Category: Memphis, Tennessee

This posting is a bit of odds and ends — some cultural tidbits of 1911.

On September 7, 1911, Jessie wrote in her journal, “Got some lunch at the Baltimore Dairy. It was grand.” The Baltimore Dairy Lunch was one of the first chain restaurants in the U.S.  Founder James A. Whitcomb started the restaurants in the late 1880s in Baltimore and Washington D.C., and  within 30 years most big cities had a Baltimore Dairy Lunch.  They were quick lunch counters where patrons made their orders and carried their lunch to their seats, one-armed wooden chairs (patented by Whitcomb) that discouraged long, lingering lunches.

Jessie’s older brother Bud (Frank) left Memphis for the University of Tennessee in Knoxville on Monday, September 11, 1911. By the next weekend he was back home with a case of typhoid fever. As the 20th century progressed, cases of typhoid fever became less frequent, thanks to the introduction of vaccines and improvements in public sanitation and hygiene. But in 1911 typhoid outbreaks were still occurring. This was, after all, the decade of Typhoid Mary, a healthy carrier of the pathogen living in New York. She worked as a cook and is thought to have infected 51 people, 3 of whom died. Back in Memphis at the end of September 1911, Bud seems to be recovering.

On September 18, 1911, school starts again in Memphis. Jessie went to Memphis High School. (You can see a picture of Memphis High in my posting of April 20, 2015, Debating Societies, Tally Ho Rides & the Birdmen Return.) This year a new school, the successor to Memphis High, opened and was called Central High School. On September 19, 1911, Jessie notes that “The desks haven’t come yet so we have to sit on the floor in the classrooms. Just like a circus. We cut up to beat the band.”

On September 23, 1911, Jessie, Winnie, Alma and Alta Mai go see the musical or comic opera Madame Sherry at the Lyceum. Jessie can’t get the song “Every Little Movement” out of her head!

The Lathams bought a new house on Overton Park Avenue and will soon move there. On September 24, 1911 Jessie writes, “Auntie, Swayne & I went out to see our new home on Overton Park Ave. It is beautiful.” The farmhouse where they had been living was Granny Swayne’s house, formerly her father Col. E.H. Porter’s country house. Granny died in early January, so perhaps the Lathams needed or wanted to move so that Granny’s estate could be settled. It is likely that they wanted a smaller and newer home closer to downtown Memphis. Of course I don’t know this since Jessie never wrote about that in her diary. Incidentally, the address written at the top of the photo below is incorrect. Jessie was a very old woman when she went back through many of her old pictures, writing on some of them, and she confused the number with an address from later in her life.  The address of the Latham’s soon to be new home was 1759 Overton Park Avenue.

“Sunday, August 6, 1911: Miss Anna was [not] able to come to S.S. this morning. Was so sorry. Miss Mamie taught us. Went to church. I tried to rest after dinner but in walked Val Williams, then Evan & Billy. I played & they sang. Mil came over and we took lots of Kodak pictures. I declare, Val is so sentimental. As they were leaving in came Everette Holmes — he is so cute. We saw an auto burn up. Everette acted a perfect monkey. E.S. then came. I finally got a little supper. Went to C.E. and church with Evan. He, Mil, Noble B., Billy, L.W. were over. We had a time. More good water-melon and hot tamales. The feast was sure good. It had its effects though.”

A perfectly ordinary day for 16 year old Jessie, but one that she and her friends documented in part with photographs. So we get to see her good friend Mil, a photo of her 13 year old brother Swayne driving the auto, a good look at the Lathams’ automobile, some of Jessie’s other friends  and a nice view of their clothing. Most of the photos appear to have been taken outside Jessie’s home. I hope you enjoy this look at a day in the life of Jessie Latham.

So far Jessie’s summer has been filled with joy-rides in the “machine,” visits to East End Park, band concerts and picnics. Richard Armistead, Jessie’s first boyfriend, is mentioned more frequently in her diaries. He is a year older than Jessie and goes away to school, returning home on holidays and the summer. On June 18, 1911 Jessie makes this cryptic entry:  “…Richard came. Sure was glad he got here. We fixed things up a trifle better. There were lots of stars out. I wish I had some-body by the neck. I might forget some things but not others.”

I thought it was interesting that the vaudeville show that Jessie saw at East End Park on June 27th included opera singers (!) and also an apparent Annette Kellerman knockoff, Lottie Mayer, the Diving Venus. She gave a diving exhibition and seems to have worn a swimming costume very similar to Annette Kellerman’s costume with the black tights. Later in July the Oklahoma City Daily Pointer reported:  Tights of ‘Diving Venus’ Shocking to Chautauqua, “If the management of Piasa Chautauqua had known what and how little Lottie Mayer, the “Diving Venus,” was going to wear when she gave an exhibition there yesterday, the show would have been canceled and the Piasa Chautauqua would have been saved a shock.”

July 4th included a picnic at Riverside Park given by C.E. (I don’t know what C.E. is, but I believe it may be connected with her church. Jessie goes to C.E. every Sunday evening.) Many of the kids, including Jessie, went down to the park on a boat. In the bottom picture is Miss Anna (on the left) with Jessie (on the right) and some other girls on the boat. She is their Sunday School teacher and also works at the courthouse. All the girls seem to love her.

In January 1911, Jessie was 16 years old. She was really past the point of playing with toys too much, but every once in a while she mentioned the big doll. On Christmas Eve Jessie said, “Hung up my stocking and my big doll’s too.” On January 5, 1911, the family spent a quiet evening at home and Jessie “dressed my big doll up pretty.” Since she started writing in her diaries after she received the doll, I don’t know how she got it or from whom. When Jessie had her own daughter (my mother Frances) she gave the doll to her, and when I was a little girl they gave the doll to me. I never had a formal ‘giving’ of the doll to my daughter Jessie, nor did I realize until after my Jessie was grown that I should have taken a photograph of her as a child with the Big Doll. Nevertheless, I’ve done it now! There is now a portrait of Jessie (21st century version) with the Big Doll, and the doll will move into her care eventually.  As you can see from the photos, the doll’s hair has changed through the years.

Granny came back home on January 8th. As I mentioned in an earlier post, the house where Jessie and her family lived was Granny’s house. It had been her father’s, Col. E.H. Porter’s, country or farm home. (See the post, Late November 1909) Granny, whose name was Mary Porter Swayne, was Jessie’s maternal grandmother. She seemed to divide her time among all her children and their families, and had just returned home from spending Christmas in Gates. Within a few days Granny fell ill, and 2 weeks from the day she came home, she died, probably from a stroke. She was 77 years old. There really was no good treatment for strokes in the early 1900s. Granny was unconscious most of the time, but a nurse was hired to stay with her, which I am sure was a luxury that many people could not afford. On Monday, January 23, the day after Granny died, they had the funeral at the Old Brick Church (whose land the Porter family had donated many years earlier) and burial at Elmwood in the Swayne family plot. The grandsons were the pallbearers.

On a lighter note, Jessie’s father gave her a chafing dish for Christmas. That seems to have been one of Jessie’s favorite presents, and, in fact, there was a chafing dish craze going on at the time. College students, bachelors, society dames, teenagers, housewives — everybody seemed to use the chafing dish or know someone who did. Chafing dish recipe booklets were published. Perhaps the renaissance of the chafing dish was brought on by the increasing availability of convenience foods, but the chafing dish itself was an ancient method of heating or slow cooking foods and sauces. Welsh rarebit and fudge may have been the most popular dishes fixed in this early 1900s chafing dish craze. Jessie and her friends had many chafing dish parties in which they usually made fudge.