?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 800 - $ 1,200
Demmer, Margaret (1865-1924) Two Journals Recording Details of her Daughter's and Granddaughter's Births and Childhoods.
Belmont, Allegany County, New York, circa 1886-1911.
Two folio-format ledger books from the period, one in half red morocco with marbled paper boards, the other in blind-stamped buckram; containing birth information about both children, beginning with Demmer's own daughter, Margaret Anderson (d. 1973), with her birth in 1886, recording the child's height and weight for her first fifteen years, vaccinations, school details, childish drawings, social events, gifts, lists of friends, a large hair lock, flowers from MA's wedding, swatches of clothes (perhaps made by MD), and wedding ephemera, including a few dried flowers.
The granddaughter, Lucy Emma Barnfield's (1906-1955) album is more detailed, dedicated by MD on first leaf, "To the child whose baby days go all too quickly," including newspaper clippings on baby care, LB's published birth announcement, lists of gifts and givers, and extensive notes taken almost daily and quite factual at first: "Born Oct. 22nd, 1906, Monday 7:15 am, 8 lbs. undressed. We all went to see the baby, a little worried about her feet at first, but Dr. B. said they would be all right," "Nov. 10, I changed L. first time," "Nov. 17, Mar. not so well, Dr. says not get up yet," "Nov. 24, Mar walked from couch to bed first time and came to table for first time," with MD's own personal social notes mixed in.
By February, as the baby starts to engage with her grandmother, the details become more interesting, "Lucy doesn't sleep quite as well toward a.m. Her face is quite broken out [eczema]. She laughs out loud, reaches out her hands & knows people, began 3rd big bottle malted milk," other important milestones are recorded in July, when LB can stand alone, walk by holding onto furniture, play peek-a-boo and pattycake; the grandmother also notes her own emotions, "I wish they would give her to me, it seems as though she must be mine!" "She does so many cunning things, I don't know how to write them. For instance, she doesn't care for graham crackers, the one thing she could eat. She will feed them to Roxy and she has found out she can tease him by keeping them back & I will say, give it to Roxy, & she will shake her head for no, & when we ask her if she has any teeth she shakes her head & she waves her arms and legs for everything, and waves her hand bye-bye."
In all nearly 200 pages are meticulously filled with very detailed notes covering LB's first five years, as well as several family photographs, LB's early childish scrawls, followed by drawings, and some of her first letters; in addition to being an exhaustive history of this child, MD's journal is also a document of attitudes and practices surrounding children and child-rearing in rural America at the beginning of the 20th century, sizes vary, content is extensive. (2)
