“Rosa centifolia foliacea’’ (Cabbage Rose) by Pierre-Joseph Redouté (1759–1840) in public domain.
July 1932
Friday, July 1, Ella noted that the Democratic Convention was going on.
Monday, July 4, Clinton and Jim went to ballgames. Mr. Sidwell, their neighbor, visited for the evening. Tuesday Clinton went back to work, but was home on the weekends.
Thursday, July 7, Kate Love and Charlotte visited with Ella. Friday Garfield and Ella paid the balance on their barn lumber to John Love.
Mid-July Garfield made a cart to draw hay on. Clinton and Jim went to a ball game on the weekend, then to Highland Lake to see their Sergeant grandparents.
Garfield and Everett cut Kelley’s hay and worked on the Leavenworth driveway. Ella canned 18 quarts of greens and gave her aunt Lou three bushels of endive to can.
The first day of August Anna and Clara got the cabbage rose slip from the Leavenworth farm.
The original bush came from Holland. “Grandmother’s grandmother brought it over,” wrote Ella. (Elizabeth Lazerlier Van Pelt’s family had once lived in Holland.)
“Clara got the Cabbage Rose slip from the Leavenworth Farm.”
June 1932
June was very busy. At the start of the month, Garfield and Ella lost 16 turkeys because the fire went out in the brooder. A week later 105 chicks arrived in the afternoon mail.
Ella and Garfield finished planting the garden. They set out 55 tomato plants and 30 pepper plants. The frost mid-month didn’t seem to hurt the garden as Garfield and Ella got up early and put water on the beans and tomatoes.
Jim Leavenworth took regents exams and went to the school picnic.
Anna graduated from High School. Her aunt Charlotte stopped by on her graduation day. Her grandfather Frank Sergeant bought her a class ring.
Bill Meyers, Clinton, and Jim took in a couple baseball games. Clinton was home for the weekend a couple times. One week he worked for the County. Garfield worked six hours for the Scouts one day. He was laid off for a few days and built a new run for the dogs.
Garfield and Clara played for a dance at Beaver Brook.
Postcard Art Austin sent his aunt Aida.
Tuesday on the east side of Eldred, Aida Austin received a postcard from her nephew Arthur.
Arthur Austin, San Juan, to Miss Aida Austin, Eldred
May 10, 1932
Dear Aunt Aida, Arrived here this afternoon and will leave tomorrow at 2 p.m. It is the rainy season down here and it has been raining all day. Arthur
Arthur Austin, Yeoman
Art had received a 90.9% average on a Civil Service Clerical test to qualify as a Steward’s Yeoman (a petty officer performing clerical duties on board ship). The pay was $1,032 per year.
I took a few extra courses in high school, and worked on a few temporary jobs—the most interesting was as yeoman on an army transport which plied between New York and the Panama Canal.—Arthur Austin.
Art resigned when he returned from the 16-day round trip (4,800 miles, New York to the Panama Canal) on the U.S.S. Chateau Thierry. Art had gotten quite seasick, but there were things happening in the upper echelon that he didn’t think were right. Art was discharged from Brooklyn, with a “very good” rating.
Sometime in the early 1930s, Art and some of his Eldred and Barryville friends visited Coney Island and had their picture taken.
Friends at Coney Island. Bud Smith, Bill Warden at the wheel, Charles Geissler, Ian Warden, and Arthur Austin. Next to Art, Bub Toaspern, in front of Bub, Royden Toaspern. Photo courtesy of MBA.
Austin Smith drives the care he bought for his 21st birthday in 1931. The car is in front of Ira Austin’s house. Photo courtesy of CW.
May 1932
• Charles A. Lindbergh Jr., infant son of Charles and Anne Morrow Lindbergh, kidnapped and later found dead not far from his home.
• Amelia Earhart’s transatlantic flight in her single engine Lockheed Vega 5B from Newfoundland landed in Northern Ireland instead of Paris due to winds, icy conditions, and mechanical problems.
Continuing Ella Sergeant Leavenworth’s 1932 Diary.
April 1932
The first week of April, Bill Meyers bought a new Dodge car. Clinton worked on the Methodist Church Hall. Tom Hill and family, and Austin Smith visited one evening.
Mid-April Austin Smith and Frank Hill were in for music lessons [from Garfield]. Jim played all day with the Eldridge boys—perhaps William and Charles, the sons of Harriet Hill from her first marriage.
Garfield started on a contract barn building job. Clinton worked for the County at Hurleyville.
May 1932
Ed and Mabel Smith (Austin Smith’s parents) called on Monday, the second day of May.
Tuesday Ella did some spring cleaning. She washed quilts and more quilts and cleaned two bedrooms. Clara helped her clean the rest of the upstairs. Continue reading →
I am revisiting the year 1932 from the Diary of Ella Sergeant Leavenworth from “Farewell to Eldred;” and adding the months that I did not initially include.
October through December 1931
January 1932
Busy times at Ella and Garfield’s home on the first day of 1932. Garfield helped Ken Crandall. The girls went skating; the boys went after bait fish. Dorothy Meyers was there for dinner.
Garfield cleaned the ice house for the Scout Camp the second week of January. Clinton went hunting, but Anna, a senior, and Jim, 10, were still in school.
Mid-January was very unseasonable weather—“75 degrees in the shade.” They had yet to have some cold weather. Garfield remodeled the pantry.
Harold (Bud) Myers was hurt in an automobile accident and died the next day. Harold, the son of Charles Cripps Myers and his first wife Lena Schoonmaker, died three months before he turned 25. His half sister Eleanor was 12.
Charles Myers, Harold’s father, was a cousin to Jennie Austin and Garfield Leavenworth.
The funeral of Harold C. Myers was conducted Wednesday afternoon at the home of Mr. and Mrs. John Love of Eldred by the Rev. J.J. Wade. Pallbearers were Stanley Myers, Alvin Hill, Walter McBride, Hugh Myers, Lynn Myers, and Oliver Dunlap. Flower bearers were Archie Von Ohlen, Forrest Wilson, Orville Myers, Clifford Crandall, Alfred Hill, and Stanley Crandall. Buried in Eldred Cemetery.—Middletown Times Herald.
Snow squalls threatened on Friday, the 25th. Saturday was colder, but still beautiful, clear and warm. No snow had stuck to the ground yet.
Paul Knorr was busy at the Leavenworth home at the end of the month. He fixed the door bell and buzzer, put in sidelights, two plugs, and finished the wiring.
Kate Love, and Alvah and Mary Sergeant stopped by to see the Leavenworths.
The last day of the month, Clinton and Jim headed to Port Jervis to get a radio fixed. The international news was not good.—pp. 118 and 120.
1928 Certificate for Paul Knorr for electrical work on Garfield Leavenworth’s home. Courtesy of CLB.
1932 World and National News
• Japan occupied Manchuria.
• Nazi party largest single party in the German Reichstag (parliament).
• 12 million unemployed.
• Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World.
The Chasm Bridge, Passaic Falls, Paterson, NJ. Postcard in Austin Collection.Washington Bridge and Speedway, New York. Early 1900s postcard in the Austin Collection.
I have found a few older postcards in the Austin Collection (most likely saved by Great Aunt Aida Austin) which I thought Halfway Brook readers might appreciate.
Kate Strenglein and Mary Briggs (above X’s) help hold the Class of 1943 sign.
The Eldred school was under construction in 1942 and was not completed until the spring of 1943. I was Class President and Chuck Myers was Valedictorian of that graduating class.
The pictures in the 1943 yearbook have all class and team photos taken on the steps of the new building.
Because of the war, gas rationing started and our senior activities wet drastically curtailed. Fundraisers were out of the questions.
There was no class trip, no senior prom, and we were told there would be no yearbook. I personally pleaded with Mr. Ebers to at least let us have that. He finally relented with the proviso we must sell enough copies in advance to pay for publication. WE DID IT!
Time was our enemy! It was May. Many students felt they could not participate since exams were upon us. Mary Briggs, Chuck Myers, Harry Haas and myself hastily put together a small issue. As unbelievable as it would be in today’s society, I was given the keys to the new school building in order to use the typewriter at night.
Another major problem was where to find a printer at such a late date.
Mary Briggs’ father, Pastor of the Methodist Church in Barryville, came to our rescue. The company who did the church bulletin agreed to do it, but would only make copies of typed pages, hence the uneven margins.
The yearbook so hastily put together by today’s standards is a pitiful issue, but to us, has been an endearing treasure of memories. Actually, it’s now historical. It’s the first issue from the new school!
World events deprived the Class of 1943 of so much and yet we gained much as well. We were the last senior class to graduate form the new Eldred Central School!
At the graduation ceremony, it was intensely hot, so much so when Chuck Myers gave the Valedictory address, every time he turned his head, the tassel on his mortar struck to his face.
We were later informed the heat was on in the building to “cure the cement.”
We broke with tradition at the first ceremony. Just before marching into the auditorium, the boys exchanged tassels with the girls. The boys wore gold tassels and the girls wore blue.
—Kate Strenglein, President of the Class of 1943.
