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Lizzie Black was born in Milwaukee in 1858, the daughter of John and Mary Black, who were Jewish pioneer farmers from near Green Bay. She was educated in the Milwaukee public schools and in 1878 graduated from East Side High as valedictorian. In 1881 she married Simon Kander, a real estate and insurance salesman, who later served in the 1907 Wisconsin State Assembly.

Kander was one of the first women...

From 1920 to 1924, Lucille Murphy attended the Milwaukee Normal School, eventually graduating with degree in music. During her time as a student, she filled a small scrapbook with a variety of mementos, ranging from photographs of friends, dance cards, ticket stubs, and pressed flowers.

We specialize in books and other artifacts on the subjects of manners, etiquette, charm, poise, personality, women, the home, rudeness, civility and related topics.

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Professor finds cache of previously unpublished letters by author of Frankenstein, written between 1831 and 1849

...The letters date between 1831, nine years after the death of her poet husband Percy Bysshe Shelley, and 1849, when Mary Shelley was already unwell with the brain tumour that would kill her two years later, and show a woman who was skilled in charming favours from friends, bursting with pride in and concern for her teenage son – and not unconcerned with frivolities. A last-minute ticket to the coronation of William IV in 1831 necessitated a 3am visit from her hairdresser; she attended the event sporting a plumed headdress ("The whole thing was wondrously splendid – Diamonds & cloth of gold grew common to the eye.")

The later letters, written in an increasingly scrawled hand, are short and distracted, full of apologies for her failing memory and powers. To a number of them is still attached a blob of scarlet wax stamped with the author's own seal – one that was not previously known, according to Crook.

The women born between 1905 and 1909 were the same young girls who grew up during the years of the women’s suffrage movement in the US. They would have seen the struggle, heard the talk, and knew they could have greater freedom of choice in living their lives. They too would see, if not quite be, part of the flapper movement. Activism and parenting being almost completely at odds with one another, some may have opted not to have children — and at this time, birth control, thanks to Margaret Sanger, was becoming a realistic option.

And, just as these young women were perhaps thinking of starting a family…

Along comes The Great Depression — the one of that started about 1929, not the one some say we are approaching now — and the birthrate fell about one-tenth globally from the rate during the “prosperous” 1920′s. In America, the birth rate dropped below the replacement level for the first time in history.