From my grandmother’s diary when she was sixteen and working in the family bakery. All names mentioned are those of her siblings except for the obvious.

Nov 1st

We were quite busy today. We took in $63.93.

Nov 2nd

Mary and Joe started out for Haledon [NJ] on the wheel [bicycles] this morning. It took them five hours, three hours getting there and two hours coming back. The distance there and back is forty miles. They went at the rate of eight miles in one hour, which is equal to one mile in seven and a half minutes. I went to bed about half past eleven and didn’t fall asleep until after one A.M.!

Nov 3rd

Got up at 4:30. Joe and I are going to ride to Haledon on our wheels if it doesn’t rain.

No 4th

Gee whiz! Everybody is raving about politics! Fielder, a democrat is our next governor. That’s all I know about them. Mamie Cancannon was here to bring the hat that she made Tillie. The whole thing came to 25 cents and it’s grand! She is going to make Hattie and me each one, but ours will be a dollar each because she has to buy the material.

Nov 5th

Tillie got a handmade embroidered sofa cushion cover from England. Mama and I went to get stuff for the lunches and I wore Hattie’s coat and shoes. We hadn’t gone far when some sporty looking fellow came along, tipped his hat and said, “How do, Hattie?” who says we don’t look alike? Everybody takes us for twins.

Nov 7th

Gertrude Voigt, a girl Em got acquainted with up in the Verona Sanitarium, died today. Age 20 years, 8 months. I think Tillie and I will go to see her. Oh dear, one after another of them are dying. [Her sister Emily died, age 20, of tuberculosis as did Gertrude].

Nov 8th

Saw Gertie. Oh, if she didn’t look just like Em lying there. 

Gertie’s kidneys became infected and her lungs got worse and she got consumption of the throat. The poor thing should have suffered terrible. So much in fact that she wanted to take poison. How different from Em! Gertie wanted to be created, but they don’t believe in it, so they will bury her.

About three weeks before she died, she always said, “I’m going to die in two weeks.” She saw visions, like Em did, too. And she continually asked for Em and how Em was. They never told her Em had already died for it might have made her worse.

Gertie corresponded with a young man who was a patient up in Verona when she was there. He is now in Glen Gardner [another sanitarium]. Right before she died, she cried for him awfully.

We had been in the habit of paying her visits and would have come had they sent for him, but for some reason or other, they didn’t send for him. How different they were from us. Why if Em had asked for anything and it was in our means to get, we got it.

Gertie had an appetite near the end, but the last few days she couldn’t eat on account of her throat. And the real last day, she didn’t eat a crumb.

She makes the 5th of that family dead. The mother is dead ten years in January from cancer of the stomach.

Oh dear! All those nice young girls are dying one after the other. Lucy doesn’t feel well either. I’m afraid she’ll go the same as Gertie. The doctor said Lucy was on the verge of consumption of the throat and he said it is the most painful of any consumption and the longest anyone with it can possibly last is six months. Lucy wrote that Kate Lauer, another girl from the sanatorium, is failing rapidly. 

To be continued…