April 1919. From Poe to Sorority Sisters at Sigma Kappa House

When a young teacher put pen to paper to write her sorority sisters at Sigma Kappa House, I don’t think she had any idea her letter would survive more than a century!

What unfolds in these pages isn’t just gossip and friendship, it’s a woman fighting to protect her name in an era when a whisper [even a false one] could end a career. Threaded between stories of illness and small-town life, she captures what it meant to navigate loyalty, scandal, and survival as an educated woman in postwar America, when the old rules were crumbling and the new ones hadn’t yet been written.

[A note: I was surprised to learn in 1919-1920, approximately 283,000 women attended college in the US!]

St. Anne, Ill.
Apr. 8, 1919.

Dear Girls:
I am sure I owe letters to several of you but I have been having a lot of excitement as usual. Just now I am at home with tonsilitis but am planning to go back in the morning. (This is the rottenest stationery I ever saw. It is a St. Anne product you may know.) The minister’s wife has been substituting for me and she can’t teach my four French classes so the best one in each class taught for me. They like to do it.

We have been having a lot more excitement and gossip lately and Mr. O and Miss B were both called to a board meeting and told a few things. Immediately I was blamed for telling things but they told them. Miss O never told us anything. We tried to get her to talk and she would not do it. The kids tell enough without me starting anything. They go home and tell their parents what goes on at school and the parents raise sand with the board.

We all went to Kankakee to a B.B. game and one of the girls got sick. I took her to my room, called the doctor and sat up to give her medicine while Miss B and Miss Vreeland were planning to go out with two of the senior boys, but the boys had a friend along, a sailor, so they came to my door and asked me to go with them. I told them that I had to stay with the sick girl but they insisted till two of the other boys came out of their room and said, No boys, they are sick in Vreeland we are going to bring them a lunch. A few days later Byron, one of the boys who brought me the lunch, told me that the sailor and both of the S.S. boys had been drinking and Miss B knew it. He also told me a lot of other things and since then two other boys and several of the girls have told me some very startling gossip. At first I would not allow any of them to tell me any gossip, but since the last trip to Kankakee I have learned that I am almost the only one who does not know or has not heard all this. Of course I never say anything to the kids but I do let them tell a few things. I never imagined that things could come to the place they are here. Miss O is so familiar with some of the pupils and tells them all her secrets. That was alright for a while but lately they let it leak out. She has made a good fellow of herself by telling them things about me and it worked for a while but later I got outside of her bunch of favorites and the rest sided as a howl. If I were like her, I could find out everything she has said about me but I will not gossip with children.

I had a letter from Ethel Schapmann and she said she has at last heard about the silverware. I am sending my five dollars in this letter. Please tell Ruby and Ethel that I received their letters and the pen. Thanks Ruby. This letter is meant for them too. You see it is hard to write more than one letter to you girls for I should have to write the same thing to all of you.

I don’t know what I am going to do this summer. I want to come to school if I can, but I am not sure yet. It will not be long till Commencement and if I come to I.U. this summer, I shall be there for Commencement. I have seven weeks after this and will be glad when it is over. I like the children and could never hope to find a better Board of Education to teach for or one that would stand by me any better, but my colleagues!

How about Yellowstone Park, Jane? And how is everything going with you all now? I see you have several new pledges, have you many of the old class girls who are going to be back next year? Do you know just how many of the girls who are there now will be back? Will Cleo be at Smithville again? How are the girls at the annex? Tell me all the news when you get time.

Love to all the girls,
Poe.