Summer 2003

Selections from the College Scrapbook of

Miss Lucile Adams

Miss Adams from Dundee, New York, attended the
State Normal School at Geneseo for the years 1912-13 and 1913-14.
She received a professional degree February 4, 1914

by

Helena Howard

For the time Lucile Adams was a student at Geneseo, she kept a scrapbook containing photographs of the school buildings and classrooms, tickets to games and entertainments, dance cards, programs of performances, and mementos of parties and excursions.

One entry read: “On Dec. 14, 1912, the Jrs. chartered a trolley car and went to theater in Rochester. Srs. at Foster House knew nothing about it until after we girls had gone. Hats had previously been taken to a house near. Srs. tried to capture Ed. Mooney who had the money but failed.” Lucile's class went to the Lyceum Theatre and saw John Drew in the comedy in four acts, “A Single Man.” She even preserved a face mask she had fashioned of cloth and painted for the Travel Club Masquerade Party in the gym Oct. 30, 1912. “I was dressed as an Indian and was not known by even Miss Reeve. One grand good time.”

When she won first prize for the best-decorated jumping rope in the May Day celebration, she pasted the newspaper column recording the event onto a page of her scrapbook along with the ribbon that bound the 2# box of chocolates she received, a paper that held one of the candies, and the flowers made of cloth and paper from her jumping rope. The book has pages with handmade party favors, a travel folder and dinner menu from a Travel Club excursion on the steamer Caspian of the Richelieu & Ontario Navigation Co. Lines from Charlotte to Kingston through the Bay of Quinte and on to the Thousand Islands.

She also saved printed Class Day and Commencement programs. For the June 21, 1913, Class Day, Miss Adams delivered an oration, “Picturesque America.” Her hand-written copy is in the scrapbook. She also represented an Indian in a tableau “The Tribute of Nations” in the Class Day exercise.

Lucile wrote in her scrapbook revealing impressions of her teachers—Christabel Abbott, Ph.B. B.L.I.: “Let's see—What class is this”? “If I only had time.”; M Louise Russell: “Reading is thought getting.” “A 1 in 1 and a 2 in 1 = a 3 in 1.”; Georgia M. Reeve: “Sit down! You don't know it.” “After Travel Club we will go in the gymnasium and have a rattling good time.”

© 2003, Helena Howard

This article was compiled by Lucile Adams' cousin, Helena Howard, with the assistance of Wayne Mahood, professor at SUNY-Geneseo, 1969 - 1994. Judy Bushnell, Head Research Librarian at the college, found records of Lucile A. Adams's completion of the professional course.

Little is known of Lucile Adams's life following her time at Geneseo except for an occasional postcard and a letter written in the 1950s to her twice-removed first cousin, Helena Howard, in which Lucile wrote that she had lived for 7 years on a 22-acre fruit and vegetable farm between Glenora and Rock Stream, north of Watkins Glen, with her brother Allen and his wife, Clara, and their two children, Arthur and Gertrude. Later she lived in Maryland; then in 1952 went to live with her niece Gertrude Adams Deline and her family in Michigan. On the trip there, they visited the “happy memory place” in New York and stayed overnight with Cora Jayne Andrews, mother of Helena Howard. Adam's family items, including Lucile's scrapbook and the photograph shown above, had been left for safe keeping with cousin Arthur Andrews, Helena's father.

Mrs. Howard has worked out many of Lucile's family relationships and made her scrapbook and family photographs available. Lucile's mother was a daughter of Levi Perry who lived in Watkins Glen and owned a canal boat. Lucile's father, Orrin Adams (1844), was one of 11 children. His parents were William Adams (1815) and Anna Mariah Bemis (1811). William was a son of Ashor Adams and Hannah Weeks. Orrin's sister Mary (1848) married John Meade and was through her daughter Ella (1866), wife of Hawey Andrews (1864), and through grandson Arthur Andrews, Mrs. Howard's great grandmother.

Helena's mother, Cora Jayne Andrews, corresponded with Lucile Adams and her brothers- and sisters-in-law and kept all of the postcard correspondence from the Adams family. Lucile had two brothers, Allen and Levi, and there may have been a brother Walter. There are pictures of Amy, was she a sister? Lucile signed her letter to Helena as Lucile Adams Stone. Her inclusion of a last name is all that is known here about her marriage.

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