Glenn and Lena Curtiss, along with their infant son Carlton, spent Thanksgiving Day in 1901 visiting friends in Rochester. It they had stayed at home in Hammondsport, they could have attended Union Services at 10:30 that day in the Methodist Episcopal Church on Lake Street, where Glenn’s grandfather had once been pastor. At the Presbyterian Church they could have attended a Thanksgiving Fair, with “Chinese curios, Angora cats, cut flowers, potted palms, …other things too numerous to mention, and a fine supper to finish off with.”
If Lena had chosen to make her own Thanksgiving feast, she could have gone to C. G. Kay for “Thanksgiving Eatables.” Cape Cod cranberries were 10 cents a quart. A package of sage leaf cost a nickel. She could have gotten three pounds of raisins for a quarter, or half a pound of chocolate candy.
The Curtisses could have enjoyed many other social events that long-ago November day, if they were in fact so inclined, although Carlton’s poor health doubtless slowed them down; this was the only Thanksgiving he would ever see.
They could have joined one of Mrs. Benedict’s dancing classes in the newly opened Opera House Block. (Do you think Glenn would have liked that?) They could have watched Bath-Haverling clobber the Hammondsport home team 16-0 in football. On November 7, from 3:00 to 6:00 and again from 7:30 to 10:00, they could have attended a chrysanthemum show and sale at the home of Mrs. W. Brown. Fifteen cents would have gotten them admission, coffee, and wafers.
Glenn didn’t become a Mason until 1914, but the Lodge was moving into its new rooms in the Opera House. Citizens’ Hose Company had ladies’ night on the 25th. The Epworth League literary society met at the home of Miss Florence Voorhees to discuss the life and work of Edward Eggleston. A “jolly party” went on at Germania Wine Cellars, but those were all people from Rochester. The Curtisses could also have slipped over to the Casino Opera House in Bath for a delightful love romance, “When We Were Twenty-One,” presented by “a strong and popular company.”
Lena would not have been eligible for a mysterious group formed one Friday evening in November of 1901 at the home of Miss Adda Shull. All members of the “M.M.M.” were “bachelor girls,” but they refused to reveal what the initials meant. Hammondsport Herald editor Lew Brown archly conjectured that they might stand for “Merry Marriageable Maidens,” “Merciless Man-Hating Maidens,” or any number of other possibilities. He also twitted them in verse. Members would say only that their goal was to discourage matrimony, improve their proficiency at Pedro (a form of the card game pitch, which seems to have been wildly popular around Hammondsport in 1901), and encourage the production of “palatable culinary products.”
While Lew Brown would have his fun with the M.M.M.’s over the next several months, he was conscientious in reporting women’s issues. In fact, if the paper’s columns reflected his views, he supported woman suffrage and the increase of women’s rights. On November 13 he published lengthy extracts from an essay by Ava Stoddard of M.I.T. analyzing why women’s pay was less than that of men. Miss Stoddard stated the reason was political – established workers feared competition from women, and women were not in a position to force improvements. “Give women the ballot,” she urged, “and… ‘Equal pay for equal work’ will be realized.” She would probably be horrified to see how little that is true more than a century later.
Of course, Hammondsport also had some more prosaic interests back then. Sheep worrying was still a problem. J. S. Hubbs added an iron fence to his home on Sheathar Street. Miss Grace Ellis was working at Smellie’s Pharmacy, as the telephone and telegraph operator. Trappers and hunters were busy taking muskrat. Concrete or limestone sidewalks were being installed, along with a crosswalk at Lake and Wheeler. Lown’s in Penn Yan held its winter millinery opening on the 14th and 15th.
Out in the big wide world, variolid (a mild form of smallpox) had broken out in Corning. The Soldiers’ Home in Bath had 1706 inmates. The New York Central Railroad settled a strike by agreeing to a 10-hour day (down from 12), plus overtime. The Boers beat the British badly in a South African battle. A coastal storm devastated sections of Long Island and New Jersey.
The Treasury Secretary ordered a buy-back of US bonds; our government had so much money, the surplus was starting to drain the economy. The Board of Naval Construction was doing all it could to solve the problem, proposing 40 new ships in addition to the two battle ships and two armored cruisers already on the ways. And the Navy’s first submarine boat, Fulton, submerged for over 15 hours in New York on the 25th.
Just in case you were wondering, the weekly Hammondsport Herald ran its first Christmas ads on November 27, the day before Thanksgiving.