By Susan Martin, Senior Processing Archivist
This is the sixth part of a series. Read Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV, and Part V to catch up.
For the last few months, I’ve been telling you about Henrietta Schroeder, a 14-year-old American girl on a European tour with her family in 1889. Her diary in the Stout family papers is a very entertaining record of that trip.
Today I’d like to introduce you to some of her friends. One of Henrietta’s most endearing qualities, I think, is her love for her friends, so I wanted to know more about the girls that meant so much to her.
The Curiosity Raising Club
On October 19, 1889, Henrietta had a great idea: “Lina Wetherill, Edith Speyers & Lena Schroeder & myself are going to get up a club, called the ‘Cur[i]osity Raising Club,’ […] for the purpose of getting up the cur[i]osity of others.” Just who were these curious young women?
I’ve mentioned Lina Wetherill before – that is, Caroline Bowen Wetherill, Henrietta’s best friend. Henrietta often wrote about Lina in her diary like this: “Oh! how I long for her, pray for her, love her. Oh! how I wish I could see her over here and (if only for an hour) press her to my heart once more, and be able to hear her voice, and feel her warm kiss once more.”
Lina, the daughter of Civil War veteran Francis Dring Wetherill, was born in 1876 and grew up in Philadelphia. At the age of 30, on a trans-Atlantic ocean liner, Lina met a 42-year-old bachelor lawyer from Seattle named Josiah Collins. They married a few months later and went on to have two sons together. Lina died in Seattle at the age of 80. I sincerely hope she and Henrietta stayed friends for the rest of their lives.
Confusingly, there was another Lena in Henrietta’s life, this one with an “e.” Here she is in an adorable photograph pasted into Henrietta’s diary.
This Lena was Selina Richards Schroeder, Henrietta’s first cousin once removed, the daughter of New York cotton broker Gilliat Schroeder. She was born in 1875, just ten days before Henrietta. The Historical Society of Pennsylvania holds three diaries kept by Lena between 1888 and 1891. They look very similar to Henrietta’s; one of them even includes her picture!
In 1896, Gilliat Schroeder made some bad investments, and as the New York newspapers quaintly expressed it, “unfortunate speculation swept away the [family’s] fortune.” Lena, who was just 20 years old, went into business as a dressmaker to support her family, soon moving to larger premises in Manhattan and employing at least 25 other women. Her entrepreneurship was lauded in contemporary papers and in an 1898 book called What Women Can Earn.
The last member of the Curiosity Raising Club was Edith Lawrence Speyers, also of New York, Lena Schroeder’s first cousin through their mothers, Louisa and Selina Lawrence. Edith was also born in 1875, the oldest of the friends by a few months.
Edith would become best known as a leader in relief organizations during both world wars. She was chair of the National League for Women’s Service during World War I and, in 1920, founded the Dug Out, a Manhattan club for disabled veterans. For her various wartime efforts, she was decorated by the governments of France, Romania, and Serbia. But Edith didn’t rest on her laurels. She headed the National Women’s Council of the Navy League during World War II, when she was in her sixties. She was widowed twice and died in 1949.
I hope you’ll join me as I pick up Henrietta’s story in a future post!