Mildred's diary

I have decided that this is Mildred.

I'm not 100% sure, but I'm about 95% sure.  Maybe 98%.  Who is Mildred? Well. Here is what I know about her:

• Mildred A. Wells was born on August 23, 1901 in Hardin County Ohio to Mollie Hamilton Spring (1882-1926) and Denton S. Wells (1874-1935). 
• She married Merritt Dukes (10/13/1891-1/5/1976) probably on March 1, 1920.
• She had a son, Roger Dukes, on September 26, 1920 - she had just turned 19.
• She had a daughter, Norma Belle Dukes, on October 4, 1922.
• She was divorced in 1924 or 1925. 
• She married Roy Smith on December 24, 1926. They had a baby on 12/6/28, who died. They had a son, Tom Smith, on September 13, 1933.
• Pop called her Nana.
• She died on October 18, 1982 in Findlay, Ohio. 

This is Nana's diary.

Granna kept it, and I am lucky enough to have ended up with it. She wasn't particularly organized with her writing, and didn't follow the "page a day" concept, but went on writing binges where she would fill up pages and pages and then stop for half the year. The diary begins on January 1, 1924 and the last few sporadic entries are from 1932 and 33. She seems to have been much more enthusiastic about writing in it during the first months of every year, usually tapering off in June.

So I'm going to blog about it from time to time because it has some really interesting (to me) things in it.  It has an inscription in the front that says:

To Mrs. Mildred Dukes

From

Laurence A Brown

Dec 25 [19]23

(1)

Now that the day is over, 

The sun gone down in the west, 

Our bodies so tired and weary

Are ready for peace and rest.

(2)

And if by the will of the father

We rise to another day,

We pray He may find us ready

His will both to do and obey.

(3)

But if 'ere tomorrows dawning,

Our journey here shall be past,

May we say "Good morning" in Glory,

Home Sweet Home at last.

That's sort of nice, isn't it?  Who is Laurence Brown, I wonder?  A pastor?  A relative or a family friend?  A potential suitor who knew her marriage was troubled?  A couple of pages in, she wrote her name, "Mrs. Merritt E. Dukes," which might indicate that she still at least wanted to be married to her husband... or maybe it was just a perfectly conventional way for a married woman, in whatever state of marriage, to refer to herself.  Before the diary starts, she writes:

And so has ended the year 1923 - a year of sunshine and sorrows almost equally divided. So can or should we complain? God has seen fit to reunite a divided family and has permitted us to live prosperously and in comparatively good health, and we have not been sufficiently grateful to him to be as kind and considerate of each other as we might have been. But with the coming of the new year, I for one will try ever so hard to make life a little easier, a little more pleasant every day. MD