Saving Memories

Myrtle Taake Soulier, Student One of the targeted audiences for commercially-produced scrapbooks in the first quarter of the twentieth century was high school and college students. Albums were specifically designed to guide young people in capturing memories of friends and classmates, and the extra-curricular social activities that made their school days special. Myrtle Taake was born in 1907 in Madison County, Nebraska, and graduated from Newman Grove High School. She married Frank Soulier of rural Madison County and together they farmed before retiring to Tilden. Myrtle died in 2003. Myrtle's scrapbook, a commercially-produced volume called School-Girl Days, A Memory Book, was designed specifically for female high school students and organized to guide its owner to preserve all of the information that would later be important to her in remembering her school experience.  Top Verna Cort, Student Verna M. Cort was born in Iowa in 1897. She graduated from Maryville (Missouri) High School in 1918 and received her teaching certificate from Doane College in Crete, Nebraska, in 1921. In 1922 she married Leonard Bosch of Maryville, Missouri. Verna Cort Bosch died in 1978. Verna's Doane College scrapbook is a commercially produced volume made specifically for college students. The cover is embossed in gold with Doane's seal and with Verna's name. Pages in the scrapbook are printed with verses about preserving memories and with printed directions for gathering the materials that would presumably help the owner select those items that would help recall those memories. Several pages provide space for friends to inscribe their name, home, birthday, and "a word or two or toast will do". Other pages are dedicated to recording memories of college activities such as Inter-Collegiate Athletic Record; Theatres, Lectures and Entertainments; Classroom Boneheads; Social Gatherings; and Pleasure Jaunts.     The majority of the pages are left blank for the book's owner to fill as they wished with a few of the back pages covered with adhesive dots to which newspaper clippings could be attached. The book even took into account the inevitable delay in assembling the pages and included a pocket labeled "Use this Envelope to Preserve Material Until You Find Time to Insert it in Fellowship Book Carefully" Most items that found their way onto these pages were mementos of happy times. But a few, like the postcard telling students that the dormitory quarantine during the 1918 flu epidemic was lifted, had to bring back more serious memories. Verna filled her scrapbook to overflowing, even to the point of pasting items on the inside covers and covering up some of the printed pages with photographs and mementos. It appears from her scrapbook that this was a young woman with a busy social life.

NSHS Home Exhibits Introduction Hide Paintings and        Ledger Books Diaries and Journals   J.A. Hill, Civil War   W. Richards, Surveyor   J.S. Morton, Statesman   Sara J. Price, Teacher        & Homesteader   W. Danley, Businessman   J. & E. Green, Farmers        & Homesteaders   S. Buck, Farm Wife Autograph Albums   S. & E. Allis, Missionaries   E. & L. Correll, Suffragists   W.J. Bryan, Orator   Lucy Drexel, Student   Viola Barnes, Student Scrapbooks   D. Canfield, Author   Willa Cather, Author   C. Calvert, Educator   Fenton. B. Fleming,        Businessman   Myrtle Soulier, Student   Verna Cort, Student   Martha McKelvie,        Movie Columnist   Emogine Moor,        Women's Army Corps   Scrapbooking Today Photograph Albums   W. B. Watson, Porter   Margaret and Edward        Gehrke, Adventurers   Nan Aspinwall,        Entertainer   Frances M. Creech,        Musician Quilts   Edith Withers Meyers,        Quilter   Sierra Nevada Bunnell,        Educator Home Movies Future Memories