Datebook 1919: Monday, May 12, 1919

Rained slowly all day. To College 9 to 2:30 P.M. Bowled at Star Alleys. Home. Studied at night. Mother and Father to Y for supper. To bed 10:30 P.M. Thankful for health, education etc.

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Not much to say about this entry, except that I found it curious that people went to the Y for supper. But considering that people went to the YMCA for bowling, it stands to reason they might go there for meals as well. Trying to determine if this was unusual, I ran across a news item in the February 15, 1919 Cambridge Tribune, a Cambridge, Massachusetts newspaper, announcing the intentions of the YMCA to invite returned servicemen to dinner to try to interest them in joining the organization. Below is a copy of the piece, available on the Cambridge Public Library website:

The YMCA was certainly much more of a community gathering place in 1919 than it is today!

(I know the guests must have been grateful not to have to sit through long after-dinner speeches!)

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

Monday, May 12, 1919

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