Tag Archives: Harriette Anderson Kaser

Jazz Age Vintage Jewelry and Beyond

All heirlooms have stories, if we know how to find them. I am listening to the stories of my mother’s vintage jewelry today.

Last week I shared pieces of jewelry that once belonged to my great-grandmother, Harriette Morgan Stout. This week I am showing you some of my mother’s jewelry. Harriette Anderson Kaser liked pretty things, and kept everything that had a special meaning to her, from a gift from a boyfriend to charm bracelets with her children and grandchildren’s names. Few of the pieces have any intrinsic value. Jewelry did not have to be studded with precious gems for her to enjoy it.

Take for instance, this nostalgic piece, given to her by her boyfriend when she spent one year living in Columbus and attending Ohio State University. They were both pre-med students, and he went on to become a doctor, but as I’ve explained before, she left college for teaching, and finished her degree gradually in stints at summer school. They drifted apart, but she never forgot him and that magical year.

Harriette Anderson and Ray Jarvis at Ohio State, 1923

Harriette Anderson (Kaser) pendant, gift from College boyfriend. 1923. Onyx in silver with diamond chip in center.

It would be many years before she started dating my father, and they married in 1938. While I am not sure my memory is correct, I believe she wore this bracelet for their wedding at a friend’s home. It always makes me think of the Great Gatsby, although it was a little bit later–30s instead of 20s. I have searched on the Internet, and have not been able to find any pice similar to this. The metal (perhaps copper) was painted brown, and the paint has rubbed off. I am not sure what material is used for the flowers, but they are attached to the bracelet with thin wires, and I can’t imagine that it could have been constructed by machine.

Harriette Anderson Kaser bracelet, circa 1938.

One time in the 1940s, my father brought back these tourist trade Indian bracelets for me and for my mother. These are vintage jewelry because most people from the mid west or east did not have a clue that there was a difference between machine made and artist created Indian jewelry. Although most jewelry evokes good memories, these bracelets, which were mine, remind me of the ones my mother had that forever changed her life.

My mother and father took my one-year-old brother and six-year-old me to Millersburg, Ohio from Killbuck (a trip of about 12 miles) to visit my father’s brother, Keith Kaser. On the road home we had a terrible automobile accident. I will talk about that accident later, but mother was wearing her Indian bracelet the force of the accident drove it into her wrist, cutting ligaments and leaving her unable to fully close her hand for the rest of her life. (Despite the injury, she played golf in later years!)

: Two Indian bracelets brought back by Paul Kaser after trip to West. Circa 1945

: Very tarnished Indian bracelet 1945. Gift from Paul Kaser after a trip west.

Unfortunately, I don’t remember who gave her this lovely pendant necklace with the carved front. Although the pictures date from the mid 1960s, the necklace could have been older. The story here certainly is her devotion to her three children.

: Harriette’s silver pendant necklace with pictures. Circa 1966

: Paul William and Vera Marie in pendant necklace 1966

: Picture of Paula Kaser in locket 1966

As a teacher, she always depended on a wrist watch and for many years wore a rather plain gold Waltham watch. However, when the quartz watches came along in the late 60s, my father bought her this decorative gold Helbros watch. Since hardly anyone wears a watch any more, these are immediately recognizable as vintage jewelry. There was a time when women owned several wrist watches to go with various outfits. At the very least they would have a plain one for every day use and a fancy one, perhaps with precious stones, for evening wear. My sister and I were remarking on the fact that neither of us owns a good wrist watch. When she needs to keep track of time for a class she teaches, she uses a ten dollar watch from a shopping center kiosk. I have depended on my cell phone to tell me the time for many years, and my last three watches, before I stopped wearing them, were inexpensive Timex watches from the local drug store.

Harriette Anderson Kaser, Helbros wristwatch with small diamonds. Silver stretch band. Christmas Gift from Paul Kaser. Circa 1970.

Just as interesting as the wristwatch in this case is the gift card that she kept with it. “The Duchess” was my father’s pet name for my mother from the time that they met. And even after they had been married for more than thirty years, he addressed this gift to “The Duchess.”

Not pictured are the diamond rings that she wore that she inherited from her grandmother, Hattie Stout. Of course, she had much more costume jewelry–many sets of matching necklaces and earrings for a more dressed-up school atmosphere than we see today. And once we moved to Arizona, and she and my father followed us, she accumulated some very nice authentic Indian jewelry.

Jeanne Bryan Insalaco of Everyone Has A Story suggested doing posts on heirlooms in a discussion in the Genealogy Bloggers Facebook group and wrote Now Where Did I Put That? Several bloggers have taken her up on the challenge to write about their heirlooms and we hope more will follow our lead.

Antique Jewelry: Out of Aprons–Into Bling

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NOTE: Because I enlarged the photos to show detail, you can’t tell the actual size. I have added some description in the captions that I hope will help put them in perspective.

It would be misleading to leave the impression that my ancestors spent all their time in aprons. (Mostly the women, but as we’ve seen, Leonard Guy Anderson and my father, Paul Kaser wore aprons and Joseph Kaser wore a carpenter’s apron.) But the women wore bling.

I have resolved this year to photograph the many heirlooms that I have inherited, and share them and their stories with you. Today I will start with some pieces of antique jewelry that belonged to Hattie Morgan Stout, my great-grandmother. Her husband, “Doc” Stout adored her, and I have no doubt that many of these were gifts from him. Doc Stout is the connection to the Cochran ancestors I am writing about this month–his mother was Emeline Cochran.

My mother, Harriette Anderson Kaser, the namesake of Hattie Morgan Stout, stored the antique jewelry in a collection of small boxes. She gave them to me for safekeeping when she went into a nursing home, and I added notes as she told me the history of the pieces.

Cameos were big during Hattie’s lifetime. (1842-1928) and I have several antique jewelry pieces with cameos. These little earrings have a cameo surrounded by very small diamonds. My mother thought that there should be a pin or necklace that matched, but perhaps she was thinking of the pin/pendant that is just below them. Although the earrings’ cameo is not too impressive, the carving of the cameo in this antique jewelry pin is exquisite. The pin once had stones or beads around the edge, but they are all gone. I believe it was small pearl-like beads because there are a few lying in the box where the cameo rests.

Pair of cameo earrings, edged with small diamonds. Size: 1/2″ across; smaller than a dime. Owned by Hattie Stout

Cameo pin-pendant belonging to Hattie Stout. Size: 1 ” wide by 1 1/2″ high.

Apparently, Hattie liked emeralds–or at least the color green. December is the month for green stones, but her birthday was in August, so that does not explain her love of green stones. The small heart-shaped pendant has a row of green stones and a row of diamonds. The earrings, which look older to me, although I’m no expert, are or very tarnished silver with a green stone in the center.

Hattie Stout’s Diamond and Emerald heart pendant. Size: 1/2″ wide 5/8″ high.(dime sized)

Hattie Stout earrings with green stone. Size of a dime.

The little matching pins below look very contemporary in design, with their gold work complementing the shape of the branch coral. The Stouts traveled to Florida. I wonder if that might have been where they purchased these lovely pins. By the way, I did look at those marks on the gold, and it is not writing, but just a design of parallel lines.

Branch coral pins belonging to Harriet Morgan Stout. About the height of a penny and metal part 1/2″ wide. Coral 5/8″ long.

The provenance of this pretty necklace with varied colored stones is interesting. My mother told me that it was originally her Grandfather Stout (“Doc” William Stout)’s watch chain, which his wife turned into a necklace and bracelet some time after he died in 1910. It occurs to me that this was quite a fancy watch chain for such a serious and moral-minded man as Doc Stout. But how typical that Hattie would find a way to reuse it. Waste not!

Mother thought the jewelry was created about 1924, when she would have been 18 years old. I remember her wearing the necklace. We don’t know what happened to the bracelet.

Hattie Stout had Doc Stout’s watch chain made into a necklace and bracelet. My Mother thought that was about 1924. Size: Total length of chain without clasp: 14 1/10″

And then there is the piéce de rèsistance. I absolutely love this charming pin-pendant. It is a fine filigree of silver with a turquoise stone in the center and a small pearl below. It belonged to Harriet Morgan Stout (Hattie), but my mother believed that it might have belonged to Hattie’s mother, Mary Morgan (my great-great grandmother). That would make it much older, as Mary lived from 1810 to 1890.

Soon we’ll take a look at how jewelry styles change as I share some pieces belonging to my mother in the twenties and thirties.

Silver, turquoise and pearl pin belonging to Hattie Stout that may have been her mother’s. Size: For perspective, the center “hole” is the size of a quarter.

I want to thank Cathy Meder-Dempsey for suggestion I join the bloggers talking about heirlooms. The idea originated with Jeanne Bryan Insalco. This list is copied from Cathy’s site. The last two bloggers are additions from Jeanne’s site.

Home Economics Education in the 1920s and 1930s

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Very likely the type of hotplate Miss Anderson used to teach home economics in 1925.

When I read that my mother, Harriette Anderson (Kaser) taught home economics her first year of teaching, and all she had in the way of equipment was a hot plate, I wondered what she taught.

Of course she was teaching a lot of stuff that had nothing to do with cooking. The newish science of home economics (in 1925) covered a good deal more than food. The objective was to turn young women into scientific home makers–able to use the latest and greatest discoveries in health and nutrition, new kinds of sewing machines, and how to be a home manager instead of just a house slave.

The fact Miss Anderson had only an electric hotplate to teach on in 1925 was not entirely unreasonable. In their homes, these girls may still have been cooking on wood stoves, and using an ice house dug into the side of a hill to store perishables. Although ice boxes with delivery of ice would be widely used in urban areas, home refrigerators had only been introduced in 1914. There were no small electrical appliances. The first stand electric mixers were introduced in 1919. Even the simple toaster did not come along until 1926, and electric stoves were not popular until around 1930. And that did not matter to these farm families, because before the federal Rural Electrification Administration (REA) in the 1930s, they had no electricity anyway.

Home Economics is Born

Harriet Beecher Stowe’s book Uncle Tom’s Cabin, was credited with fueling the north’s passion for the Civil War. But her sister Catharine Beecher wrote a book that may have had more lasting effects. In 1841, she published Treatise on Domestic Economy and in 1869, American Woman’s Home (co-authored by sister Harriet). According to the history of women in the kitchen, A Thousand Years Over a Hot Stove,

“…she put forth a vision for the home economics movement, a movement that would not come to fruition until the turn of the twentieth century…Her most fervent cause was education for women, and she started many schools for women where ‘domestic science’ was a formal branch of study. With education and professionalization, Catharine believed housework could be transformed from drudgery into a sacred job on equal footing with the professions of men.”

Catharine herself was never a traditional housewife because her fiancé was lost at sea and she never married. Coming from a family with servants, she may never have cooked. Her books were saturated with the Calvinistic religion of her father and the intellectual philosophy of the circle of New England literati and abolitionists and her extraordinary family members who gathered at the Beecher Hartford Connecticut home at Nook’s Farm.

Although she was a pioneer in this field, I can’t see the fundamentals of Miss Beecher’s teachings permeating the fun-loving 1920s that formed my mother. Catharine was a scold who was intent on improving women, particularly the lower classes so that they could fulfill the “great mission” of “self denial”. Food was not for enjoyment, but for character building. Furthermore, her religious background formed a philosophy where women were subservient to men and she did not believe in women voting. They should be educated–as teachers.

But the ‘get to work and stand up straight’ messages were salted with incredibly helpful hints for forward-looking home making. Move over Martha Stewart–Catharine explained that women could learn how to divide their home into rooms to best use the space, how to make their own picture frames and plant stands, organize their kitchens for maximum efficiency, and properly serve meals.

Home Economics in Ohio Schools

In 1914, a federal law required land grant colleges (including mother’s and my alma mater, Ohio State University) to extend teaching of home economics and agriculture through county extension agents. That program was in full swing when mother started teaching in rural Ohio in 1925. In 1917, the federal government had started partially funding domestic science teaching in local schools, which probably explains why by the time mother started teaching, most Ohio schools–even a two-room school like Clark, Ohio– had home economics classes.

Clark, Ohio High School, the 1925-26 students. The 19-year-old teacher is on the far right.

But what could she teach to a class with three girls of various ages? Food was certainly going to be a challenge with only a hotplate to operate with. And I can imagine what those farm mothers thought about their girls being taught by some outsider the skills that had been passed down form mother to daughter for generations.

Home Economics for the Twenties and Thirties

In the twenties and thirties, women were being taught that cooking with commercially preserved foods was superior to using fresh or home-preserved. The newest, most modern, most economical and efficient way to cook was to use commercially prepared foods. Food manufacturers jumped on this opportunity and mother’s closet was full of brochures and cookbooks on how to use brand name products. The Singer company helped get sewing machines into classrooms. Pattern-makers catered to home economics teachers.

Since Miracle Whip was not introduced until 1933, this brochure must have come along a little later, but checking historic labels, I think this would have been very early. [Note: I had to leave out a couple of panels. The recipe that goes with the center bottom picture of food is Burgers and coleslaw. Also, the color balance is off–the mayo was just as white then as it is now.]

: Kraft Foods provides salad recipes.

: “Gay group of recipes” suggested in Kraft foods brochure.

In a book called A History of Vocational and Career Education in Ohio 1828-2000, I learned that the first state coordinator of Home Economics was appointed in 1918. I do not know for sure what the teaching guidelines were for home economics teachers in 1925, but by 1930, Ohio had a detailed curriculum guide, Home Economics: Course Study for High Schools in Vocational Home Economics Education. If you want to see what was expected of women in 1930, check the digital version on this page.

Food teaching centered on nutrition–not fancy food. The vitamin value of vegetables was not even realized until World War I–not even a decade before mother started teaching. The recommended reading section of the study guide includes two books by the Boston Cooking School teacher and author, Fannie Farmer. Recipes are plain and seasonings are few.

The study guide is earnest and for the most part probably very helpful to a beginning teacher at a city school, but I doubt that the farm girls of Clark had any need for the etiquette of serving dinner–both with and without a maid; nor would Miss Anderson’s hotplate have accommodated the instructions to have each girl take responsibility for “planning, preparing and serving (with the aid of another member of the class) at least one luncheon of each type for a group of five or six people.” And “planning, preparation and serving a series of suppers (10-14) for the family. Two or three meals a week may be prepared if the project is covered while school is in session.”

The “types” of luncheons to be discussed, with focus for each day underlined were:

Vegetable plate luncheon, bread, beverage.
Cheese dish, vegetable salad, gelatin dessert, bread.
Meat or fish salad, parkerhouse rolls, fruit compote.
Croquettes, green vegetables, fruit salad, bread.
Meat, or meat extender, vegetable salad, bread, beverage, dessert.

Mother was learning her own ideas of what made the proper meal as she taught her classes. To the end of her life, she complained about any meal that did not include bread. She expected meat, vegetable, starch (potato or rice for instance), bread and coffee and dessert. If these farm families wanted bread, mother had to bake it. There were no bakeries, and commerical sliced bread was not yet available.

In the classroom, she could have boiled potatoes on the simple hotplate like she reported doing on a campfire on her summer road trips during this period. I can imagine her borrowing an iron skillet from Aunt Rhema, in whose house she was staying while she taught at Clark, and frying potatoes, or perhaps she made an omelet. Of course the girls could make a salad, but there was no refrigeration for leftovers, and anyway, fresh salads might have been a hard sell in those days of boiling vegetables to death. That vegetable plate luncheon would have been an oddity for these meat-loving farm families. And fish? Probably not. In one way, they would have been extremely modern. All produce would have been locally grown and organic.

Teaching home economics in a rural two-room school in 1925 would have been quite a challenge– even if teacher had more than a hotplate in the classroom.

Will you try any of the recipes in the Kraft booklet? For that matter, which side of the divide do you fall on–Miracle Whip dressing or Kraft mayonnaise?

Ancestors in Aprons

Food and Family