Journal

File — Box: 5, Volume: 19

Identifier: III

Staff Only

Scope and Contents

April 19
"It is now 3:00 A.M. I have to keep putting musterole on Norma's chest and her cough doesn't get any better. I am about exhausted with worry and lack of sleep. I feel greatly tired in my spirit over things that are not my fault or Charles's or the children's. I am almost heart broken with the long continued strain of puzzling problems, anxieties, and misunderstandings. I will say that it is all directly due to poverty. I am getting morbid about it. Too much repression and not being able to talk it out with anyone is beginning to break me down."
August 31
"I have heard so much about the beneficial effects on the body of sun baths that I got Charles to build an out door sun room for me which I entered thru my bedroom window. That I crawled out onto the ironing board which rested on the window sill and on a horizontal piece of wood in a framework of the sun alcove. The first time I used it I stayed out too long and blistered my back and it was three weeks getting well."
This seems typical of Mary's problematical "out of the frying pan and into the fire" sort of existence.
July 24
"We all went to see the big 'Covered Wagon Days Parade'. But we didn't get the see the covered wagons because they all dropped out before the parade reached Sixth East where we were."
Mary writes her New Year's Resolutions:
1932
January
"Resolved-1. To carry on a family and personal health regime. 2. To keep account of all money spent. 3. To be calm and hopeful and kind to all including myself. 4. To keep up my personal appearance and attend church."
January 5
"Father was worse this morning and talked about being resigned to die. I know that he could get well if he had the proper treatment."
She remembers being sent to a "fake" sanitarium presided over by a friend [of her family's]:
"I begged them not to send me to this place, knowing from my first glimpse of the man who claimed to be a nerve specialist that he couldn't possibly be one. But they let him and his wife carry me off forcibly and left me to their evil designs and the damage they did to my already extremely sick nerves has never been and can never be remedied."
January
"I didn't get up till nine o'clock. I must rest enough to prevent a collapse but it is the hardest thing in the world for me to do. Even when I am lying down my whole body is tense and I can't relax."
January 21
"Father died. He had been in the hospital five days. The doctors were unable to discover the cause of his death until the very last. They pronounce it pernicious anemia. Pres. Grant was there and had his secretary take down all that was said in short hand and later had type written copies made."
In 1933 Mary begins to make and sell braided rugs to help support her family. With this money she paid for the family's dental work, for their summer coal supply and so forth.
1934
September
"For the first time in history some of our family went to a moving picture show on Sunday. Little Women was the play being shown."
December 25
"The children were all happy or seemed to be with their meagre gifts."
Mary had a sixth and final child in March of 1934, whom they named Lyman.
"God bless them and reward them with better opportunities for gaining complete happiness than from their parents, grandparents, or great grandparents had."

Dates

1844-1949

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