I never knew my Aunt Selma.
She was my mother's sister.
Selma died at the age of 31, leaving
her husband and two little girls.
I have in my possession some diaries that Selma kept.
One of them was written in 1928, when she
was a parochial school teach at Ten Mile Lake Church near Dalton.
I'm sure Selma never thought that someone would be
reading her diaries 80 years after her death.
I am sure had she not died to young, they might not have even been kept!
Her diaries tell of the behavior of the children,
who was absent, who was naughty.
There are entries of those were went home sick,
or those who had headaches.
May 11, 1928 she wrote:
"Russell and Irville went for water at recess and
they evidently forgot there was such as thing as school,
as they came a half an hour late! And they came in
laughing, having fun - so unconcerned!"
She tells about the flowers Pearl brought her:
"a beautiful bouquet of cowslips."
At the end of the 6 weeks, she related that she got a dime from Selma B.
and 50 cents from Bernice & Lester, and lots of dandelions from Vernon.
She noted that Mr. & Mrs. Ed Larson paid her.
The next entries of the diary are from later that same year,
when she went to Edinburg, North Dakota to teach
parochial school. It was at Edinburg that she met
Clarence Christopherson, a parochial teacher in another
church there. She does mention the Christopherson
family often, but there are no entries of their dating!
They were married on January 30, 1930 and lived
in Edinburg, where Clarence was a farmer.
Selma died in 1934 when her little girls were only 1 and 3 years old.
