My Grandmother’s School Notebook from 1912-1916: 52 Ancestors 2025 Prompt “Written”

 
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.

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.

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.

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.