Jefferson County Historical Society: Cora’s Diary

To give exploreJeffesonpa.com readers an illustration of the history of Brookville, the Jefferson County Historial Society is sharing an excerpt of the diary of young girl who lived in Brookville during the last years of the 19th century.

[Pictured above: Cora Canning was born in Brookville in 1877. As a young woman she attended a finishing school in Philadelphia.(JCHS Collection)]

The following article was submitted by Carole Briggs:

HER NAME WAS CORA

Usually, diaries are meant to be private, so when we come across one, we feel somewhat like an eavesdropper on a party-line. For the younger reader, once upon a time before cell phones and even before individual landlines, multiple users shared a phone line. One family might answer to one ring, another to three, and so forth. Sometimes the folks that should answer only to one ring would hear four and quietly lift the receiver to listen in.

So, reading someone’s diary is a bit like eavesdropping. We have diaries in the History Center’s collection written at various times in history and by people of different ages.

Cora Canning’s little diary is the diary of a young woman who lived in Brookville in the last years of the 19th century. Her father was a grocer. The family, including younger brother Jimmy, lived on the north side of Main Street, several houses east of the Presbyterian Church.

Like several of her Brookville peers, Cora went to a “finishing school.” Her diary begins after Christmas in 1898 shortly before she returned to Marshall Seminary. She’d turned 20 that summer. The seminary or school was located in a Philadelphia suburb, and much of her diary tells us what life in that school was like.

There were cocoa and cake parties in the evenings. The girls played pranks on one another, sometimes strewing clothing in unusual places. They switched beds.

They put on plays. In 1898, Cora was practicing a part for Shakespeare’s “Merchant of Venice.” She and her friends, and sometimes a teacher or two, often took the train into Philadelphia to see plays and musical events, too. After all, the role of a “finishing school” is to complete the education of a young woman―to introduce her to the “finer things of life.”

During the spring holiday, Cora took the train to New York City to visit her mother’s brother, Sam Scribner. His work was booking vaudeville shows in theaters throughout the northeast. They visited Grant’s tomb, Central Park, and strolled down Broadway.

Cora didn’t neglect her diary when she came home for vacations at Christmas and in the summer. It is there that we find mention of Paul Hughes, a dental student in Pittsburgh, who also lived in Brookville. Her very first entry on January 3, 1898, tells us she “went to the opera with Paul.” We know she is in Brookville because she notes leaving for Philadelphia on the 7th, but where this “opera” took place is a mystery! We do know that unbeknownst to her mother she borrowed “Mama’s black skirt.”

Cora Cynthia Canning and Paul Hughes married in July of 1903 and began their life together in a house on Jefferson Street.

The History Center’s 2007―2008 award-winning exhibit, Native American Lifeways in Western Pennsylvania, showed evidence of five cultures that lived in this region centuries ago with conclusions about how they lived.

Copyright@Jefferson County Historical Society, Inc.

To learn more about Jefferson County’s history, visit the Jefferson County Historical Center here.


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