A 108 YEAR OLD TEXTBOOK!

I owe this post to Sean of "FAIR AND SQUARE HANDYMAN SERVICES".

Fair and Square Handyman Services

Sean's mother came across a very old school book which had belonged to her aunt. The aunt, Mary (May) Williams, happens to be my aunt too. 

Mary (May) Williams and her younger sister
standing behind their parents

Mary Williams attended St Patrick's Convent School more than one hundred years ago so she would have been taught by some of the Presentation Sisters who had come over from Ireland on the Newfoundland Mission!  

Mother M DeSales Walsh (1866-1968)

Among the Irish Sisters was Mother Mary DeSales Walsh who was born in Tralee, Co Kerry, in 1866. Mother DeSales was just 16 years old when she arrived in St John's to join the Presentation Sisters at Cathedral Square. Mother DeSales had a long and distinguished life. She taught at various schools, including St Patrick's, and served two terms as Mother General of the Presentation Sisters in Newfoundland. She was also one of May's favourite teachers!  Mother DeSales died at Presentation Motherhouse on 1 March 1968. She was 102 years old.

English textbook used by St Patrick's pupils
more than 100 years ago

Now back to that book! The book is an English text book that children of that time used in school. Sean has taken pictures of some of the pages where we can see where May marked the pages to be studied. Homework, perhaps? He has also taken pictures of the front cover and of the inside back cover. On the inside back cover, May has written her name and the date. At this time, so soon after our commemoration of the signing of the Armistice on 11 November 1918, the pictures set me thinking about the children who learned from copies of this textbook. They would have lived through the dreadful years of WWI. Many of them would have been in the thick of it, fighting in the mud and blood of the trenches. Sadly, so very many of them would never again return to their beloved Newfoundland. May lost her first beau just days before the Armistice was signed. He died in a military hospital in France at the tender age of 17.  

A peek inside an English textbook from the early 1900s

Could you handle this at 11 or 12 years of age?

Once again, thank you Sean, for the pictures and for others that you have kindly sent to me over the years. I must not forget to thank Sean's mother, my sister Doreen.  She too gets a vote of thanks for keeping the book safe and keeping alive the memory of a 12 year old St Patrick's Girl who studied at our school over one hundred years ago.

Inside back cover with May's signature and the date