Adeline and Julia: Growing Up in Michigan and on the Kansas Frontier: Diaries from 19th-Century America PDF
Preview Adeline and Julia: Growing Up in Michigan and on the Kansas Frontier: Diaries from 19th-Century America
Adeline and Julia Adeline, Julia, and Thomas Lee Wilkinson, Jr., ca. 1885 Adeline and Julia GROWING UP IN MICHIGAN AND ON THE KANSAS FRONTIER Diaries from 19th-Century America edited by Janet L. Coryell and Robert C. Myers Michigan State University Press East Lansing Copyright © 2000 by Berrien County Historical Association. Copyright © 2000 Introduction by Susan Armitage. 8The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of ANSI/NISO 239.48-1992 (R 1997) (Permanence of Paper). Printed and bound in the United States of America. Michigan State University Press East Lansing, Michigan 48823-5202 05 04 03 02 01 00 1 2 3 4 5 6 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Graham, Adeline, 1864-1934. Adeline and Julia: growing up in Michigan and on the Kansas frontier: diaries from 19th century America / edited by Janet L. Coryell and Robert C. Myers. p. em. Annotated diaries of two young sisters, Adeline and Julia Graham, written during their adolescent years growing up in Berrien Springs, Michigan in the 1880s. Also includes Julia's diary from the year she spent homesteading with three other young women on the Kansas frontier. ISBN 0-87013-513-9 1. Graham, Adeline, 1864-1934--Diaries. 2. Graham, Julia, 1862-1900-Diaries. 3. Sisters-Michigan-Berrien Springs-Diaries. 4. Young women-Michigan-Berrien Springs-Diaries. 5. Berrien Springs (Mich.)-Biography. 6. Berrien Springs (Mich.) Social life and customs. 7. Frontier and pioneer life-Michigan-Berrien Springs. 8. Frontier and pioneer life-Kansas-Greeley County. 9. Young women-Kansas-Greeley County-Diaries. 10. Greeley County (Kan.)-Sociallife and customs-19th century. I. Graham, Julia, 1862-1900. II. Coryell, Janet L., 1955- III. Myers, Robert C. IV. Title F574.B47 G73 2000 977.4'11-dc21 99-050969 Book design by Michael J. Brooks Cover design by Heidi Dailey Visit Michigan State University Press on the World Wide Web at: www.msu.edu/unit/msupress Contents PREFACE vii INTRODUCTION 1 PARTl GROWING UP IN MICHIGAN: THE DIARY OF ADELINE GRAHAM 7 Volume 1: May 10, 1880-June 6, 1881 9 Volume 2: December 21, 1881-May 28,1882 41 Volume 3: June 14, 1882-June 2, 1884 93 PART 2 JULIA GRAHAM'S KANSAS ADVENTURE: THE DIARY OF JULIA GRAHAM 141 Volume 4: September 11, 1885-December 31,1885 145 Volume 5: January 1, 1886-August 3, 1886 171 Appendix 1: Who Addie Knew 215 Appendix 2: What Addie Read 221 Index 227 Preface Janet 1. Coryell and Robert C. Myers A na cold winter day, Adeline Graham ditched school, pulled taffy, giggled with her friend, teased the boys who followed her home, and sat down at night to write it all down in her diary. A few years later, her sister Julia wearily shoveled the last of the snow that had drifted into the interior of her sod "hotel" and sat down to write to her sister all about the blizzard that had buried her and her friends inside for days. Americans of the late twentieth century seldom record their thoughts or write letters on paper anymore, preferring to rely instead on the speed and convenience of telecommunications. But vast numbers of nineteenth century Americans kept journals and diaries, and many more used the mail as their only method of communication, despite new-fangled inven tions such as the telegraph (in 1847) or the telephone (in 1876). Today, their thoughts and deeds, their lives and loves, their dreams and disap pointments, preserved in ink and pencil on paper, become part of an open book to students of the past. Two such recorders of lives lived were diarists Adeline and Julia Graham, sisters who lived in the second half of the nineteenth century. Residents for a time of Berrien Springs, Michigan, their experiences were common to many women of the period--education, marriage, children. And, like many women, they occasionally had grand adventures, the grandest perhaps being Julia's homesteading attempt in Greeley County, Kansas, near the Colorado border. Their adventures and everyday lives were recorded in lined blank books, sold widely in the nineteenth century for this very purpose. To remember and reflect on adventures and daily life were important parts of learning how to grow up. We edited this collection of Adeline and Julia Graham's diaries in order to illuminate the past through the presentation of original docu ments. We have kept the spelling, grammar and punctuation that the "Graham Girls" used in their original documents, although minor vii viii ADELINE AND JULIA changes have been added in brackets for clarity's sake when needed. We defined some of the words unfamiliar to modem Americans in the notes to provide additional explanation and context, and we included the names of their relatives or people who showed up frequently in their writings. For more information, two appendices are attached for those interested in further details: Appendix 1 includes information about the people Addie knew and mentioned; Appendix 2 lists the books she enjoyed or studied. Those items are highlighted in the text with an aster isk (*) to indicate more information is available at the back of the book. The editors wish to acknowledge the aid and support they received from the following persons: Mary "Polly" Preston Parrett, Cynthia Burkholder Grootendorst and the late Sally Berk Roe, who donated Adeline's diaries to the Berrien County Historical Association; Julia Caldwell Mitchell, who owns Julia Graham's Kansas diary and made it available for publication; Kay Mantegna, who owns Mary Garrow Graham's letters and made them available to help with the annotation of these diaries; Jan H. House, former director of the Berrien County Historical Association, who helped with initial research on the Graham family; Virgil W. Dean, Ph.D., editor at the Kansas State Historical Society; Diether Haenicke, president of Western Michigan University, whose timely donation of grant funds allowed the purchase of a com puter to make the editing process much easier and faster; Bonnie Coryell Hatch and Homer Hatch for information regarding Kansas traditions and terminology; Rachel Lynn Ayers and Bethany Leigh Ayers for a careful reading of the manuscript; and most especially Candace Seymour Myers, whose support is always a timely affair, and James Smither, for taking on extraordinary amounts of childcare so Momma could work on this. For those wishing to learn more about the times in which Addie Graham lived, her journal is used as a resource for part of the permanent exhibit, "Growing Up in Michigan" at the Michigan Historical Museum in Lansing, Michigan. Introduction Susan Armitage y ou are about to meet two engaging young nineteenth-century women and share important experiences with them. Adeline and Julia Graham, daughters of a prosperous Michigan farm family, kept diaries during key moments in their young lives. Addie, the younger sib ling, consciously kept a very personal and literary record of her adoles cence (ages 15-19) during the years 1880-84. The next year, older sister Julia penned a less personal but equally interesting account of her great "adventure" homesteading in western Kansas. Taken together, these two diaries tell us many things about the opportunities and challenges facing white, middle-class women in the latter part of the nineteenth century. Adeline Graham's diary affords us a fascinating glimpse into the dif ficulties young girls of the middle class experienced as they confronted nineteenth-century notions of appropriate gender roles. Addie, (or Adam, as her family and best friends called her) was a "tomboy." In part the term described a joy in physical activity such as the riding and ice skating that Addie and many other young girls so enjoyed but that they were expected to give up as they became "young ladies." Young girls on farms and ranches like Addie who enjoyed the freedom and physicality of horseback riding may have most regretted the changes of adolescence. Agnes Morley Cleaveland, growing up on a New Mexico ranch during the same time period, saw a sharp divide between the free horseback riding life of her childhood and her expected female adult role: ranching was, she said, "no life for a lady."l In Addie's account, the moment of truth occurs when her new sidesaddle arrives, without the leaping hom that would have allowed her to continue to jump fences. Bicycles, which 1 Agnes Morley Cleaveland, No Life for a Lady (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1941; reprinted Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1977). 1
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