In 1911, [the Old Timer] graduated from High School. She was second highest in marks and so she was class historian. The Pickwick Club chipped in for 6 dozen red and white carnations, and what a test for a girl's popularity it was to receive a lot of flowers! The Old Timer held a few roses on her lap during the commencement exercises, only to hear in a loud whisper from Julia Murphy, "Hold those carnations!" So she did, and how lovely they were and what a token of affection.
The Pickwick Club was modeled on the one in Little Women, and they all took names in the news.... Hazel was Henry Van Dyke, Mabel was Zim, the Old Timer Richard Harding Davis, Clara Wolfe was Homer Green. They met mostly at Katherine Barclay's home, it was so large, and they ended always with a Virginia Reel with Bess Armstrong at the piano. The Old Timer wrote a play and they performed it at Clara's home, where her brother Ernest manipulated the double doors for a stage curtain. Vera Ryman was the male lead, and Mrs. Struthers of Lincoln's time loaned them a red male wig. The Old Timer was the maid, Lizzie, but what the play was about is lost in the mist of time.
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Interestingly, according to Poconohistory.com, "The thirty-six star American flag which was used to cradle President Abraham Lincoln’s head as he lay mortally wounded in Ford's Theatre is now a part of the Pike County Historical Society. The blood-stained flag descended into a family of prominent actors, the Gourlay family, who were appearing in the play 'Our American Cousin,' in Ford’s Theatre on the night the President was assassinated. The 'Lincoln Flag' was donated to the Pike County Historical Society in 1954 by V. Paul Struthers, the son of Jeannie Gourlay Struthers, an eyewitness to the tragic event." Perhaps Mrs. Struthers was the mother of V. Paul Struthers?
Lousa May Alcott's classic book Little Women was published in 1869. It was the story of the March family consisting of four girls, Meg (a teacher at age 16), Jo, Amy, Beth and their mother, whom they call Marmee, in New England in the mid-nineteenth century. The family is "comfortable" and always ready to share their meager possessions, not unlike the Fiegs in Milford.
The Pickwick Club is first described in chapter 10 of Little Women: "Gardening, walks, rows on the river, and flower hunts employed the fine [spring] days, and for rainy ones, they had house diversions, some old, some new, all more or less original. One of these was the `P.C', for as secret societies were the fashion, it was thought proper to have one, and as all of the girls admired Dickens, they called themselves the Pickwick Club."
The characters whose names the Milford girls adopted were newsmakers of their time. Henry Van Dyke was an American educator, author and clergyman born in Pennsylvania; Richard Harding Davis was an author and journalist, the first American war correspondent to cover the Spanish-American War, the Boer War and World War I; there was an author and lawyer named Homer Greene who was born in Pennsylvania and was a district attorney in neighboring Wayne County, but who Zim was is a mystery.
As a testament to Millie's love of literature, on April 4, 19__ the Emilie Case Children's Library was dedicated in Milford. Her nephew, Henry (called Hank by his family), a former president of the library's board of trustees, said, "The most important things in Emilie Case's life were people and books.... It could be said of Emilie that she never met a man or woman she did not like." A memorial plaque was placed in the children's library.
In another strike by the knobby club, a torrential rain fell outside the library during the ceremony but, as reporter Cynthia Van Lierde wrote, "The warmth and love generated by the family, friends and fellow workers, for Emilie and her work in the library, permeated the rooms in the Community House.
"Emilie was a volunteer in the library for many, many years. When she had trouble with her eyes and could no longer drive, she would hitch hike the six miles from Oak Tree Farm to the library in Milford. Fortunately, she was well known and never lacked for a 'lift' to town.
"Books created a world apart for Emilie. they were an escape from the monotony and drudgery of housework. She gained great pleasure by just being in the library, surrounded by books.... She enriched the lives of children and adults by guiding them to this special world...."
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Only five girls were in that 1911 graduating class. How important they all felt, and how the oldest sister and her mother labored over that graduating dress. How dressed up they felt with those black silk stockings, just come into fashion.
Later that summer a written examination by Lucida Westbrook, the county superintendent of schools, and held in Matamoras, was passed by the Old Timer with adequate marks. Grammar, history, arithmetic, geography and spelling. The Old Timer missed demonetize - she had no idea what it meant - and that old problem about the hired man and the rainy day. A dollar a day was the salary. She was granted a certificate to teach -- sixteen years old! -- and with Miss Lizzie Rochette drove to the home of the school director Julius Kiesel, was interviewed and hired to teach the Franklin School. Miss Rochette gave her a piece of sound advice, "Always make a fuss over the baby," as the Old Timer, never having seen a baby, ignored the Kiesel baby, Julius A. -- "Junie" -- (now seventy-one!).
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In "Milford to the Minisink Valley," Susan Mickley notes, "The Milford High School was the pride and joy of the town. Its central location made it the heart of community events and meetings. Built in 1904, it served as a high school and then as the elementary school (grades one through six) until it was sold to become a merchant center and commercial offices." A picture of the building appears on page 67 of the book.
Milford served as setting for a number of silent films directed by D.W. Griffith in the early 1900s, including The Informer starring Mary Pickford, Lillian Gish and Lionel Barrymore. In fact there is a photo of Mary Pickford in Mickley's book.
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The next four years were spent teaching the Franklin and Union schools. The first year had a disturbing incident when the fourteen-year-old Levi La Bar threw a book that struck [the Old Timer] in the back as she stood at the black board. She sent him home -- and twenty years later at the Ed Gebhardt home at a party he apologized humbly!
The summers of those years were spent earning money -- waiting table at the Villa Madeline, where the cooking was suberb, (delicious rabbit stew with blood in the gravy -- the flakiest pie crust ever seen) and one summer, as office help for the Hyatt Roller Bearing Company in Harrison, NJ. At the time she was "going steady" with her future husband -- and how he did flatter her when he was told she was going away for two months! He sat with her and tears rolled down his cheeks in a steady stream! The office work was good experience and she and her sister boarded with their cousin Mrs. Anna Rothfuss. The two cousins Walter (10) and Clifford (17) were at home and once for some reason the 17-year-old gave the Old Timer's face a resounding slap! Why?
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Crisco was introduced in 1911 and advertised as "a Scientific Discovery Which Will Affect Every Kitchen in America," though it was met with skepticism at first by housewives used to cooking with butter and lard. Jewish housewives embraced Crisco, which contained neither milk nor meat products, helping to propel its sales. Undoubtedly this ingredient contributed to the "flakiest pie crust" mentioned above!
The cousin Anna Rothfuss mentioned above could have been Helen Griffith's sister.
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| 1920s advertisement for Hyatt Roller Bearings Company |
Back in September to teaching, and boarding in winter weather at her "intended's" sister's, Mrs. Lottie Momeaux. She got a good lesson in minding your own business when she got that awful idea that a teacher should be an elevating influence and she told her host not to eat with his knife! What a laying out he did give her, so that she shed bitter tears!
To save all that board money ($3.50 a week) they decided to get married, Feb. 28, 1915, and what a bright sunshiney day it was. The groom, Arthur Case, hired an automobile, and as she was only twenty and her mother too far away to sign the marriage license, the minister Levi McMickle said he could perform the ceremony anywhere in the U.S. So to the Methodist Church in Port [Jervis?], with Hazel and her sister Martha as witness[es] -- they were married. Didn't he have any friend to stand with him? A wedding supper with mayonnaise on the salad by special request of the bride, and a four-mile drive to her future home with his parents, was the honeymoon drive. [ed. note: Hellman's Blue Ribbon Mayonnaise was first marketed by a New York deli owner in 1912. Until that time mayonnaise was usually made at home. What a treat to be able to enjoy this condiment without the labor of making it!]
Teaching school again the next day -- a very rainy one! -- and a skimulton that evening by seventeen of his friends -- so they could be treated to drinks. (A skimulton or shivance is a serenade on tin pans, shotgun fire to a newly married couple.)
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