. Washed. Done up sour cucumber pickles. Note to Mrs. Holmes and Clem.
1946: Fine. Baked bread, made plum jam, ironed. Stuart better. Wrote Mrs Holmes. Had card from Murbid. (Murill?)
1947: Warm. Made plum jam. Mended cories(covers?) Bill R. drove over. Mr Cantrell & Mrs Druy came. Suichns(?) mowed lawn. wrote Holmes hiss(?)
I have no idea why my Great-grandmother was hissing at Mrs. Holmes in 1947, or why she was suddenly referred to without the Mrs.
Names are the hardest to figure out as context is no help. (For example, I was pretty sure it was the boys not the dogs who'd had no luck fishing.) I only know that it's an es beginning Suichns (or whatever) because it's the same shape as the first letter of Stuart, but after that, I'm lost.
You may think, given August 27th as an example, that she was woman of few words because not much happened on August 27th beyond jam, pickles, and hissing, but the entry for December 21st, 1944, the day she learned my great-uncle Arthur, her middle child, had died in a plane crash -- he was a mechanic at de Havilland and the test flight of a new bomber went fatally wrong -- says only:
Fine & cold. Near zero. Cleaned churn and made butter. We heard the news about Arthur.
I was in Grade eight when she died and I don't remember her ever saying much. She'd been in service when she met my Great-Grandfather who was the assistant gameskeeper at Littlecotte in Salisbury and they emigrated to Canada with my three year old grandmother in 1907 because they couldn't afford Australia. Apparently my great-grandfather refused to do the forelock pulling insisted on by his lordship's Steward. His response being, according the aged uncle, "He works here just like the rest of us."
December 22nd, 23rd, 24th, and 25th 1944 just listed two or three people a day who called. On December 26th...
Lovely cold day. We buried Arthur. Many lovely flowers & a very nice funeral. Everybody was very kind.
Those little diaries are a kind of pre-Twitter tweeting. No extra words allowed, no emoticons yet available...
August 27th,
1943: Rain, cold. I went to B. on waggon, got new ration books and walked home - bought 1 basket peaches, 1 basket plums - $1.39, $1.10
1944: Cool. We read. The boys had no luck fishing.
1945: Windy. Washed. Done up sour cucumber pickles. Note to Mrs. Holmes and Clem.
1946: Fine. Baked bread, made plum jam, ironed. Stuart better. Wrote Mrs Holmes. Had card from Murbid. (Murill?)
1947: Warm. Made plum jam. Mended cories(covers?) Bill R. drove over. Mr Cantrell & Mrs Druy came. Suichns(?) mowed lawn. wrote Holmes hiss(?)
I have no idea why my Great-grandmother was hissing at Mrs. Holmes in 1947, or why she was suddenly referred to without the Mrs.
Names are the hardest to figure out as context is no help. (For example, I was pretty sure it was the boys not the dogs who'd had no luck fishing.) I only know that it's an es beginning Suichns (or whatever) because it's the same shape as the first letter of Stuart, but after that, I'm lost.
You may think, given August 27th as an example, that she was woman of few words because not much happened on August 27th beyond jam, pickles, and hissing, but the entry for December 21st, 1944, the day she learned my great-uncle Arthur, her middle child, had died in a plane crash -- he was a mechanic at de Havilland and the test flight of a new bomber went fatally wrong -- says only:
Fine & cold. Near zero. Cleaned churn and made butter. We heard the news about Arthur.
I was in Grade eight when she died and I don't remember her ever saying much. She'd been in service when she met my Great-Grandfather who was the assistant gameskeeper at Littlecotte in Salisbury and they emigrated to Canada with my three year old grandmother in 1907 because they couldn't afford Australia. Apparently my great-grandfather refused to do the forelock pulling insisted on by his lordship's Steward. His response being, according the aged uncle, "He works here just like the rest of us."
December 22nd, 23rd, 24th, and 25th 1944 just listed two or three people a day who called. On December 26th...
Lovely cold day. We buried Arthur. Many lovely flowers & a very nice funeral. Everybody was very kind.
Those little diaries are a kind of pre-Twitter tweeting. No extra words allowed, no emoticons yet available...