A Glimpse into My Grandmother’s School Years: Nora’s Class
Notebook
Nora Elsie Hoffman: 1899-1994 (Maternal Grandmother)
One of the items I received from my mom before she died was
her mother’s school notebook from 1912-1916. I love this heirloom. It shows my
Grandmother Nora’s penmanship and reveals a little about her schooling and the
era in which she was raised.
The composition notebook is similar to the hardcover
composition notebooks used in schools today, except it is smaller. The common
notebook dimensions today are 7 1/2 inches by 10 inches, while my grandmother’s
notebook is about 6 ½ x 8 ¼ inches. There is no manufacturing information
printed on the notebook, and no obvious price.
The cover features an American flag and the words “Freedom’s
Emblem” above a small blue eagle with a shield featuring stars and stripes, and
laurel and wheat in its talons. Gold stars appear over the eagle’s head, and
his beak holds a gold banner. I am not sure if this patriotic imagery was
common in that era or whether Nora had a choice of several possible colors and
patterns and preferred this one. Nora’s name is printed in the upper right
corner.
The notebook contains a series of what I first assumed were
poems. I copied some of the lines from the poems into a search engine, and
discovered that most of them came from a book called “Songs of the Child World”
written in 1897 by Alice C.D. Riley and Jesse Smith Gaynor. Riley was the
lyricist and Gaynor composed the music.
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The first page of the notebook shows an example. “The Owl”
was a song from the Riley and Gaynor book. Apparently Nora’s teachers—she lists
them at the top of the page as “Miss Oconner—1912” and “Miss Sanborn—1914”—had
their students copy the lyrics into their notebooks so they could learn the
songs. Several were songs about flowers, including “The Tulip” below.
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The notebook also included dialogue from several short
plays. The page below is the start of a play called “The Sewing Society”, and lists
the names of the students who were to play the parts. Nora was to play the part
of Mrs. Green. Another cast member was named Sadie—that may have been Nora’s
older sister.
The notebook was also used for Nora’s classwork in 1916. She
seems to have taken notes for an American History class, as the page below
shows. I was interested to see that slavery was listed as the second cause of
the Civil War, behind only secession. Now our government seems to be trying to remove this from
history books, claiming blaming slavery is revisionist history, but Nora’s notes show that
over a century ago, just five decades after the war, history texts recognized
that slavery was a principle cause for the war.
I noted that Nora’s penmanship became more distinctive as
the years passed. When she began using the notebook, she was thirteen. She had
probably just started high school in Mankato, having completed grades one
through eight in a one-room schoolhouse near her home. The final sections of
the notebook were written in 1916 when she was seventeen and about to graduate
from high school. The history lesson handwriting was more like what I remember
of my grandmother’s penmanship.
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| Nora at about age 15, around 1914. Confirmation photo. |
Near the end of the notebook, there is a list of the U.S.
Presidents, noting the years they served and their home states. The penmanship
for the list is identical to her handwriting as an older adult. I believe this
list was written many years later, as it is written in ball-point pen, while
the rest of the notebook is written in pencil. In addition, the president list
includes Harry Truman, so it was probably compiled after World War II. An even
later addition to the list, written in different ink, adds Eisenhower, Kennedy
and Lyndon Johnson, so that part was written in the 1960s.
I love owning this little piece of my grandmother’s life. It
is so interesting to see what types of things were included in her high school
education—music, plays, and history lessons. I love seeing her careful script—rather
narrow and spidery as a freshman, and a bit looser and more confident as a
senior. I wish I had asked her about her high school memories when she was
still with us.
Sources:
Riley, A. C. D. 1867-1953. (1897-1915). Gaynor, Jesse S. Songs
of the Child World. Cincinnati: [publisher not identified]. 1897.
