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5.27.2012

Quaker Girls




The photo is of actress Ina Claire, 
playing the title role of the Comedic Broadway musical “The Quaker Girl” 
in 1912. 
  
This bore no resemblance whatsoever to any Quaker girl’s life, especially not a Quaker girl in Depression Era Idaho.









 
Being a Quaker girl 
in Greenleaf , Idaho in the 1930’s meant...

That you did as many chores as your brothers, and often the same ones.

That according to your gifts, you had the same educational prospects as your brothers.

That you were taught by Quaker Ladies at the one room public schoolhouse until you family moved you closer to Greenleaf to attend the Quaker Academy to be taught by more Quaker ladies and some Quaker gentlemen.

That when you played against the Nazarene Girls in Softball,  you got to wear slacks and they had to play in dresses. You also played basketball.

You went to church at least three times a week.

You sometimes listened to women preachers.

            Fannie Esther Benedict, recorded Greenleaf 1916, died in 1957 - 41 yrs of service to the Lord
               Hannah Lydia Mendenhall, recorded Greenleaf 1917, died in 1950 - 33 yrs of service
               Emma Budman Harris, recorded Greenleaf 1932, transferred out 1953
               Elaine Settle Cronk, recorded 1944 Greenleaf, died in 2000 - 56 yrs of service
               Traveling female evangelists and missionaries were a regular feature.

Your Sunday school class was probably segregated by gender.

Your mother belonged the Women’s Christian Temperance Union.

Your mother voted.

You participated in “Christian Endeavor” a training ground for adult church life.

If interested, and talented,  it was possible to be class president, or hold any other leadership position at school.

You went to Camp meetings and youth camps every summer, but not during harvest.

You learned to waste NOTHING.

.


// posted by Peggy Senger Morrison @ Sunday, May 27, 2012
Comments:
Would it be hopeless digressiong to:

--ask for the year women achieved the vote in ID? By the Depression, some young women likely would have grandmothers who voted, no?

--ask for reflection on the WCTU as a great religious melting pot? Both of my grandmothers and one of the women I was named after were active in the WCTU. None of them were Quakers.

--express interest in knowing more about what themes were covered in Christian Endeavor?
# posted by Blogger RantWoman : May 30, 2012 5:00 PM
 
It is possible that girls in the 30's in Idaho had grandmothers who voted as Idaho gave women the vote in 1896. I am not going off into the WCTU. But we will have a bit more on CE because it bears on CM's story.
# posted by Blogger Peggy Senger Morrison : May 31, 2012 8:45 PM
 
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