What happens when one sweeps up after an election and dissects the hall filings? Looking for uncounted ballots that accidentally might have fallen to the floor?
Grange seems to have played an important role in many community and personal lives in New Ipswich. I read somewhere, can’t remember where, years ago that the organization was founded after the Civil War to support rural families not only because farmers needed stronger social support and legislative representation but also because of a high rate of suicide among farm wives, particularly west of the Mississippi. We can only imagine the isolation and suffering that drove them to thisv.
My parents were Independent Apostolic Lutherans when we were growing up in the 50s and 60s and would not let us kids join the Grange because we had been told that the Bible was ceremonially opened at the beginning of each meeting but was not read from aloud. So that lack of reading made joining taboo for us. I could never understand that rationale.
Boy, those dress clothes women in New Ipswich wore even into the 1930s look stiff and confining. Photos of my grandmother on their New Ipswich farm from that era show loose cotton dresses that seem pretty comfortable.
What happens when one sweeps up after an election and dissects the hall filings? Looking for uncounted ballots that accidentally might have fallen to the floor?
Grange seems to have played an important role in many community and personal lives in New Ipswich. I read somewhere, can’t remember where, years ago that the organization was founded after the Civil War to support rural families not only because farmers needed stronger social support and legislative representation but also because of a high rate of suicide among farm wives, particularly west of the Mississippi. We can only imagine the isolation and suffering that drove them to thisv.
My parents were Independent Apostolic Lutherans when we were growing up in the 50s and 60s and would not let us kids join the Grange because we had been told that the Bible was ceremonially opened at the beginning of each meeting but was not read from aloud. So that lack of reading made joining taboo for us. I could never understand that rationale.
Boy, those dress clothes women in New Ipswich wore even into the 1930s look stiff and confining. Photos of my grandmother on their New Ipswich farm from that era show loose cotton dresses that seem pretty comfortable.