EN 455
The Modern Home Laundry. The Home Economics Department, The Procter & Gamble co. 1937.
In the archives of the Hoole library at the University of Alabama, there exists a bound book titled “The Modern Home Laundry”. Covered in a blue and pink pattern, the 96-page informative piece aims to teach housewives about laundry. Procter & Gamble, a company that sells washing machines and soaps,
Clendening, Logan, “ Diet and Health.” Kansas City Star Nov. 4 1931. Rpt. In A friend in Need, Facts Worth Knowing About Arm and Hammer Baking Soda as a Proved Medical Agent. By Arm and Hammer Inc. 1933. Print
“A Friend in Need, Facts Worth Knowing About Arm and Hammer Baking Soda as a Proved Medical Agent” is a small booklet displaying a smiling mother offering her, also smiling, daughter a spoonful of baking soda. The booklet is a
Various Contributors. “Alabama Clubwoman.” November-December 1935.
This newsletter is filled with information and stories about life in Alabama during the Great Depression for women. Looking it as a piece of history, it did a lot to outline the club’s members and their roles during this time period, it serves as an interesting view of the world back then. It’s basically a piece of
The Sealtest Food Adviser. Sealtest Laboratory Kitchen, Radio City, NY. Lent, 1939. University of Alabama Special Collections. “Carolyn Shepherd Price Home Economics Teaching Materials” collection, “Foods—Menu Planning” folder. 1632.0001/39.
Though a modest recipe booklet seems unlikely to yield substantial insight into the Great Depression, the Sealtest Food Adviser offers enough writing variety to justify exploring its pages. Sealtest’s status as a dairy company renders the Lenten edition available in the Hoole Library to be of particular
Murray, Mary B. “Let’s Enjoy Eating.” The Wesson Oil and Snowdrift People, 1932. Carolyn Sheppard Price Home Economics Teaching Materials, 1632.0002, 53-115, 03.
The “Let’s Enjoy Eating” recipe pamphlet by Mary B. Murray, published in 1932 by the Wesson Oil and Snowdrift people, gives the reader an insight into the lifestyle of a woman in the 1930s. The introduction by “Dr. Walter H. Eddy, Ph. D, Director of Bureau of Foods, Sanitation and Health, Good Housekeeping
Continue reading “Let’s Enjoy Eating: A Recipe to Good Research”
Ellis, Levice B. “Your Appearance.” Your Appearance, June 1944.
This article is vital to my research because it gives a sharp insight into the upkeep of women’s hygiene at the time. The magazine includes information about how to create products like deodorant, shampoo, etc. Each section is focused on solely one aspect of a woman’s appearance from “superfluous Continue reading “What Makes A Charming Woman?”
The face of a Native American, sad and contemplative, stares at me from the back of the wooden rocking chair I am walking towards. The dark wood looks fragile but holds weight with a steady balance. “There used to be horses and carriages”: those words have come to me from the chair’s mouth in a few surreal dreams. Continue reading “Working Harder for Less: The Story of an Industrious Mother”
“Sometimes I tell my children that I would like to go to Mexico, but they tell me ‘We don’t want to go, we belong here.'” (http://www.loc.gov/pictures/resource/fsa.8b26837/?co=fsa) , or as I like to call it, �Chubby Jesus� is a picture we rarely see in the discussion of the Great Depression. In a theater of dirty white children and gaunt face fathers next to stern, tight lipped mothers, we have something that approximates… hope? The first thing to catch my eye was the face of the mother in this
Caldonia Athalee Strahan was born on December 12, 1918, in Hancock, Mississippi. Technically she lived in Pearlington; however, Hurricane Katrina wiped it off the map. After a mysterious event in which the courthouse holding her birth documents was lost to a fire, she changed her name officially to Dona A. Strahan. Later in life, she would relocate to bustling city Mobile, AL, with her husband and live the rest of her life there.
(1911 – 1964)
Contributed by her great-great granddaughter Keely Ellman
Catherine Margaret Korytoski Miller was born somewhere in Illinois in 1911, though most of her life was spent in and around Porter, a small town in Northwest Indiana. The oldest of six children, Kate married Frank Miller, a painter by trade and artist by hobby, in 1934 and moved to another house in Porter on Franklin Street. Due to family financial troubles, though, by 1940, the Millers (Frank, Kate, and three of the four children they would have: Joanne, 4; Nels, 3; Margo, 11/12; Helen, not born until 1943) lived in Porter at 119 Beam Street instead with Kate’s parents, her five siblings including her oldest sister Mary, Mary’s husband Charles Meyne, the two Meyne children, and a paying boarder to make ends meet. Kate kept home with Mary’s help and took care of this hectic household of sixteen until they could afford to live separately around the Porter area, perhaps preparing her for life in the next decade when Frank would be drafted into the Navy.