Letter 28 ~ September 30, 1918

My cousin "Lew" Griffing in 1918

These photographs were taken by Lew Griffing as U.S. troops were being loaded for transport to France and while enroute on the high seas.

My mother writes me to let me know she was disappointed that I didn't make it home for a visit. She also tells me about the family and says she received a letter with pictures from my older cousin Lew Griffing in France.

Addressed to Private Ward C. Griffing, 25th Company, 164th D. P. Brg., Camp Funston, Kansas
Manhattan, Kansas
September 30, 1918

My dear Ward:

My! It’s cold tonight. I hope you will be able to keep warm. These days make one begin to think that winter will soon be upon us.

I wonder if yesterday was as full of hopes and disappointments for you as it was for me. When your letter came Saturday morning, I thot that likely you could be home. Then about 3 [o’clock], Miss [Alice] Bobeck [Bobek] phoned me that you boys could not get a pass to leave camp on account of the disease but that visitors cold still go there. So then I planned that we would go up to see you. Bertha [Scholer] had called me up & said Minnie had not come home but if I learned that you would be home that they would go after her. So when we thot we would go up I called them but Mrs. Frey thot that she had school work to do and had better not come this time. Well, Sunday morning I hustled and got a good lunch put up. I was going to try to get the chicken & gravy & sweet potatoes up there warm by putting them in the hot bean pot, &c. [Your brother] Willis went up & got Kate. We left home 10:25 [A. M.], got to town for Miss Alice and she said that you were going to have a pass. So we thot if you got the pass, you could come down on the interurban and we not make the trip.

We came back – Kate stayed – I did up the work I had gone off and left, then we had our picnic dinner and after the work was done up, Kate & I visited & waited for you. Willis took a nap. Kate went over to Munger’s, then to Sunday School. After Sunday School, George, Kate, Stella, & Brownie all came over [here] to see you. I had called up Alice & she said she had not expected you until after 5 [o’clock]. So I still hoped you would come & so the day went. Mr. [James] Sparks called about 7:30 [P. M.] and told why you had not come. I hope your head was alright this morning.

Aunt Mate & Uncle Lloyd [Fry] were here yesterday about night and Mr. & Mrs. Frey & Bertha [Scholer] came around on their way home after taking the milk last night to learn how we found you, etc. You may be sure that you have lots of friends around here. By the way, people are always asking us how you are getting along.

Minnie called up from Riley yesterday morning to know your address for she supposed you had been moved. I expect you will enjoy the box of candy that you will get. I started with a jar of strawberry jam & some jelly to leave for you yesterday. Willis thot I should not have bothered Mr. Sparkes to have taken that bundle. I suppose you understood that the mess of little rags were for cleaning your gun. Mate was here when I did them up. I felt that maybe it was making too large a bundle to put them in [but] she said, “Oh! he will get his share of them.” The wristlets Mrs. Frey knitted. She did not know that they make them to come up on the hand. I shall try to knit you some of them after I finish the helmet. Aunt Mate knitted one pair of socks & I the other. A good long letter came from [your cousin] Lew [Griffing] today.

Willis has finished the wheat, plowed out the potatoes and tomorrow expects to begin cutting the cafir & cane. Willis went down to spend the evening with that Mr. Fisher last week, then on Friday night they took some girls to the [picture] show and he stayed all night with the boys at the [fraternity] house. This afternoon they called up & asked him down for tonight. It is the last night before they go into the service &c. so they are having a “Big day tonight.” I hope they are the right sort of men for he seems quite taken up with them. I am glad for him to have someone that way if they are only the right kind. He thinks they are. If he goes there so much, we will have to have them out here some time. Carol [Cunningham] was much pleased with her letter you wrote her. She brot her book home tonight and “studied” tonight.

Willis received a letter from Ethel Arnold the other day. If there is anything you want that I can send you to make things any better, do let me know. I hope you will keep well. Things never seem so hard if one can only keep well. The interest on the bonds came a while ago. We have not cashed them yet – 75 cents each. I asked at the bank the other day about Fitzgerald – he had put in $20. Didn’t that surprise you? So that will make him straight now. I expect she will be asking for the papering, etc. soon.

Good night my dear. God bless you & keep you is mother’s prayer continuously. Very lovingly, -- Mother

Footnotes:

• Hattie doesn't say how cold it was but according to historical records kept between 1891 and 2006, September 1918 was the second coldest September in Manhattan, Kansas, coming in at 63.3 degrees Farenheit (on average). The nights must have been pretty chilly in tents out on the prairie.
  

• Lewellen ["Lew"] Goodrich Griffing was the 29 year-old bachelor son of John Silas Griffing and a cousin of Ward's. Lew was inducted into the army during WWI and served in France. His draft registration card indicates that he was employed as a farmer on his father’s dairy farm near Tecumseh, Kansas prior to entering the service and that he was of medium height, stocky build, and had blue eyes and black hair.

• Ethel Arnold was the 21 year-old daughter of 57 year-old Lewis D. Arnold and his 43 year-old wife Emma. In 1918, Ethel Arnold (like Minnie) also worked as a school teacher in Riley County. Ethel’s siblings included 15 year-old sister Leah, and four brothers: 19 year-old Ross, 17 year-old Alfred, 12 year-old Harold, and 5 year-old Ralph. Sometime after 1930, Ethel Arnold and Willis Griffing were engaged to be married several years later, but Ethel died prior to the wedding. Family tradition has it that she collapsed in a dental office and never regained consciousness. A local paper says the cause of death was a "weak heart." Willis was devastated and never married.

Letter 19 ~ September 20, 1918

Minnie tells me she feels like “a bird in a cage” – thinks of nothing but school and her soldier boy.

Addressed to Mr. Ward C. Griffing, 25th Company, 164th Depot Brigade, Camp Funston, Kansas
[Sherman, Kansas]
Friday evening, 10:15 P.M., [September 20, 1918]

Ward Dear:

Well honey boy, I just about played off on you tonight. I cleaned the school house and furniture so well that I didn’t get home till supper time and I haven’t spent any time in my room. It’s getting late now to write. I’ve just been telling Mrs. Parkerson all about the Girls and Boys Club on College Hill. I told her all about the first time the boys entertained the girls [on] Thanksgiving, about the Christmas Kid party, and the watermelon feed. I told her everything from beginning to end. I’ll bet that bunch would all like to get together again, don’t you?

Didn’t it clear off nice? But it sure is cold. I would like to go to bed and just stay there till the winter is over. I dread it so. I’m worse than a feeble old man about cold weather.

I hope your folks are going up to Camp Funston Sunday. If they do and will take me along, I think the folks will come for me tomorrow evening – if it’s perfectly clear. My, I’m anxious to go. It seems so long since last Sunday. I certainly hope you will get off a week from Sunday. If you can get off Saturday and Sunday, and if you come to see me Saturday evening, wouldn’t we pull a big chair up to the fireplace (if it stay this cold) and just talk and talk and talk. But there are so many “ifs.” My, but I wish we could be together again that way….lots of times.

School is going along too smooth. Not enough happened today to make it exciting. I have to get to school pretty early now days to make a fire, but I haven’t minded it in the least so far. I can keep the fire over from one day to the next.

You asked how I would like to see you coming in some evening, Saturday or Sunday. Well, do you remember how happy I was one time when I was away from home and saw you walking over the hill? Well that was [nothing] compared to what it would be now. Why boy, anything like that is too good to be true. I’d give anything to see that smile right now [that] I saw that day. I have your picture right before me and it sure looks just like you – the way I like to think of you, but it isn’t the real person.

I have only been out about an hour away from Parkerson’s in the last three weeks. I’ve been staying here (excepting on Sundays) so I don’t have anything to write about excepting the two things that are on my mind – my school and you (mostly you). There isn’t anything to write about my school part of the time so I half to write about you. That certainly suits me fine, but I don’t know whether you like it or not.

I sure feel like a bird in a cage sometimes. This is different from what I’ve been used to the last seven years. But I like it because I know I don’t do anything wrong. It’s such a good life. I know I’ve got to be just the best I possibly can be in the school room, and here at Parkerson’s. I never get a chance to do anything out of the way, except maybe write something to you that afterwards prick my conscious. But I will always live as near right as I possibly can because I just live for you boy, And when you come back, I want to be just like I was when you left – only a whole lot better.

I expect you will soon be out of that Camp. I’ll be glad, if you have it any better and don’t have to leave soon. I guess you have your bunk and all fixed up by now so it’s pretty decent compared to what it was.

Mrs. Parkerson is going to teach me to knit. I’ll have lots of time when I get that beastly old book outlined.

Well, it’s after eleven o’clock and I must get to bed. Sweet Dreams – and best of luck to you Boy. Your sweetheart, -- Minnie G. Frey

[P.S.] If this letter sounds choppy and funny, don’t be surprised [as] I’m half asleep.

My Home on College Hill

This is the house on College Hill where I grew up and where my mother Hattie, twin brother Willis, and niece Carol Cunningham lived while I was in the service during WWI. My grandfather, Rev. James S. Griffing, had the house built in 1870 when he moved his family here from his farm near Tecumseh, KS. The area was known as College Hill because the original Bluemont College building, the precursor to Kansas State University (KSU), was only about a mile south of this farmhouse. The house still stands and is across the road from the KSU baseball fields northwest of Manhattan, KS.

Keep the Home Fires Burning
...one of my favorite songs

Keep the Home Fires Burning,
While your hearts are yearning,
Though your lads are far away
They dream of home.
There's a silver lining
Through the dark clouds shining,
Turn the dark cloud inside out
'Til the boys come home.

Music by Ivor Novello & words by Lena Ford

Letter 15 ~ September 19, 1918

My mother (Hattie, picture right) fills me in on the news from College Hill and inserts a note from Carol Cunningham, my niece.

Addressed to Private Ward C. Griffing, 25th Company, 164th D.P. Brg., Camp Funston, Kansas
[Manhattan Kansas]
Thursday Evening, [September 19, 1918]

My Dear Ward:

It is just two weeks ago that you left us. I wonder how long it seems to you. It is very much longer to me. I trust that you have not taken any more cold this weather but it has been so cold that I fear you have.

[Your brother] Willis has gone to town to see that Mr. Fisher and they are to have a date with some girls I believe. He has been harrowing all day, walking – said he had not been so tired any day all summer. I thot it too bad he had planned to go away tonight.

Mrs. Hudson is sick so the day after we left Mrs. Hutchings, Mrs. Munger, Kittie, Abbie, and I all went over to see her and took some flowers that the club sent her – it pleased her very much. She gave me the socks she has knit for you with lots of good wishes for you. I believe they would feel good on your feet tonight. I am knitting as fast as I can. Will have them done before long.

Mrs. Vangilder was just talking with me. [She] said to remember her to you [and] that they all think of you. She is afraid her boy will have to go now – her only boy.

I called up the Frey’s today. Bertha said they had not gotten the car fixed. Had a letter from Minnie today. She told them that if there was any chance of going up to [Camp] Funston Sunday, for some of them to go for her Saturday evening. I suppose she has told you all about their troubles and there is no use for me to have done it. She got up there in time Monday morning to ring the 8:30 bell.

Carol did not enjoy the day with Edna’s boys. [She] said they were not nice [and] that they slapped her, etc. She says that she will go with me next time [and] that she don’t want to go to Aunt Emma’s again unless I am there.

There simply is no news to write. May our Father keep you and bless you my dear boy. Very lovingly, -- Mother

[P. S.] I do not believe that this letter is worth the postage. I think that Carol [Cunningham] is doing fine at school. She hardly talks of anything else at home. She is learning fast.

[Separate insert:]

I like school all right. We play house. I have new raincoat and cap. Like it. It is black and whit. – Carol

Carol Cunningham, my niece, at age three.

Footnotes:

• Carl Fisher lived on Yuma Street in Manhattan, Kansas. He was the 20 year-old son of Charles Fisher, a conductor on the interurban in Manhattan.

• Either Mary E. Hudson, the 67 year-old wife of retired farmer Samuel E. Hudson, or Verda E. Hudson, the 33 year-old wife of Harlow K. Hudson (son of the Samuel & Mary). Both families lived in adjacent farmhouses on our College Hill farm.

• Mrs. Marie Hutchings was the 48 year-old wife of Oliver A. Hutchings who owned a bookstore in Manhattan. Mrs. Hutchings was a native of Denmark.

• Mrs. Elizabeth Vangilder was a 57 year-old widow who lived next door to my Aunt Mary Griffing and her husband Lloyd Fry. She had one son, an 18 year-old named James Lowell Vangilder.

• Carol Cunningham was the five year-old daughter of my older sister, May Griffing, and her husband Claude Cunningham. May died from complications in giving birth to Carol and she was raised by her grandmother, Hattie Griffing, until Claude remarried.