Book 05, Diary of J.P. D'Ooge from 1893 July to 1894 June · Eastern Michigan University Archives

Title

Book 05, Diary of J.P. D'Ooge from 1893 July to 1894 June

Creator

Electa Jane (Jennie) Pease D'Ooge

Description

The fifth volume of Jennie Pease D’Ooge’s diary is comparatively short, spanning less than a year, from July 1893 to June 1894. It begins with Jennie and husband Benjamin L. D’Ooge’s two-week visit to the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. Jennie gives an almost-daily account of the fair’s highlights, disappointments, and novelties, and the accompanying overwhelm and frustration. She rides the Ferris Wheel, sees Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West Show, and witnesses the burning of the Cold Storage Building. She also makes a side trip with a relative to her hometown, Salem, Wisconsin, to visit her aunt Charlotte and old friend Lelia Runkel.

Shortly after returning to Michigan, Jennie and Ben, along with their three children, travel north by train to their summer cottage in Charlevoix. Flora Cattermole, their hired girl, joins them to help with household chores and childcare. The summer is spent, with friends from Ypsilanti and elsewhere, fishing, sketching, picnicking, bathing in Lake Michigan, attending church and amateur plays, and boating. The D’Ooges and their friends Bastian and Helen Smits purchase a yacht together, christened the “Helen.” The family stops in Grand Rapids en route to Ypsilanti for a family gathering, or “Kring” in Dutch, with Ben’s mother, siblings, and cousins. The D’Ooges continue to rent 423 Ballard Street in Ypsilanti.

Hinting at the Panic of 1893, Jennie remarks on Christmas Day 1893 that she is thankful for what she and her family have “when there are so many thousands starving and cold this winter” and notes that Detroit alone has needed $10,000 per week “to feed the poor who could not get work.”

Jennie alludes to a marital issue in March 1894, which appears to have been resolved and left her feeling more grateful for her husband and family. The D’Ooges’ two daughters, Ida and Helen, attend kindergarten and play with classmates and neighborhood friends. Their youngest child, Leonard, is becoming more talkative and making progress with toilet training, but Jennie worries about him for reasons she does not specify. She meticulously tends to her children’s sore throats, earaches, colds, and croupy coughs with homeopathic remedies. When a young girl in her Sunday School class dies, Jennie is critical of her parents for attributing their daughter’s death to God’s will, rather than a lack of care on their part.

Galusha Jackson Pease, Jennie’s aging father, is ill and frightened of death, which grieves her. She and Ben try to help her older sister, Ida Pease, sort out his business matters. Ida is their father’s primary caretaker, as well as landlady to several students from the University of Michigan who rent rooms in the Peases’ Ann Arbor home.

Jennie has difficulty managing her household accounts on the allowance she is given by Ben. Flora leaves once again and is replaced by a succession of servants: Blanche Scott, Fannie Collier, and Mamie Dickerson. The young women are often unable to handle the laundry, so Jennie hires Mary James or, on one occasion, Wealthy Sherman, a Black woman, to come in and wash clothes. Mrs. Farnam (or Farnum) helps make and make-over clothing, but Jennie still spends many late nights sewing, mending, and darning.

The pressures of her family concerns, household stressors, and domestic duties take a toll on Jennie’s mental health in this volume. She describes “the everyday grinding at the home-mill” and writes she “[is] happy as [she] used to be, one day, and the next – [she is] down-cast by a single word or look.”

In addition to his position as Professor of Greek and Latin at the Michigan State Normal School, Ben gives public talks, reads a paper before the Philological Society at Ann Arbor, and travels to evaluate a school elsewhere in Michigan for the State Board of Education. Richard Gause Boone becomes president of the Michigan State Normal School, replacing John M. B. Sill.

Date Span

1893 July to 1894 June

Original Object Type

Bound Journal

Subject

Ann Arbor (Mich.); Art and recreation; Baking; Books and reading; Budgets, Personal; Card games; Charlevoix (Mich.); Chicago (Ill.); Child rearing; Childhood; Children; Church entertainments; Clothing and dress; College teachers; Community and college; Congregational churches; Cooking; Detroit (Mich.); Diaries; Dinners and dining; Discretionary income; Dutch Americans; Early childhood education; Etiquette; Extended families; Families; Family recreation; Fatherhood; Female friendship; First Congregational Church (Ypsilanti, Mich.); Food; Friendship; Gifts; Home economics; Homeopathy; House cleaning; Household employees; Indoor games; Interior decoration; Interurban railroads; Kindergarten; Laundry; Local transit; Manners and customs; Marriage; Medicine; Michigan State Normal School; Michigan, Lake; Missions; Motherhood; Music; Musical recreation; Neighborliness; Outdoor recreation; Parenthood; Parenting; Parents; Play; Printed ephemera; Railroad travel; Recreation; Sewing; Shopping; Social life and customs; Societies and clubs; Streetcar lines; Sunday schools; Theater; Universities and colleges -- Faculty; University of Michigan; University towns; University women; Unpaid labor; Women in missionary work; World's fairs; Young families; Ypsilanti (Mich.)

Collection Location

Book 5

Cataloger

Alexis Braun Marks, CA; Katie Delahoyde; Luis Pena

Relation

04.JD

Rights

This Item is protected by copyright and/or related rights. You are free to use this Item in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. In addition, no permission is required from the rights-holder(s) for educational uses. For other uses, you need to obtain permission from the owner, Eastern Michigan University Archives (lib_archives@emich.edu).