Ensley High School - Jacket Yearbook (Birmingham, AL)

Page 5 text:

Colonial Days It was very unfortunate for a child to be born in New England about the middle of the seventeenth century ; very, very unfortunate. But then one should be more careful in the choosing of a birth-place. The winters were cold; the housing facilities were very' poor. If a baby were more than four feet away from the fire-place it would freeze. One of the hardest things for a child to overcome in its fight for life was the baptismal service. After the tot had been carried miles through the snow at zero temperature, brought into an unheated church, and water from an ice-crusted bowl was poured onto its head, it was so benumbed with cold that it could utter no outcry. As a result of such inhuman treatment, death occurred in many cases. It was hard in those days for a child to bear his teething dose of ‘'boiled rabbit brains, honey, and butter. If he were sufficiently strong to endure this, the next obstacle was the rickets. The symptoms of this dreadful disease have never been fully known, but every one knows it is a deadly malady. However, those who died from the disease might be considered fortunate in that they escaped the treatment which was administered according to directions given below, the same being taken from a New England Almanac : Take one peck of garden shell snails, wash them in small beer, then bake them in an oven until they have ceased popping. Then wash away the green slime in small beer and bruise them in a stone jar. Then take a quart of earth worms; salt, slit, and wash away their filth and bruise them in a stone jar, also. Put into a pot two handfulls of angelica, celandine, betany wood of sorrel, two quarts of rosemary flowers, a bear's foot, agrimony, and red dock root. Put over this the worms and the snails. Pour over this four gallons of strong ale and let stand over night. Add in the morning three ounces of beaten cloves and nine pints of water. DRINK two teaspoonfuls of this to four of small beer in the morning and at night. Perhaps the child might be strong enough to overcome this; if so. he then was ready for religion. Our forefathers were very strict on the subject of religious worship. Children were often supposed to make long prayers, even as many as five or six a day. Jonathan Edwards said in his autobiography that he and some of his companions built a small grotto in the woods where they would often go to pray. There were many laws regarding one’s conduct on Sunday. In one place whittling was abolished on the Sabbath. I shall say no more on this subject for fear that I should offend the spirits of our ancestors.

Page 4 text:

Ensley Faculty PRINCIPAL Mr. Elmer E. Smith ENGLISH Maude Luttrell Hallie Porter N llie Samuel Gretchen Marsh Sylvia Aird Eunice Sloan Ruth Chiles Agnes Oliver Ruth Palmer MATHEMATICS T. M. Kegley R. J. Gregg Margaret Culp Jas. A. Davis Grace Jones Mary K. Hood Winnie B. Carter Dorothy Koepp SCIENCE E. E. Sechrieat W. C. Thompson Elizabeth Montgomery Faye Grayson Mary Whatley Kathryn Green Kathryn Boehmer Ru h Andrews HISTORY J. C. Powell Frankie Enzor J. R. Gardner Maude Forbes Mary Col.ver Lucile Hendrix Vida Mae Jones LANGUAGES Captola Neal Annie Ix u Brown Elizabeth C. Smith Rowena Galloway Florence Bates COMMERCIAL W. R. Pittman Q. R. Henry Daisy Stacey Sallie Campbell HOME ECONOMICS Mary Dunn Rachel Thornbury ART Helen Conover MUSIC Mary E. Troutman Elizabeth Wakeman Louella Hanlin Grace Redbum Ethelyn Hayes Helen Warner Mrs. Barton Mr. Davenport MANUAL ARTS Theo Wright Vinet Smith J. G. Woodall VOCATIONAL TRAINING I. C. Frederick J. J. O'Brien Oliver Graves SALESMANSHIP Elizabeth Smith PHYSICAL EDUCATION James H. Bryan Kathryn Smith MILITARY TRAINING Lt. Col. Nolen Capt. Hedden Sgt. Palmen REGISTRAR Mary Frances Turner ASSISTANT REGISTRAR Onia Givens MANAGER. LUNCH ROOM Mrs. Fanny Adams

Page 6 text:

4 THE GLEAM Folk married very young then; the age for girls was anywhere from twelve to twenty. After that they seldom were married by any one except a widower. The girls had no lipsticks, rouge, and powder then. The only powder available was gunpowder and that was used to shoot the Indians. In one colony there was a law which in the Puritant language was worded like this; “Knoweth ye all that aney younge mann whoe having passed the age of one score and three shalle have to kill, with his own gun, three blackbirds, and also he must kill six crows ere he may get married to any lass belonging to this here Plymouth settlement. Amen. So one sees what hazzards were presented to an unmarried man. Cotton Mather speaks in his diary of “an ancient maid of five and twenty.” How horrid! The household goods in those days were very crude and rough. There was in the average house five or six crude three-legged stools; a table; a bed; a dresser, which, if it were there at all, was an heirloom brought over from England. Rustic furniture was universally used, not of desire but of necessity. Forks had not been heard of as yet. “Father” ate peas on his knife without the interference of that, now, inevitable sword-swallowing gag. Yes, they, too, had the servant problem to contend with then, so one may see that the people were well on their way to be civilized folk. The highest wages ever heard of were offered for servants, but the only ones available were Indians, and these were incompetent and soon ran away. Imagine the thoughts of the modem housewife if she should hear her cook grunting and should see him making wild signs that the coffee-pot was boiling over! Yea. verily, the times were hard then. As already said, the wages offered were so high that the daughters in the richest families would often go to work for some one who was just fresh from England and knew not the ways of the folk who lived in the great forest. Travel then was not what one could reasonably desire, for the price or cost of a road was measured in men, not money. In the early hours of the morning, a small band of men would sneak out the back way and go to the forest to start a road. An hour later another band would go forth and bring them back, each with an arrow through his heart and with his scalplock missing. To visit Farmer Brown one must run down a dark passage through the woods, hide behind a tree while a bear strolled by, flee from a scalplocker and arrive at his neighbor's with only the loss of his coat-tail. In order to get, about, one had to learn the over-stroke, for over the numerous rivers there were no bridges.