Dear Donald,
in our subscriber base who might enjoy attending
a “Finishing School”. (Vanessa, Jacqueline, Olivia,
Stephanie come to mind).
Please note that the one and the same reference to
William and Mary in both articles below.
 |
Miss Jerrems Graduates from the Ogontz School for Young Ladies |
Ray Jerrems, Our Genealogist, Historian
genealogybank.com. In the course of searching the
name “Jerrems” (something I often do, for some
strange reason) I came across a reference in a 1901
Philadelphia newspaper to a Miss Jerrems who had
won a prize for charcoal drawing at a girl’s school with
the rather unlikely name of “The Ogontz School for
Young Ladies”.
This website specialises in newspaper articles, rather
like the website fultonhistory.com which I have
referred to previously, but it covers more States.
I have set out the newspaper article later in this article
because it is quite long and you may get lost in it
unless I tell you more about Miss Jerrems beforehand.
The history of this article is that I sent an early draft to
our esteemed Editor Donald, who initiated
more
research which I have now incorporated in this article.
As so often happens when I obtain more information,
the article has grown considerably. I hope you like it; it
provides (amongst other things) an interesting
contrast to the trials and tribulations of James
Jerrems and his family as described in the July
2008 issue of this Journal.
Who was Miss Jerrems?
Bearing in mind that the school was a private school
and the fees would have been very high, when I first
read the newspaper article I narrowed the field down
to the daughters of William and Mary Jerrems of
Chicago, being Helen, Mae or Annie. I concluded
that the most likely candidate was Annie, the
youngest, who would have been 19 at the time.
Editor Donald contacted Abington Library in
Abington, Pennsylvania, resulting in Carolyn
Hotchkiss from that library providing me with
extracts from the 1903 Class Book of the school which
confirmed that the “Miss Jerrems” in the newspaper
article was in fact Annie.
The school seems to have been what is often called
a “finishing school” so some of the girls attending
could have been in their late teens or older (Annie
graduated when she was 21).
Annie’s full name was Annie Letitia Jerrems,
and she was the youngest daughter of William
George Jerrems and Mary Nicholl Jerrems. She was
the grandmother of Mark Healy, one of our
readers.
Annie’s father (William George Jerrems) was
one of the Jerrems families that migrated to Australia
in the 1850s. He eventually settled down in Chicago,
where he became a wealthy mens’ clothing merchant
trading under the name of his father-in-law’s firm
“Nicoll the Tailor”.
What was the Ogontz School?
My first reaction was that with a name like “Ogontz” the
school must have been in Russia (or wherever Minsk
and Gdansk are located). But Mr Google assured me
that the school was in Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania and that it had reigned for a
hundred years from 1850 to 1950.
The website for the school modestly states that: “For
100 years, the elite and prestigious school known as
The Ogontz School for Young Ladies was a prominent
force in female private education.”
After giving you these tantalising pieces of information
I will now quote most of the article, from the
Philadelphia Inquirer newspaper of June 5,
1901, then I will explain some more things.
The newspaper article: School Days End At
Pretty Ogontz
Thirty One Young Women To Meet The Problem Of
The Big World
Yesterday the school days of 31 graduates of the
Ogontz School for Young Ladies came to a close. The
different rooms on the lower floor of the school
building were beautifully decorated with flowers and
plants. The drawing room, where the exercises were
held, was more elaborately decorated than the
others. At one end was a raised platform, which was
occupied by the graduates.
About 400 persons were assembled in the room
when at 10 o’clock the graduates, attired in spotless
white, entered, accompanied by the school faculty.
The program contained many interesting and high
class features and was necessarily a long one,
because of the number of graduates. At its
conclusion the award of diplomas and distribution of
honors was made by Miss S. Eastman, principal.
Honor Winners: The honor winners were:
Gymnastics-Gold medal to Miss Gladys
Green, with
honourable mention to Miss Cordes and Miss Mathieu.
Military-A silk banner was awarded Company
A for
proficiency in drill, with honourable mention to
Company C. In individual competitive drill Miss Mabel
Horton won the gold medal, with honourable mention
to Miss Blunt, in the older girls’ class, and a gold
medal was awarded to Miss Carolyn Sherwood in the
new girls’ class.
Athletics-Miss Cathryn Treat was awarded a
silver cup
for proficiency in fencing.
Art-Miss Walker was awarded a gold medal
for the
best all-round work, with Miss Fisher a close second.
Honourable mention was given to Miss Bigelow for
color work, to Miss Jerrems and Miss Treat for
charcoal work, and special mention was given Miss
Webber for best work in clay modelling.
After the awards had been made an address was
delivered by the Rev. J. Sparhawk Jones D.D.
The Graduates
[I have not included the list of graduates here. It did
not include Annie Jerrems, who I subsequently
discovered graduated in 2003]
The School Curriculum
The newspaper article showed that the school had a
rather unusual curriculum designed for energetic
young ladies (or perhaps it was designed to attract
parents who thought their daughters should be
energetic young ladies, regardless of what the young
ladies actually thought on the subject). The
curriculum included activities like military drill (the first
girls’ school to have this), gymnastics and fencing.
Photographs on the website show girls playing
baseball and basketball, horse riding and standing in
a line holding rifles.
What happened to those genteel activities one
associates with well-bred young ladies of that era like
cooking, flower arranging, embroidery and ballet?
Was the school akin to a reform school for delinquent
girls?
Intrigued that Miss Jerrems had gone to such a girls’
school I consulted Mr Google and found that there is a
website devoted to its history. I was in for a surprise.
The School and its Grounds
At the school Annie in fact had a very congenial
environment that most girls could only dream about.
The school was located in three different locations
over the years. At the time Annie attended the school it
was based in an imposing five story country mansion,
with extensive grounds, and had about 100 students.
The website tells us that the mansion, with its many
spacious rooms, could accommodate one hundred
students. “Dignified, but not gloomy,” it came
furnished in ornate Victorian style with heavy velvet
carpets on the wide corridors. The large library
became a classroom, and an amusement room on
the top floor with a stage and seating capacity of 150
was used for lectures and plays. The Conservatory, a
court with palms, rubber plants, and a sculptured
fountain, was a central gathering spot. The elegance
of the mansion proved impressive even to the affluent
clientele.
A lodge in the grounds would serve as a science
laboratory, and new buildings were erected to
accommodate an art studio, gymnasium, and music
rooms. There also were stables, an infirmary, and
greenhouses. Forty acres of the estate were well-kept
lawns and flower gardens. The students spent their
spare time walking, playing tennis, skating, playing
ninepins (bowling) and swinging dumbbells. In the
large amusement room the girls presented operettas,
dramas, and minstrel shows.
It must have been a hard life!
Origin of the School’s name.
In its first move away from its original campus, in
1883 the school had rented the Elkins Park estate
of Civil War financier Jay Cooke, named “Ogontz” for
Cooke’s boyhood mentor and role model-a
Sandusky Indian chief. With the move, the school
assumed the name of the estate and became The
Ogontz School for Young Ladies. So much for my
initial idea that the name had had European origins!
The website www.libraries.psu.edu/digital/ogontz ,
with its numerous links, has a lot of fascinating
information on the school and numerous photos of
Annie’s era. The website is well worth a visit.
Why did Annie attend the school?
It is of course a matter of conjecture over a century
later as to why Annie attended the school. However
three of Annie’s brothers went to major
universities
like Yale and Harvard (the fourth brother, William, did
not want to go) so it would be reasonable to
assume
that Annie went there for the simple reason that she
wanted to do so because her parents gave her that
opportunity. In those days not many girls went to
university.
Did Annie want to go to the school because she was
an energetic person? The answer is probably “Yes”. It
was no coincidence that Amelia Earhart (the famous
American aviatrix) attended the school. Probably Annie
liked adventure also. Jerrems Journal reader
Mark Healy (her grandson) has a photo of her,
taken about five years later, showing her perched on a
camel in front of an Egyptian pyramid. Editor’s
note: We need a copy of that photo.
What were Annie’s achievements at the school?
We find out from the documents provided by Carolyn
Hotchkiss that Annie was quite a busy young Miss.
The 1903 school Class Book refers to the following:
(a) Annie’s nickname was “Jerry” (not
particularly original, I would like a dollar for every
Jerrems person nicknamed Jerry), she came from
4917 Greenwood Ave Chicago, she attended the
school from 1900-1903 (three scholastic years), she
was a Corporal and then Second Sergeant in 1902,
First Sergeant in 1903, she was in the T.W.T. Team
(whatever that was) in 1903, was in the Tennis Club,
and was Captain of the O.B.B.N. Team (sounds like
the baseball or basketball team to me) in 1903.
(b) In the more sedentary area,
she was in
the Sketch Club and received Honorable Mentions in
Drawing in 1900 and 1901.
(c) In the thespian area she was Snug
in “A
Midsummer Night’s Dream” and at the
Commencement Day ceremony on June 2nd 1903
she recited “The Last Leaf” by Oliver Wendell Holmes.
(d) At the Class Supper Election
in 1903 she
was elected as being the “Most Athletic” girl in the
class (she missed out on being the Prettiest, Wittiest,
Best Figure and Most Intellectual).
(e) This was followed up with a
humorous
forecast in the Class Book about the girls’ futures,
Annie’s being “After having a Physical Development
Class for two years, Annie Jerrems will take
another
course in muscle-making exercises, and will do such
wonderful feats in the athletic line that Corbett,
Fitzsimmons, and even Sandow, will look with
apprehension to the time when she will enter the ring
with them, and, it is needless to say, gain the
champion’s belt”. (Corbett and Fitzsimmons were
world champion boxers and Sandow was a famous
strongman).
What did Annie’s parents think about the Ogontz
School?
I have no doubt when proud parents William and
Mary
Jerrems attended Annie’s graduation ceremony at
the
school in 1903 they would have cast their minds back
to their more humble childhood days. William, in
particular, at the age of 60, would have remembered
his early childhood days in Gainsborough, the
family’s perilous sea voyage to Melbourne
(JJ#16 August 2006 and JJ# 26 June 2007)when
he
was 16 and the family’s hard times adapting to life in
that frontier city. What a contrast to the environment at
the school! I am sure that William and Mary would
have felt very pleased that they had been able to send
Annie to such a school. But perhaps they might have
been slightly quizzical about the relevance of military
training, tennis, baseball, fencing and athletics to a
future debutante awaiting entry into the upper level of
Chicago’s society.
Conclusion
I trust you have enjoyed this excursion into the lives of
one of the Jerrems relatives. I have certainly enjoyed
researching and writing the article. Our thanks also to
Carolyn Hotchkiss for her research.
|
Letter from the Past |
Charles W. “Chick” Keller, Overland Park, KS
Treasured Finding in Chick’s Attic
We moved recently and last night I was cleaning out a
file cabinet and came accross a file I don’t think I had
ever seen before. I think we picked the file up when
my mother Sydney Ann Jerrems died.
Anyway there was a letter in the file that contained one
good paragraph of family info that may interest you.
The letter was written by William G Jerrems
(my
grandfather) on Sept 22, 1943 and was written to
Betty
Wright Rizzo, daughter of Marjorie Jerrems Wright
Teasdale.
The letter is addressed to “My Very Dear
Granddaughter”
Anyway here is the paragraph of interest.
“You once asked if the Jerrems family had a coat
of arms. It has. I had a copy of it, but it became lost in
my frequent moves.
The Jerrems family were French
Huegenots who fled to England with many thousands
of their compatriots and settled in Lincolnshire. My
own great grandfather was William Jerrems.
In 1811 he was important enough to issue his own
silver coins. His son Thomas was my grandfather
and my father was William Jerrems born in 1843, in
Gainesborough in the county of Lincoln. His mother
was Elizabeth Jephson, daughter of a county
squire and Magistrate. Many of the Jephsons were
buried in Lincoln Cathedral and had bronze tablets to
their memory (which) are still to be seen in the
cathedral.
Your grandfather Jerrems shipped as a cabin boy on
a sailing vessel from Hull, England in 1856 and
arrived in Australia nine months later. He married
Mary Nicoll on Christmas day 1869 (note
maybe 1867?). She was born in London. We came to
the U.S. in 1875, lived in Brooklyn and Phildelphia and
went to England in 1877. No more paper. Love
Grandpop.”
Note during WWII in the US there was a paper
shortage. Too bad or we might have learned more
family history
Editor’s Note: This is such a charming letter, we will let it stand
for now. Ray’s initial response: “The letter was a real “find” and clears up
some outstanding mysteries.” Stay tuned next month.
|
Administrivia |
Donald Jerrems, All-purpose Editor and More.
In Pursuit of Jerrems Lore
Did you note that William and Mary were
mentioned in both featured stories?
We welcome these wonderful stories. If you have one
to share, send it in.
Later this year we will run images in our neglected
Remember Us series. Be sure to submit you family
favovite.