Comments On Article: The Diary Of Sarah April 24 - 30, 1932

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Hey Everyone, 

Wonder what she meant by the meal being unfit fot Ernest? Does anybody have a guess? Maybe he had food allergies? 

Hope  all are well and busy this spring.  

Hi, Grandma Donna!

Sarah does work a lot and I feel inspired when I read her diary! And a bit tired, too! ;)

She had a lot of energy and reading that she cleaned the big wardrobe down stairs, made me remember that I have a few closets to clean, too...

Oh, and the word you are pointing to, seems to be Telephone to me, too.

Have a blessed week!

:)

Hi, Patty!

I think he ate something that didn't go very well with his stomach... maybe allergies or something heavy that made him feel sick?

:)

I'm sorry. I couldn't get past that adorable fabric you have the book displayed on!!!

How does the word "telephone" compare to "telephoning" that she wrote later?  Her writing can be a little confusing - kudos for deciphering all that!

I wondered what "unfit for Ernest" meant, too.  We seem to have some real puzzles in this week's writing.

Sarah stays incredibly busy and I admire her, but like my mother, her domain is mostly the house, with a few exceptions like the chicks.  My dad handled the outside and farm work, and we kids (all girls) helped them both.  However, since I've become an adult, I hold down a full-time job, do all the housework, cook from scratch, sew, and do the yardwork -  pruning, planting, trimming, fertilizing, watering, all but mowing, which I hire out - in the yard and I built and maintain the raised beds.  I always helped my husband with the garden, landscaping, carpentry, plumbing, wiring, etc. when he was able to do those things.  So maybe I'm not slacking as much as it feels like I am, when I compare myself to Sarah.  Maybe none of us are!

Grandma Donna wrote, Hi everyone, I did a reply to this feed and have no idea why it did not go through.  I went back to pop in and it was not there. So I will write it over.

What I was saying is that I don't know why Sarah said that about Ernest , maybe his stomach was not okay that day or something she cooked that was not something he enjoyed eating, probably just the way she wrote it being a personal diary.

This is what I wanted to make sure to re-write since it disappeared.  To give you some insight on a few things.  Many of my diaries had no information about the writer when I got them and sometimes it takes awhile to find the writer through my genealogy research and takes me awhile.  I know that many people wonder why Sarah does washing for other family and not just her own and other things.  

After I read through the diary the first time I got it I had a lot of questions too.  So I did research on her family.  All of her adult children farm on different farms in different communities or close by.  All except Joseph and Sherley.  They live on the same farm as Sarah and her husband that she refers to as Father.  Joseph is a partner in the farm with his father and they live in a different house on the land.  They have four children ages from ten years to one year old.

The diary is written in 1932, in the 1940 census the four children are living with Sarah and her husband.  I wanted to know why and found that Sherley had died early 1934 and Joseph died seven months later in 1935.  I do not know the cause of their deaths and there are no death records I can find.  

So Sarah and Father, in their 70's years of age raising their grandchildren.  In the 1950's census I find that Sarah hung on to life until 1950 and the grandchildren were all married by 1950 including the youngest married at age 18.  Father died in 1946.  

Long ago it was very common to keep a diary, ledger, journals for documentation.  They did not have electronics and social media It was private documentation.  But I feel important to learn real history because they wrote what they did each day.  I hope this helps a little to imagine the setting for this diary. 

So much detail about the daily flow of family life. 

Future generations will not have this resource to know what life is really like now.

Facebook posts won’t survive, or give flow and context if they do. Tiktok videos are not about real life either. 

Makes you want to start your own diary - on paper.

I love reading the diary posts. It makes me want to start my own diary in case my children or grandchildren might like to have it one day. I currently work full time outside the home, but my heart longs to be home full time. Reading all that Sarah gets done makes me feel like I don't do anything although I know that isn't true. 

Grandma Donna, I really appreciate your insight into Sarah's life giving us the background. I know they lived long ago, but it seems like we know them. It helps knowing "the rest of the story".

Thank you so much, Donna, for your diligent research on this family -- it makes them seem even more "real" than what Sarah's diary already reflects.  The only thing I miss about this is .. her thoughts and feelings about things.  She puts things down that she accomplished each day, but never mentions whether something has upset her, or made her happy, or miserable.  I know our elders just tended to "get on with things" -- at least, mine did -- but she is essentially just reporting her daily doings without emotion; only mentioning if she was tired or sleepy or achy.  That's the only thing missing from these diaries -- and they all seem to be that way!  Thank you again for all the work you have put into getting these to us.  They truly give me a new perspective on my own daily doings.

Thank you GDonna for the details on the family. That really explains a LOT for me. I always wondered why she was doing their laundry too, but that explains so much more. I thought maybe their was an injury or maybe they traded a job. I've noticed in my diary writings that sometimes it's more detailed and other times it's not. For Ernest I pictured in my mind that she fixed a dish he just didn't like or it didn't sound good that night for dinner. For her bath on Saturday I remembered back to my families houses that were from that time and some had bathtubs already and some didn't. Maybe that was the day she just took a regular bath instead of quick scrub down as we call it.