An Introduction

I decided to start this blog to record and share my Granny's writings over the course of her life. I have things she wrote at various points from 1909 to 1983, including the diaries she kept as a girl and a young woman, papers written for correspondence courses she took as an adult, and even a journal written in the nursing home late in life.  The posts are labeled with the correct date, but are 100 years off. If you look at the Blog Archive on the right, April 21, 2013 corresponds to April 21, 1913, for instance, because you can't use dates before 1970. I later ran into problems when I tried to post things that were less than 100 years old!
 

Note that I'm transcribing these verbatim. There are a few times when she uses language and describes situations that are jarring. Like everything else she wrote, it gives us a sense of what she and the people in her community thought and said at the time.

Eventually, I might fill in a bit of what I know to help make sense of the writing... Who is Miss Starbeck? Who are all these aunts and uncles? How do you play Speculation? What's a corset cover?

Happy reading.
Weather -- fair & mild

1909-1912 Diaries

Granny's journals from October 1909 through December 1911. These are volumes III, V, and VI. I have a note she wrote much later about her journals: Volumes I and II (August 1908-October 1909) are lost. As is Volume IV (the summer of 1910). I have a transcription of Volume VIII (May 1912-September 1912). She continued writing through the summer of 1915 according to her note. I'm hoping some of these might be in storage somewhere!

Mitchell girls -- 1906?

I'm guessing that this picture was taken circa 1906. Zella would be 12, Winifred 10 (our author), Bernice 8 and Neill (Baby) 3. The photographer was their aunt, Mettie Mitchell.