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Title
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Book 10, Diary of J.P. D'Ooge from 1902 March to 1903 June
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Creator
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Electa Jane (Jennie) Pease D'Ooge
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Description
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Jennie Pease D’Ooge’s tenth diary spans from March 1902 to June 1903. She, her husband, Benjamin L. D’Ooge, and their four children continue to live at 602 Congress Street in Ypsilanti, Michigan, and spend summers up north in Charlevoix.
In May 1902, Jennie accompanies Ben when he travels to give a lecture in Chicago. She writes: “I hesitated at first on account of the cost – but as I told Ben, it will be all the same in a hundred years, and we shouldn’t deny ourselves everything.” During their trip, Jennie meets with cousin and old friends, lunches at Marshall Field’s, attends musical and theatrical performances, and visits two major Progressive educational institutions: Jane Addams’s Hull House and John Dewey’s Laboratory Schools.
Jennie has a full calendar of social, religious, and charitable activities, and she laments being so busy (“I am in too deep – cannot see daylight”). She serves as president of the Ladies’ Aid Society at Ypsilanti’s First Congregational Church. In April 1903 she joins Abbie Hunter Pease, wife of Michigan State Normal College music professor Frederic H. Pease, as a “patroness” to the Harmonious Mystics, a sorority established in 1900. Jennie is also recruited into the local Whist Club. In her spare time she practices pyrography, burning decorative designs into wooden objects, including her new ping-pong paddles, and begins teaching classes on the art. She reads widely. Among other books, she comments on The Leopard's Spots: A Romance of the White Man's Burden—1865–1900 by Thomas Dixon and quotes extensively from Confessions of a Wife by Mary Adams, both published in 1902.
Ben is also active both professionally and personally. In addition to teaching classics at Michigan State Normal College, he gives lectures on Greek and Roman topics and works to revise Allen and Greenough’s New Latin Grammar. According to Jennie, “Ben has some glimmer of hope of a change – to Oberlin or Stanford University or somewhere away from Ypsi!” He becomes a second degree Mason.
The Normal College has a new president in fall 1902, Lewis Henry Jones. Privately, Jennie thinks he looks “queer” and “dissipated” after first meeting him. Two MSNC colleagues and good friends die suddenly: August Lodeman, professor of modern languages, and Austin George, former director of the college’s Training School and later superintendent of Ypsilanti Public Schools. Jennie notes “a growing re-action against co-education in Universities,” as some, herself included, do not believe it is producing the “best results.”
The children are becoming more mature and independent, although Jennie at times worries about how they “seem to utterly lack any idea of care for themselves,” as well as how much food they consume. All have active social lives, spend weekends in Ann Arbor with their Aunt Ida Pease, and take part in music recitals and theatrical performances. They suffer from various ailments, which Jennie diligently treats with homeopathic remedies and visits to the doctor. Mumps sweeps through the family in April and May 1902. In March 1903, an outbreak of smallpox sends a neighbor girl “to the pest-house in Detroit” and pushes Jennie to have her children vaccinated.
Ida is initiated into the Beta Nu Society, wants to dance with partners at the Charlevoix hop, suffers from acne, and receives sixteen lumps of sugar from a friend when she turns “sweet sixteen.” Helen, nicknamed “Arlie,” finishes grammar school and “graduates into the troubles of High School.” Both girls “have reached the shirt-waist age.” Len struggles to pay attention in class, but he helps out with chores, leads a Junior Christian Endeavor meeting, and enjoys playing with friends and his toy steam engine. Stanton is good natured and earnest. For his seventh birthday, his Aunt Ida gives him a pair of guinea pigs, which quickly multiply. A neighbor gives the boys a puppy, Skele, “the dearest, softest, naughtiest little rascal,” but he dies from distemper before his first birthday, “a sore trial” to the whole family. Shortly thereafter, Stanton brings home a large gray and white cat.
For much of this period, the D’Ooges take their dinners out and, until June 1903, pay Mabel Love to help with cooking and washing. The family has difficulty obtaining coal to heat their house in the winter due to the anthracite coal strike of 1902, and Jennie worries that “[t]here will be immense suffering in the poor classes.” There is much confusion in Ypsilanti as the town attempts to switch to Standard Time in early 1903.
In this volume, Jennie celebrates her “—rd” and “forty __th” birthdays, remarking, “Time flies, these years.” In the very last entry of the diary, she writes: “Our eighteenth wedding-anniversary. We ought to celebrate, but doubt if we have time to even remind Ben.”
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Date Span
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1902 March to 1903 June
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Original Object Type
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Paper journal
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Subject
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Ann Arbor (Mich.); Art and recreation; Baking; Books and reading; Budgets, Personal; Card games; Charlevoix (Mich.); Chicago; Child rearing; Childhood; Children; Church entertainments; Clippings (Books, newspapers, etc.); Clothing and dress; Communication; College teachers; Community and college; Congregational churches; Cooking; Detroit (Mich.); Dutch; Correspondence; Diaries; Dinners and dining; Disease; Discretionary income; Domestic Workers; Etiquette; Extended families; Families; Family recreation; Fashion; Fatherhood; Female friendship; Finances; First Congregational Church (Ypsilanti, Mich.); Food; Fraternal organization; Friendship; Germany; Gifts; Holiday; Home economics; Home economics--Accounting; Homeopathy; Horse-drawn vehicles; House cleaning; Household employees; Illness; Indoor games; Infants; Interior decoration; Interurban railroads; Investing; Latin language; Latin philosophy; Laundry; Letters; Local transit; Manners and customs; Marriage; Medicine; Menstrual cycle; Menstruation; Michigan State Normal School; Michigan, Lake; Missions; Money; Motherhood; Music; Musical recreation; Neighborliness; Outdoor recreation; Pandemics; Parenthood; Parenting; Parents; Play; Printed ephemera; Railroad travel; Recreation; Sailing; Scholarly publishing; Sewing; Shopping; Social life and customs; Societies and clubs; Streetcar lines; Study and teaching; Sunday schools; Symphony; Travel; Transportation; Theater; Universities and colleges -- Faculty; University of Michigan; University towns; University women; Women in missionary work; Vacation homes; Young families; Ypsilanti (Mich.)
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Collection Location
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Book 10
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Cataloger
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Alexis Braun Marks, Katie Delahoyde
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Date Digital File Created
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January 2024
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Relation
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04.JD
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Rights
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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).
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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).
