Browse Collections

Bloomfield Blossoms: p. 102-103

Smith, Kay, 1925-

Bloomfield Township Public Library

Bloomfield Township (Mich.) -- History

Bloomfield Township (Mich.) -- Manners and customs -- History

GB01a053

part of 'Bloomfield Blossoms' by Kay Smith

text, image

jpeg

THE LONG, QUIET VICTORIAN PERIOD From the end of the Civil War until the coming of the automobile permanently changed its visage, Bloomfield slept quietly on the sidelines while panics, depressions and wars rumbled in distant places. The founding families had established large, orderly farms, and the Victorian ethic settled around Its citizens. Propriety and security were everything. The older people worked hard, went to church on Sundays (several times) and kept a sedate pace. The children grew up, quite happily, kept things lively with their audacious pranks, grew sedate in their own time and married one another . Mrs. Leland Forman has diaries of three young people, all written in 1881, with both a girl's and a young man's list of daily activities. Household chores, notably doing the washing, was the girl's major activity for the week, and planting and harvesting were the boy's. "I made a shirt this afternoon:' "T oday I made my apron:' "T oday we washed all morning and sewed on Jennie's rug all afternoon:' "Today we sowed clover:' "T oday we went to Pontiac to buy nails:' Only a wedding seemed to bring people out of their work routine. The prim shadow of a safe and secure way of life was unsoftened by a measure of the comforts and financial security so unknown to the pioneers. The Durant Oakland County History of 1877 and the Seeley history of 1912 are alike in showing portraits of austere men and women. If the embryo which was to become Bloomfield in 1976 was restless, it didn't make its stirrings known. Bloomfield slept on.