Young people across the Midwest and South encourage a young woman's aspirations

Wyoming, Cincinnati, and College Hill, Ohio; Richmond, Indiana; Covington, Kentucky, 1895. Cloth binding stamped in gilt and black, measuring 4 x 6.5 inches and comprised of 76 handwritten pages and 7 original sketches in a variety of hands. Binding shaken and hinges broken with text being held by cords. Internally, a rich document tracing the social attitudes, friendships, and familial links of a young Ohio woman nearing the turn of the century.

Likely a gift from her mother, Jeanie Hendelson's commonplace book has an early entry from "Mama" tenderly calling her "Jennie" and reminding her that "we live by aspiration, hope, and love." It is a departure from many of the period's more demure mother-daughter wishes that tend to focus on ideas of humility, purity or virtue. But for the Hendelsons at least, these and "dignity of being" are central. For more than a decade, Jeanie used this book to capture memories with her friends and family, and to carry their sentiments with her when they were apart. Many of them speak to the kinds of hopes and aspirations Mrs. Hendelson identified. "If the world be worth winning," Cara Pendery writes in an undated entry, "think, oh think it worth enjoying!" In another undated entry, Jessie Guillow writes, "True worth is in being not learning, In doing...not in the dreaming of great things." And in 1878 her cousin Lillie Pool contributes, "The heights by great men reached and kept were not attained by sudden flight, but they, while their companions slept, Were toiling through the night." Men and women both contribute to the pages; but while many of the men leave Latin phrases or catchy aphorisms on friendship, so many women seem to recognize some kind of drive and ambition in Jeanie. They never advise it out of her. Instead, they urge patience, practice, and kindness in its pursuit.

Details about Jeanie's family origins or future are unclear but deserving of further research. The only sign of what came to her exists within one of the very latest entries. From September 1895: "from your loving daughter, Esther Chapman." In a childlike cursive, Esther wishes for her "dear mother" that "thy days be crowned with glory."

A research rich reminder of the diversity of attitudes toward gender, education, and aspiration that existed across regions of the US -- as well as to the ways the life after the Civil War altered some women's lives and perspectives.