a century of tallahassee girls

 so here i am waiting on renee... all i have to say... is get a phone girl, okay? speaking of renee i <3 her. she made my day yesterday. so there we were thrift store and vintage shop hoppin looking for a sweet nightstand/coffee table/end table, and renee found the best treasure ever for only 3 bucks! it's a book of compiled journal entries from girls in tallahassee from the settlement of tallahassee to the flapper era. here it is in a nut shell... 

first is an indian princess who tells the story (myth) of how wetlands came to be in florida, then betsey gets chased down by an indian but is saved by the new cute lawyer in town who then proposes to her (he wants to protect her forever as he put it), jennie lee is just walking down monroe street and all of the sudden fire has broken out and spreads across jefferson and adams. her love interest proposes to her the next day because the fire made him realize how fragile life is, and he just so happens to be betsey's son. next comes molly who gets proposed to after a christmas party and then her brother proposes to his woman after making her faint by showing her a rabbit he got on the hunt. bettie says "oh dearie me!" far too often, as she talked about the civil war that seemed so far off until it came to marianna and all the men had to go off to war, including sam her man. molly and harry had to get married the day before the men marched off to war. as sam was marching away bettie was so distraught she ran along side him and shoved a homemade confederate flag in his hand, he put it in his coat over his heart. when he comes home he tells her he wore it there the whole time and asks if he can keep it forever, aka he proposed. the next two girls nell and elizabeth are sisters going to school at florida state women's college (fsu), ww1 breaks out and they each do their part to help. elizabeth and other girls in her foods class can 30,000 cans of food for the army and help save a warehouse of tin cans for food by working from 4:00am to 6:00pm drying them out and carting them. when the war ends the girls march singing down college avenue 400 strong. when they get to monroe a girl jumps on a parked truck and leads them in more songs while the townspeople join in, then they march back up to school. lastly is elizabeth ann who read the diaries of her foremothers and although she is a flapper and part of the independent women movement she appreciates the "betties" of the past and does not think of them as just a pretty face with no thoughts. well i hope you've enjoyed your history lesson. i get so excited when i think or talk about history and i can't wait to use this primary source in my classroom one day! thanks renee. it also makes me think about my journal and how exciting and interesting it might be for my great granddaughter one day. we're living through history everyday (obama being president for example?) and sometimes we don't even realize it. i'll leave you with a quote from elizabeth ann that struck close to home (maybe because i just finished learning about nietzsche) "we like to think of bettie as being hedged around with ideas of other people, while we have learned to think for ourselves. now here comes another confession: i don't know which is the worst, to be a dear little polly parrot and clinging vine sort, or fool yourself into thinking you are an independent thinker, while all the time you are steeped up to your neck in bernard shaw and nietzsche philosophy and freud psychology. we may not have read any of them- we may not even know their names- but someone else has, and the propaganda has started. who is the independent thinker now- bettie or elizabeth ann?"