COMMONPLACE BOOKS

There is an Altered Art Party going on at the
French Cupboard.
I thought I would join in even though I am not very creative when attempting altered art, but I happen to have my step-great-grandmother's commonplace book from the 1890s to show off.

Are you familiar with Commonplace Books? They are the predecessor of what today we know as altered art. Essentially they are scrapbooks filled with every kind of written word: quotes, letters, poems, tables, obituaries, drawings, etc. Readers, students, etc. used them as an aid for remembering things they had learned. Below is my step-great-grandmother's commonplace book from the 1890s. Always using what she had on hand, she took a previously read book and pasted her notes and clippings on the pages. She then embroidered a new cover for her scrapbook.

Tucked inside the front cover are some clippings that she never found time to glue in, including a news article about some one's suicide.

Tables of Weights and Measures and Marriage Anniversaries

Obituaries and Poems

Cute drawings for inspiration, as she was an artist.

Programs

Going through this book has given me a glimpse of a woman I barely knew. My great-grandfather, after being widowed with two young boys, came to Colorado from Maine in the 1880s to start a new life. After his boys were raised, he sent for 'Auntie Evelyn' to come west to be his new wife in 1897. She was considered a spinster at the age of 29 when she was dispatched to Colorado! We have the train ticket that he sent her for her journey. They were married for 41 years until his death in 1938; she lived until 1950 in the West, far from her family and in a place that must have felt so foreign to her.

Just a look into another time and era.