Wanted: A Hired Girl

I feel like such a blogger slacker.  It’s been my goal since I started this blog to post an average of twice a week, and I haven’t posted anything since Sept. 24.  I could blame it on a combination of things: flooding, a bedroom renovation project, adjusting to the rhythm of the new school year.  But I’ve decided to blame it on my lack of a hired girl.

My great-grandmother, Islea Graham Riggs, had a hired girl 100 years ago when the family lived in Grand Forks.  I know this because the girl – a 30-year-old woman, actually – is listed on the 1910 census form as a live-in servant.  I was astonished when I discovered this because it never occurred to me that they might have had money for such an expense.  As I thought about it, I remembered that it was not uncommon at that time for families to hire help, even those that weren’t wealthy.

I’d like to know more about this woman, and what she did for the family.  Did she cook and clean?  Did she look after little 2-year-old Rosalie while Ronald (my grandfather) and Percy were at school, so Islea could attend meetings of the Thursday Musical Club, practice piano and teach music lessons?

G. Oliver and me, standing in front of 411 Reeves Drive in Grand Forks.  The Queen Anne home served as a meeting place for the Thursday Musical Club, a group Islea joined in 1909.

The servant’s name was Lena Gorder.  She was born in North Dakota in about 1880, and her parents were from Norway. 

At the time of the census, the Riggs family lived at 708 S. 4th St.  My great-grandfather, G. Oliver Riggs, was directing the Grand Forks municipal band and organizing a juvenile band; the family had moved to Grand Forks in 1909 from Crookston, Minn.  I tried to find their house when my parents and I visited Grand Forks in June, but it appears that the site no longer exists; it was replaced by a levee that protects the neighborhood from river flooding.  It’s part of the Greenway, a 2,200-acre recreation and flood mitigation system built between Grand Forks and East Grand Forks after the devastating flood of 1997.

The Greenway also appears to have swallowed up Central Park, which opened in August 1909 and was located just northeast of the former Riggs residence.  G. Oliver’s band played at the opening of the city park in August 1909.  Several thousand people attended the concert, and G. Oliver played a solo with the band, “A Dream of Paradise.”

A postcard of Central Park, where G. Oliver's band played.

The Greenway did not expand as far west as 412 Minnesota Ave., which is listed as the Riggs family’s residence in the 1909 city directory.  This location was empty lawn when we drove by it in June.

We were able to locate the home of Mrs. W.A. Gordon, who served as president of the Thursday Musical Club.  She lived at 411 Reeves Drive in the tony neighborhood southeast of downtown.  A Historic Reeves Drive walking tour publication published by the Great Grand Forks Convention and Visitors Bureau says this about the Club:

“The Thursday Musical has always had a high standard.  Some of our society ladies, mothers of families all, were fine pianists and singers.  This club was organized Aug. 4, 1898, at the home of Mrs. W.A. Gordon.  Gordon’s home was the regular meeting place until the ‘Thursday Musical’ moved its new Steinway Grand to the Pioneer Club ballroom and had it for its permanent meeting place.”

I don’t know if Islea ever performed at Gordon’s home.  I do know, from a Grand Forks newspaper article, that she and G. Oliver both performed at the club’s Nov. 24, 1909 meeting, which was held in the parish hall at St. Mary’s, a neighborhood church.

The brochure explains what the Reeves Drive neighborhood was like in its heyday, from the mid- 1880s until the early 1900s, noting that almost all the residents had live-in servants, and many spent their summers at cottages on Maple Lake or Lake Bemidji, Minnesota.  I imagine these were the folks who attended G. Oliver's band concerts at the nearby Metropolitan Theatre, and who were providing money for community improvements and events.

G. Oliver's band rehearsed at the Metropolitan Theatre three times a week in 1909.

The walking tour brochure includes an excerpt from a book called The White Kid Glove Era, written by a resident, Mrs. Mathilda Engstad, that explains what sophisticated society was like around 1900.

She wrote, “We got along very well without mechanical refrigerators, electric washers, or vacuum cleaners.  We had a strong and willing maid in the kitchen, and a seamstress would come every six months or so to replenish our wardrobe.  We had time to and did entertain our friends at dinners and luncheons in our homes, when we could show off our finest table-linen, our silver and our china; when we had bouillon cups and cut-glass finger bowls, and tiny after-dinner coffee cups.  We had leisure to relax, to read and to attend study and music clubs.”

I could do without the bouillon cups, but the rest of it sounds attractive – way more glamorous than my modern life as a writer and mom who works from home.  Who couldn’t get along without an electric washer, if you had someone else to do the work?  Who couldn’t use someone “strong and willing” in the kitchen?  What I probably need most right now is someone strong and willing to help me organize my ever-growing files about my great-grandparents.  I wonder if Lena had a great-granddaughter?

I don’t know what happened to Lena after the 1910 census was taken.  By 1917, the sophisticated era in Grand Forks had faded, as the important families in the flour milling and saw milling industries moved to Minneapolis, or California.  The Riggs family also left the city, in May 1910, in search of new musical adventures.  I hope they sent Lena a postcard.