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Title
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Book 11, Diary of J.P. D'Ooge from 1903 June to 1904 May
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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 eleventh journal begins in late June 1903, as her family departs for their summer cottage in Charlevoix, and follows their daily lives through the beginning of May 1904. In Charlevoix the D’Ooges visit with family and friends, play games (such as flinch, pedro, charades, euchre, and whist), and sail the Amy. Jennie’s husband, Michigan State Normal College classics professor Benjamin L. D’Ooge, continues to serve as a trustee of the Charlevoix Summer Home Association. Their daughters Ida and Helen get up to “great antics” with other teens and are eager to attend hops at the resort hotel. Their elder son Len also enjoys hops, as well as fishing, and their younger son Stanton stays closer to home, playing with other children, reading, and spending time with his parents. The family plans to remodel their cottage at the end of the season. Jennie’s sister, Ida Pease, rents out her Ann Arbor house for part of the summer and stays in her own cottage in Charlevoix.
In Ypsilanti, the D’Ooges continue to rent 602 Congress Street. Edith Hoyle, a Normal College student, lives with them and assists with housework. The family regularly takes dinners at a boarding house, cafe, or hotel, rather than cooking at home, or they purchase dishes from the Women’s Exchange to round out a home-cooked “luncheon.” Jennie bemoans how much food her four growing children consume: “It seems as if the capacity of my family for good things to eat is absolutely unlimited. I have to buy just twice as much of everything as I used to.” She has a new gas range, which she says is “fine,” although she worries that the gas will cost too much and complains that the water heater ran up the November gas bill to $6.20.
Ida and Helen are given more responsibilities at home, including meal planning, baking, and sewing, to varying degrees of success. “The girls try to help but their interest is apt to wane when they have company or a book to read. I suppose it is because they know I am here, and weak-minded enough to spring to the front whenever they hold back.” Jennie laments that she is “getting so inexcusably, inconceivably homely” and says, “I tell the children if I only did not have to push so much and do all their thinking for them I wouldn't get so tired.” A humorous example of this occurs in March 1904, when Ida and Helen travel by train to stay with Jennie’s longtime friend Kittie Castle Hattstaedt in Chicago. Soon after their departure the girls send a telegram home saying that they cannot find the trunk key, and Jennie promptly telegraphs back: “Trunk key in Ida’s pocket. What next?”
Mrs. Crosby and other women are often hired to do the laborious chores of washing and ironing. Jennie spends much of her time sewing, either by hand or with her new lockstitch machine, but when she needs to produce a lot of clothing in a hurry, she pays Agnes Fike (or Fyke) $5 a week plus lodging for two weeks to help her sew about twenty garments. She also has an underskirt made for herself and a new spring suit made for Helen at Ypsilanti’s W.H. Sweet & Son, arguing that the quality and durability compared with ready-made clothes justify the expense.
Jennie continues to serve as co-patroness of the Harmonious Mystics, a Michigan State Normal College sorority, with fellow faculty wife Abbie Hunter Pease. They are pleased to pledge MSNC president Lewis Henry Jones’s daughter Edith, to the chagrin of librarian Genevieve Walton, who had spent more than a year rushing Edith for the Zeta Phis. Mrs. Pease’s moods can change quickly, she acts “real cat-y” to Jennie during a sorority event, and Jennie describes her as “so cold and indifferent and bored,” highlighting some tension between the two. Jennie is also a chaperone of the Halcyon Club, alongside Eva Green Hoyt.
Jennie is elected president of the Women’s Union of Ypsilanti’s Congregational Church, and she remains active with the Congregational Ladies’ Aid Society. She is also elected Corresponding Secretary of the Ladies’ Literary Club and serves as chairman of the press committee. She attends thimble parties, church fundraiser socials, and “swell” luncheons. When she has time, she enjoys decorative woodcarving and burning, and she reads several books, including contemporary novels and historical fiction. Jennie maintains contact with numerous friends from different stages of her life, including the D’Ooges’ two years in Germany. In December 1903, she attends the funeral of family friend Sarah Swope Caswell Angell, wife of University of Michigan president James B. Angell.
In addition to teaching at the Normal College, Ben presents at the National Education Association conference in Boston in July 1903. He also speaks to local groups, including giving a talk about Holland in Wayne, Michigan, where “he had a most appreciative audience of Podunkers from Podunk.” As club president, he organizes a meeting of the Michigan Schoolmasters’ Club and the Classical Conference in Ypsilanti in March 1904. He is also elected president of the newly-created Ypsilanti Choral Society, a town-and-gown chorus directed by Prof. Frederic Pease. He enjoys playing golf in good weather. Ben and Jennie take the train into Detroit several times on various errands, including meetings about their investment in the Black Diamond Mine (which Jennie regrets), sailing on the Detroit River with friends Louis C. and Jane Mahon Stanley, and attending a performance of Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice starring Henry Irving as Shylock.
Especially during the winter, there seems to be an endless rotation of illnesses in the D’Ooge family: toothache, earache, headache, sore throat, “malarial symptoms,” lingering coughs, “Cuban itch,” fears of diphtheria. Nevertheless, the children are busy with concerts, sporting events, and social gatherings. Ida is appointed to participate in an oratorical contest and the Junior Exhibition. Helen attends Junior Endeavor at the Congregational Church and is described as a “dear, faithful little Christian.” Len sings with the Episcopal Church boys’ choir and plays football. Stanton struggles with arithmetic. In February 1904, the boys go, perhaps for the first time, “to see some Moving Pictures at the opera-house.”
During a visit to her sister Ida’s house in Ann Arbor, Jennie looks through family papers: “[I] read the diaries of Grandma Deuel, Father & Mother, written about the time they were married, and on through the next eight years, until mother’s death. It seems strange to think she was only 28 yrs. old when she died. (She was born in 1832.)” At least some of these documents are today in the Eastern Michigan University Archives.
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Date Span
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1903 June to 1904 May
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Subject
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Ann Arbor (Mich.); Charlevoix (Mich.); Children; Clippings (Books, newspapers, etc.); Community and college; Congregational churches; Detroit (Mich.); Diaries; Dinners and dining; Families; Family recreation; Female friendship; First Congregational Church (Ypsilanti, Mich.); Home economics; Manners and customs; Michigan State Normal School; Motherhood; Printed ephemera; Social life and customs; Societies and clubs; Study and teaching; Teenagers; Universities and colleges -- Faculty; University towns; University women; Women; Ypsilanti (Mich.)
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Cataloger
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Alexis Braun Marks, Katie Delahoyde, Kat Hacanyan
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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).
