Datebook 1919: Sunday, November 23, 1919

Cool wet day. Some rain and some snow but not enough to accumulate. Down to Hayes's room and waited for him to get ready. To S.S. To Win My Chum meeting in P.M. at our church. Over to city mission. Home. To Trinity Church with Doris Smith in P.M. To bed 10:30 P.M.

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I was disappointed to see that Stanford never even mentioned that it was his 19th birthday. I wonder why? Did they not celebrate their birthdays in that family?

Never having before heard of this "Win My Chum" phenomenon (and not even sure I was reading it correctly), I did some investigating and lo and behold such a thing did exist! It was a particular Epworth League event designed to get more young people involved in the church, apparently. I'm still not sure what happened at the meeting, though.

Here is a part of an article that appeared in the November 25, 1920 Christian Advocate in which there is praise for the annual Win-My-Chum Week:

About this blog . . .

I've created this blog to make a record of the hand-written journals of Stanford Stillman Closson (1900-1982), who was in his life a Methodist Minister, grandfather, father, brother, husband and son. I'm starting with the first one, written in 1919, but I plan to record subsequent years (they continue into the 1970s). I'm matching the days--May 5, 1919 to May 5, 2013, for instance--with one entry per day. So it will take a year to get through the first diary.

The daily entries are pretty short, though, so in addition to recording the diaries, I'm also annotating them, giving additional information about the people, places and events mentioned by Stanford. By doing this, I hope to convey a sense of 1919 Schenectady, New York and the people Stanford interacted with. Of course, I'm also hoping to give Stanford's descendants a fuller picture of who he was as a young man.

Datebook 1919

Sunday, November 23, 1919

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