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Grandma’s diary July 1913

by Ramona Jan
Posted 7/5/22

My grandmother, Lina Dreher, was sixteen when she kept this diary. She worked as a store clerk in the family bakery. In this excerpt, she grapples with going back to school, which she had quit due to …

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Grandma’s diary July 1913

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My grandmother, Lina Dreher, was sixteen when she kept this diary. She worked as a store clerk in the family bakery. In this excerpt, she grapples with going back to school, which she had quit due to pressure from her father to work fulltime in the bakery. She also mentions siblings Em (now deceased from tuberculosis), Mary, Tillie and Joe.
July 3rd
I didn’t miss Em at first at all, but now every night I lay awake thinking of her. She was the soul of the house. She was the most ambitious of all of us. To think that the heaviest, strongest, and healthiest should die with such a disease. Why, she was so weak in the end that she could hardly lift her sputum box. And she was so careful with even her last sputum.
July 4th
The glorious fourth, but not so for us. I had to go to bed early so I could get up at 4:15 A.M. for work, so I didn’t have much fun. I had a terrible dream about Em. I dreamed she was embalmed and laid out and that she came back to life again. Oh, the rest of it is terrible.
July 6th
Joe, Mary and I went to Dickfield’s [a cherry orchard and small inn located at the time in Orange, NJ] and liked it so well that I’ve decided to spend my two day vacation by her. Mary is to stay with me. We will start off as soon as we get up in the morning.
July 7th
Arrived safe and sound. Met Mrs. La-Da-Rette on the way there. I don’t believe you can walk that street ever, no matter if it’s midnight or daybreak, without meeting one of them. And they eye you up and down, too!
We picked huckleberries and Mary climbed the orchard cherry tree and went out to the tip end of the branch and got quite a few cherries.
July 8th
We pumped water, sprinkled flowers, fed the animals, washed and dried dishes, etc. Mary watched Mr. Dickfield put wire rings in the pigs’ noses so they can’t root up their fence. The poor pigs! Never did they scream.
I guess this is the second time I slept away from home. It’s alright, but there’s no place like home, and dear old mother, so thoughtful and kind and everything under the name of the sun that’s goodness itself.
July 9th
Opened up the store today, that means getting up around 4:00 A.M. and closed it at ten. Never am I tired though.
July 10th
Learned something new today while reading a book by the name of, A daughter of Fife. It’s a definition: “Comet Wine” is a wine of 1811, the year of the comet, and the best vintage on record; famed for its delicate aroma. This isn’t of much account, but it might be useful in the time to come.
July 11th
The result of Tillie’s and my vacation is that we were only too glad to get back home again. One appreciates a thing more when one loses it occasionally.
July 13th
I wasn’t with Em, but a few hours before she died. During those four days, she raved so. I haven’t much of an account of them, but I’m positive Joe has, for he was with her most all the time even up to the very minute when she died. Poor Joe! He said towards the very end, he could hear something dripping in her head. Perhaps it was the blood separating. Oh God, that one of us should die so young and with that disease!
July 14th
Received an answer to the letter I wrote to Miss Williamson [her school’s headmistress] in regards to re-entering school. She wrote a very nice letter saying that she hasn’t forgotten me, and that she’d advise me to start school and that she was very glad to hear of my ambition.
To be continued…

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