From December 1914 issues of

The Andes Recorder

100 Years Ago

 Week In and About ANDES

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Events of a Week as Chronicled by  the Man on the Street

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With commentary by Jim Andrews

FARMER RADFORD ON WOMAN SUFFRAGE

The home is the greatest contribution of women to the world, and the hearthstone is her throne. Our social structure is built around her, and social righteousness is in her charge. Her beautiful life lights the skies of hope and her refinement is the charm of twentieth century civilization. Her graces and her power are the cumulative products of generations of queenly conquest, and her crown of exalted womanhood is jeweled with the wisdom of saintly mothers. She has been a great factor in the glory of our country, and her noble achievements should not be marred or her hallowed influence blighted by the coarser duties of citizenship. American chivalry should never permit her to bear the burdens of defending and maintaining government, but should preserve her unsullied from the allied influences of politics, and protect her from the weighty responsibilities of the sordid affairs of life that will crush her ideals and lower her standards. The motherhood of the farm is our inspiration, she is the guardian of our domestic welfare and a guide to a higher life, but directing the affairs of government is not within woman’s sphere, and political gossip would cause her to neglect the home, forget to mend our clothes and burn the biscuits. [Ed.: The language is so overblown, I think this must be a spoof, though men went to very great lengths to prevent women from getting the vote. Other opinions?] [Jim Andrews: It wouldn’t surprise me if this were written in all seriousness by whomever Farmer Radford is. It reads like many other publications of that era.]

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Last Friday evening the Epworth League met with Miss Nina Frisbee at Perch Lake. A large number were present and a royal good time enjoyed….After the business meeting a good social time was enjoyed until the wee hours of the morning. [JA:I have never heard of the Epworth League. Nina Frisbee is the woman we remember as Nina Fiedler who lived in Mike and JoAnn Warner’s house on Lower Main Street for many decades. She lived to be over 100. I’m wondering if this was a young people’s group. Nina was not yet married, so would have been in her late teens in 1914. There were many young people’s groups back then. The ASHC has numerous pictures of these groups and they spent a good deal of time at Perch Lake. Aside from the Frisbee farm where Nina grew up, there was an Andes camp there where they would have “co-ed” sleepovers properly chaperoned by a younger married couple or couples. Roy and Josie Miller (they owned Paisley’s and ran the drug store later in life) were young marrieds who were in their middle twenties and used to chaperone the younger folks.]

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Friday, December 5 was the twenty-fifth anniversary of the marriage of Mr. and Mrs. David Taylor and their friends and neighbors to the number of 60 made them a surprise visit at their home in Canada Hollow. As a reminder of the occasion the company presented Mr. and Mrs. Taylor with a dinning [sic] room table. [Ed.:Was this an accepted custom, like the shivaree, I wonder?]

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[Ed.: Here the editor of the Recorder is harking back to the year 1867 when the newspaper weather reports had a poetic tinge.]

From the issue of the Recorder of December 19, 1867, we take the following which shows that cold was severe: “During the past few days we have had a regular ‘cold snap’. Friday morning thermometers indicated 8 degrees below zero. Saturday morning it had fallen to 24 degrees below when the air was decidedly fresh and bracing. People hurried up and down the street, like tardy passengers trying to catch a train. Perspiring horses came into the village, looking decidedly ‘wooly’. Hopeful mustaches, put on the appearance of veterans, and the sturdy yeoman ‘bearded like the bard’, smiled through a galaxy of icy gems. The smoke of the village chimneys stood up in tall fleecy pillars like something tangible. Winter had it all her own way.” [JA: This is descriptive enough that you can almost see the chimney smoke and the men’s breath filtering through those heavy moustaches. “Wooly” horses leaves something to the imagination!]~