Monday, February 9, 2009

My Favorite Hobby


I belong to a Grace Livingston Hill reading group online. I never post, but I read the posts of the rest of the members - I guess you would call that "lurking". Anyway, one of the readers purchased a First Edition of Grace Livingston Hill's book, "Re-Creations" printed by Lippincott and published in 1924. Inside was a letter from a Sunday school teacher named Emma F. Garner to her student, Miss Blanche Shriner in Uniontown, Maryland. Evidently, Blanche was a Sunday school student who never missed a lesson in 17 years, hence the gift.
So, I got on Ancestry.com and looked up Miss Shriner. I found the above census record (click to "embiggen" and look for Milton Shriner).



Miss Shriner was 30 years old in 1920, which makes her 34 in 1924, the date of the book and the letter. She was single, as was her sister, Bertha, who worked as a servant for a "private family". Her 18 year old brother Shreeve was an invalid according to the 1920 census, and the baby of the family, Caroline B., at 28 months, was at first claimed as a daughter, then this was half marked out and "grand" was written above daughter. Hmmmmmm. I have a feeling that Caroline was a daughter and the census writer was making a judgement based on the age of the mother, who, at 50, could still have had a 28 month old child.

Miss Shriner's father was, I think, a huckster helper (I had a hard time reading the writing), which is a traveling salesman (think a man with a cart full of stuff, I think). I believe he worked for his neighbor, W. Guy Segafoose, 47, who owned a huckster business. It would make sense. They probably split routes - one went one way and one went the other. That's IF I'm correct in my assumption about the job, although the census record does say for both that they have "own route"s.

Here's the map of where I think they lived. They were on "Main Street", which today is Uniontown Road. They were 2 doors down from Jasontown Road.


View Larger Map

1 comment:

Island Rider said...

Cool. I also had a Sunday School teacher who got me hooked on Grace Livingston Hill as well as Eugenia Price. It fostered a love for good, clean fiction at an age when I was headed another direction.