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Saturday Evening Girls

May 03, 2024

The Saturday Evening Girls club (1899-1969) was a Progressive Era reading group for young immigrant women in Boston's North End. The club hosted educational discussions and lectures as well as social events, published a newspaper called the S. E. G. News, and operated the acclaimed Paul Revere Pottery. Financed by philanthropist Helen Storrow and run by librarian Edith Guerrier and her partner, artist Edith Brown, the club originated at the North Bennet Street Industrial School (NBSIS), a community charity building that provided educational opportunities and vocational training. Meetings were later held at the Library Club House at 18 Hull Street. Storrow also provided a house in Gloucester, Massachusetts, where club members could vacation in the summer.

Saturday Evening Girls
Saturday Evening Girls working in the Paul Revere Pottery in Boston. House Beautiful, June 1912.
Formation1899; 125 years ago (1899)
FounderEdith Guerrier
Founded atNorth Bennet Street Industrial School
Dissolved1969; 55 years ago (1969)
TypeReading group
Location
  • Boston
Region
North End
LeaderEdith Guerrier
Main organ
S. E. G. News
Not to be confused with Saturday Club (Boston, Massachusetts).

Mission edit

The purpose of the club was to provide intellectual and social stimulation for the young working-class women of the North End, most of whom were from Italian Catholic or Eastern European Jewish immigrant families.[1] At the time, the North End was an overcrowded tenement neighborhood with the highest child mortality rate in the city.[2] Like many other clubs and charity organizations of the era, those at NBSIS were designed to Americanize young people by exposing them to middle-class White Anglo-Saxon Protestant culture.[3] Additionally, Guerrier was instructed to "draw these girls in, from the perils of the street"; that is, to keep them away from saloons, dance halls, and other amusements which were seen as unsavory and leading to prostitution. In reality, most Jewish and Italian immigrant girls in those days were closely watched over by their families and forbidden to leave the house at night without a chaperone.[4]

History edit

Founding edit

In 1899, a young art student named Edith Guerrier applied for a position in the day nursery at the North Bennet Street Industrial School. She approached the school's founder, Helen Storrow, with a letter of introduction from her uncle, William Garrison, Jr., who was an old friend of Guerrier's father. Soon afterwards, Guerrier was tasked with maintaining the school's reading room, officially known as "Station W" of the Boston Public Library. Her story-hour quickly gained immense popularity with young women at the school, forming the foundation of what in 1901 became the Saturday Evening Girls' Club (S.E.G.).[5]

Activities edit

The multiple reading groups that Guerrier led were organized and named after the day of the week the women met; the Saturday Evening Girls consisted mostly of young women with jobs or family obligations that kept them busy the rest of the week. Through activities and group discussions, the S.E.G. exposed the women to an array of experiences across religious, language, and ethnic divides. Weekly meetings covered subjects such as music, literature, art, economics, and job opportunities. Often, prominent members of the Boston community would attend the S.E.G. meetings and give lectures or lead group discussions on historical or contemporary issues. Speakers included a variety of professionals, academics, religious leaders, activists, artists, and writers.[6] The club also organized parties, plays, folk-dancing recitals, and concerts by local performers. Around 1906, Storrow bought a 14-bedroom house on Wingaersheek Beach in West Gloucester, Massachusetts, as a summer camp for club members. Storrow paid for a director and an assistant, and the members paid most of their own expenses.[7][8]

In addition to the funding from Helen Storrow, the club depended on volunteer work and donations. To raise funds, club members ran a restaurant and put on plays and other performances. In 1910 they staged a production of The Merchant of Venice at the home of Isabella Stewart Gardner.[9][10] S. E. G. Club members contributed financially to the clubs for the younger women and girls, as well as mentoring them. Each member was also expected to contribute an hour of service each week to the clubhouse.[11] In 1914, busy with other projects, Storrow withdrew her support for the library clubs, and the Saturday Evening Girls took over the responsibility. The clubs were moved to a space in the new North End branch of the library.[12]

Involvement in the S.E.G. provided the space to advance women's education in a manner that worked outside of traditional education methods, exposing the young women to opportunities for socializing without fear of provocation for being female, or for belonging to a specific religious group or ethnicity.[13] The women participating in S.E.G. stand out from turn-of-the-century women at large, as S.E.G.'s members pursued higher education at a significantly higher rate than the native-born women surrounding them.[14]

Notable speakers edit

The S. E. G. News edit

The club published a newspaper, the S. E. G. News, from 1912 to 1917. The editor in chief was Fanny Goldstein (May 15, 1895 - December 26, 1961), a Russian immigrant who had left school to go to work at 13. Goldstein continued her education part-time, taking evening classes at Simmons College (now Simmons University), Boston University, and Harvard University.[19] She went on to head the West End branch of the Boston Public Library,[20] where she worked with noted journalist and librarian George Washington Forbes.[21] Goldstein conceived the idea for Jewish Book Week in Boston in the 1920s; her idea was later adopted by Jewish communities across the country.[22]

The S. E. G. News printed club announcements, editorials (such as "Dire Dress" by Fanny Goldstein), informational articles (such as "Telegraphy as a Vocation for Women" by Sarah Wolk), personal reminiscences (such as "Fifteen Years Later" by Frank Rizzo), poetry by Charlotte Perkins Stetson and Evelyn Underhill, children's plays by Edith Guerrier, book reviews, lists of recommended magazine articles, and advertisements for local businesses such as Hood's Milk.[23] Contemporary issues such as Zionism and preparedness for war were also addressed. Newsletters such as the S. E. G. News made a small but significant contribution to the education of their readers.[24]

The Paul Revere Pottery edit

Main article: The Paul Revere Pottery

In 1908, Edith Guerrier and Edith Brown, with financial help from Helen Storrow, started a small pottery in the cellar of their home in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts.[7] Soon afterwards it was moved to the basement of the Library Club House at 18 Hull Street.[25] It was named the Paul Revere Pottery because of its proximity to the Old North Church, where friends of Paul Revere had famously hung two lanterns to signal to him that the British were coming.[26] In 1915 it moved to the Aberdeen section of Boston's Brighton neighborhood.[2] In 1916, it was incorporated as the Paul Revere Pottery Company.[27]

The pottery was more than an arts and crafts project designed to keep young women off the streets; it provided them with decent jobs. Working conditions at the pottery were better than the women could have expected elsewhere: they worked an eight-hour day and received a fair wage, daily hot lunches, and a yearly paid vacation. The pottery flourished for several decades, garnering national and international recognition through features in magazines, journals, and newsletters.[28] It closed its doors in 1942.[2][29] Paul Revere wares are now valuable collectors' items.[30][27]

Disbandment edit

Although the club's membership began to dwindle after World War I, the Saturday Evening Girls continued to meet on an irregular basis until the club was dissolved in 1969.[29]

Papers and photographs pertaining to the club were collected by Barbara Maysles Kramer and are available in the Joseph P. Healey Library, University of Massachusetts Boston.[31] 18 Hull Street, formerly the Library Club House, is a site on the Boston Women's Heritage Trail.[32]

See also edit

 
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Saturday Evening Girls.

References edit

  1. ^ Larson 2001, p. 195.
  2. ^ a b c Marchione n.d.
  3. ^ Larson 2001, p. 202.
  4. ^ Larson 2001, p. 208.
  5. ^ Larson 2001, pp. 207–208.
  6. ^ a b c d Larson 2001, p. 210.
  7. ^ a b Larson 2001, p. 216.
  8. ^ a b S. E. G. News, p. 11.
  9. ^ Larson 2001, p. 219.
  10. ^ Boston Globe 1910.
  11. ^ Larson 2001, p. 220.
  12. ^ Larson 2001, p. 223.
  13. ^ Larson 2001, pp. 205–208.
  14. ^ Larson 2001, p. 199.
  15. ^ S. E. G. News, p. 147.
  16. ^ S. E. G. News, p. 308.
  17. ^ S. E. G. News, p. 162.
  18. ^ S. E. G. News, p. 29.
  19. ^ Jewish Women's Archive.
  20. ^ Larson 2001, p. 221.
  21. ^ Bendor 1927, p. 184.
  22. ^ Norden 1962, p. 70.
  23. ^ S. E. G. News.
  24. ^ Klapper 2007, p. 114.
  25. ^ S. E. G. News, p. 10.
  26. ^ Wright 1917, p. 578.
  27. ^ a b Chalmers & Young 2006.
  28. ^ Guerrier 2009, pp. XIV–XV.
  29. ^ a b Larson 2001, p. 224.
  30. ^ Guerrier 2009, p. 160.
  31. ^ Holden 2015.
  32. ^ Boston Women's Heritage Trail.

Sources edit

  • Bendor, M. (June 1927). "A People's Tribute". Opportunity: A Journal of Negro Life: 184, 186.
  • Chalmers, Meg; Young, Judy (2006). . The Journal of Antiques and Collectibles. Archived from the original on October 16, 2007. Retrieved September 12, 2018.
  • Holden, Jessica (February 19, 2015). "Barbara Maysles Kramer: Saturday Evening Girls papers – Now open for research". Open Archive News.
  • Klapper, Melissa R. (2007). Jewish Girls Coming of Age in America, 1860-1920. NYU Press. p. 114. ISBN 9780814748084.
  • Larson, Kate Clifford (April 2001). "The Saturday Evening Girls: A Progressive Era Library Club and the Intellectual Life of Working Class and Immigrant Girls in Turn-of-the-Century Boston". The Library Quarterly. 71 (2). Chicago: University of Chicago Press: 195–230. doi:10.1086/603261. JSTOR 4309506. S2CID 141250519.
  • Marchione, William P., Dr. (n.d.). . Brighton Allston Historical Society. Archived from the original on January 1, 2018.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  • Norden, Margaret Kanof (September 1962). "Fanny Goldstein (1888-1961)". American Jewish Historical Quarterly. 52 (1): 68–73. JSTOR 23874352.
  • Wright, Livingston (September 1917). "Girls Club Establishes Pottery and Ultimately Makes It a Financial Success". The Art World. 2 (6): 578–579. doi:10.2307/25588119. JSTOR 25588119.
  • "North End". Boston Women's Heritage Trail.
  • "Fanny Goldstein". Jewish Women's Archive.
  • "S. E. G. News, 1914-1917". Internet Archive.
  • "North End District". The Boston Globe. March 9, 1910 – via Newspapers.com.

Further reading edit

  • Bausman, Margaret (October 2016). "A Case Study of the Progressive Era Librarian Edith Guerrier: The Public Library, Social Reform, 'New Women', and Urban Immigrant Girls". Library & Information History. 32 (4): 276. doi:10.1080/17583489.2016.1220782. S2CID 152113879.
  • Gadsden, Nonie (2006). Art & Reform: Sara Galner, the Saturday Evening Girls, and the Paul Revere Pottery. MFA Publications. ISBN 9780878467167.
  • Scheuerell, Ella Audrey (March 13, 2018). "A story in clay: Sara Galner and the Saturday Evening Girls". Smithsonian, American History.
  • "The Saturday Evening Girls Make Pottery History". New England Historical Society.
  • "S. E. G. News, 1952". Internet Archive.

Fiction edit

  • The Saturday Evening Girls Club by Jane Healey (Lake Union Publishing, 2017) tells the story of four best friends coming of age in the North End at the turn of the 20th century. The women are young, working-class, Italian and Jewish immigrants whose lives are changed by the Saturday Evening Girls Club. Helen Storrow, Edith Guerrier, Fanny Goldstein, and other actual people involved in the club make occasional appearances in the novel.
  • The Boston Girl by Anita Diamant (Scribner, 2014) is a novel set in Boston in the early 20th century; several characters belong to the Saturday Evening Girls club (referred to in the novel as the Saturday Club) and work in the pottery.

External links edit

  • Records of the Saturday Evening Girls, 1915-1991.Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University.

May 03, 2024
saturday, evening, girls, club, 1899, 1969, progressive, reading, group, young, immigrant, women, boston, north, club, hosted, educational, discussions, lectures, well, social, events, published, newspaper, called, news, operated, acclaimed, paul, revere, pott. The Saturday Evening Girls club 1899 1969 was a Progressive Era reading group for young immigrant women in Boston s North End The club hosted educational discussions and lectures as well as social events published a newspaper called the S E G News and operated the acclaimed Paul Revere Pottery Financed by philanthropist Helen Storrow and run by librarian Edith Guerrier and her partner artist Edith Brown the club originated at the North Bennet Street Industrial School NBSIS a community charity building that provided educational opportunities and vocational training Meetings were later held at the Library Club House at 18 Hull Street Storrow also provided a house in Gloucester Massachusetts where club members could vacation in the summer Saturday Evening GirlsSaturday Evening Girls working in the Paul Revere Pottery in Boston House Beautiful June 1912 Formation1899 125 years ago 1899 FounderEdith GuerrierFounded atNorth Bennet Street Industrial SchoolDissolved1969 55 years ago 1969 TypeReading groupLocationBostonRegionNorth EndLeaderEdith GuerrierMain organS E G News Not to be confused with Saturday Club Boston Massachusetts Contents 1 Mission 2 History 2 1 Founding 2 2 Activities 2 3 Notable speakers 2 4 The S E G News 2 5 The Paul Revere Pottery 2 6 Disbandment 3 See also 4 References 5 Sources 6 Further reading 6 1 Fiction 7 External linksMission editThe purpose of the club was to provide intellectual and social stimulation for the young working class women of the North End most of whom were from Italian Catholic or Eastern European Jewish immigrant families 1 At the time the North End was an overcrowded tenement neighborhood with the highest child mortality rate in the city 2 Like many other clubs and charity organizations of the era those at NBSIS were designed to Americanize young people by exposing them to middle class White Anglo Saxon Protestant culture 3 Additionally Guerrier was instructed to draw these girls in from the perils of the street that is to keep them away from saloons dance halls and other amusements which were seen as unsavory and leading to prostitution In reality most Jewish and Italian immigrant girls in those days were closely watched over by their families and forbidden to leave the house at night without a chaperone 4 History editFounding edit In 1899 a young art student named Edith Guerrier applied for a position in the day nursery at the North Bennet Street Industrial School She approached the school s founder Helen Storrow with a letter of introduction from her uncle William Garrison Jr who was an old friend of Guerrier s father Soon afterwards Guerrier was tasked with maintaining the school s reading room officially known as Station W of the Boston Public Library Her story hour quickly gained immense popularity with young women at the school forming the foundation of what in 1901 became the Saturday Evening Girls Club S E G 5 Activities edit The multiple reading groups that Guerrier led were organized and named after the day of the week the women met the Saturday Evening Girls consisted mostly of young women with jobs or family obligations that kept them busy the rest of the week Through activities and group discussions the S E G exposed the women to an array of experiences across religious language and ethnic divides Weekly meetings covered subjects such as music literature art economics and job opportunities Often prominent members of the Boston community would attend the S E G meetings and give lectures or lead group discussions on historical or contemporary issues Speakers included a variety of professionals academics religious leaders activists artists and writers 6 The club also organized parties plays folk dancing recitals and concerts by local performers Around 1906 Storrow bought a 14 bedroom house on Wingaersheek Beach in West Gloucester Massachusetts as a summer camp for club members Storrow paid for a director and an assistant and the members paid most of their own expenses 7 8 In addition to the funding from Helen Storrow the club depended on volunteer work and donations To raise funds club members ran a restaurant and put on plays and other performances In 1910 they staged a production of The Merchant of Venice at the home of Isabella Stewart Gardner 9 10 S E G Club members contributed financially to the clubs for the younger women and girls as well as mentoring them Each member was also expected to contribute an hour of service each week to the clubhouse 11 In 1914 busy with other projects Storrow withdrew her support for the library clubs and the Saturday Evening Girls took over the responsibility The clubs were moved to a space in the new North End branch of the library 12 Involvement in the S E G provided the space to advance women s education in a manner that worked outside of traditional education methods exposing the young women to opportunities for socializing without fear of provocation for being female or for belonging to a specific religious group or ethnicity 13 The women participating in S E G stand out from turn of the century women at large as S E G s members pursued higher education at a significantly higher rate than the native born women surrounding them 14 Notable speakers edit Cyrus E Dallin 15 Paul Revere Frothingham 8 Edward Everett Hale 6 Heloise Hersey 16 Charles Eliot Norton 6 Vida Dutton Scudder 6 James J Storrow 17 Edmund von Mach 18 The S E G News edit The club published a newspaper the S E G News from 1912 to 1917 The editor in chief was Fanny Goldstein May 15 1895 December 26 1961 a Russian immigrant who had left school to go to work at 13 Goldstein continued her education part time taking evening classes at Simmons College now Simmons University Boston University and Harvard University 19 She went on to head the West End branch of the Boston Public Library 20 where she worked with noted journalist and librarian George Washington Forbes 21 Goldstein conceived the idea for Jewish Book Week in Boston in the 1920s her idea was later adopted by Jewish communities across the country 22 The S E G News printed club announcements editorials such as Dire Dress by Fanny Goldstein informational articles such as Telegraphy as a Vocation for Women by Sarah Wolk personal reminiscences such as Fifteen Years Later by Frank Rizzo poetry by Charlotte Perkins Stetson and Evelyn Underhill children s plays by Edith Guerrier book reviews lists of recommended magazine articles and advertisements for local businesses such as Hood s Milk 23 Contemporary issues such as Zionism and preparedness for war were also addressed Newsletters such as the S E G News made a small but significant contribution to the education of their readers 24 The Paul Revere Pottery edit Main article The Paul Revere Pottery In 1908 Edith Guerrier and Edith Brown with financial help from Helen Storrow started a small pottery in the cellar of their home in Chestnut Hill Massachusetts 7 Soon afterwards it was moved to the basement of the Library Club House at 18 Hull Street 25 It was named the Paul Revere Pottery because of its proximity to the Old North Church where friends of Paul Revere had famously hung two lanterns to signal to him that the British were coming 26 In 1915 it moved to the Aberdeen section of Boston s Brighton neighborhood 2 In 1916 it was incorporated as the Paul Revere Pottery Company 27 The pottery was more than an arts and crafts project designed to keep young women off the streets it provided them with decent jobs Working conditions at the pottery were better than the women could have expected elsewhere they worked an eight hour day and received a fair wage daily hot lunches and a yearly paid vacation The pottery flourished for several decades garnering national and international recognition through features in magazines journals and newsletters 28 It closed its doors in 1942 2 29 Paul Revere wares are now valuable collectors items 30 27 Disbandment edit Although the club s membership began to dwindle after World War I the Saturday Evening Girls continued to meet on an irregular basis until the club was dissolved in 1969 29 Papers and photographs pertaining to the club were collected by Barbara Maysles Kramer and are available in the Joseph P Healey Library University of Massachusetts Boston 31 18 Hull Street formerly the Library Club House is a site on the Boston Women s Heritage Trail 32 See also edit nbsp Wikimedia Commons has media related to Saturday Evening Girls North Bennet Street School History of Italian Americans in Boston Settlement movement Arts and Crafts movementReferences edit Larson 2001 p 195 a b c Marchione n d Larson 2001 p 202 Larson 2001 p 208 Larson 2001 pp 207 208 a b c d Larson 2001 p 210 a b Larson 2001 p 216 a b S E G News p 11 Larson 2001 p 219 Boston Globe 1910 Larson 2001 p 220 Larson 2001 p 223 Larson 2001 pp 205 208 Larson 2001 p 199 S E G News p 147 S E G News p 308 S E G News p 162 S E G News p 29 Jewish Women s Archive Larson 2001 p 221 Bendor 1927 p 184 Norden 1962 p 70 S E G News Klapper 2007 p 114 S E G News p 10 Wright 1917 p 578 a b Chalmers amp Young 2006 Guerrier 2009 pp XIV XV a b Larson 2001 p 224 Guerrier 2009 p 160 Holden 2015 Boston Women s Heritage Trail Sources editBendor M June 1927 A People s Tribute Opportunity A Journal of Negro Life 184 186 Chalmers Meg Young Judy 2006 The Saturday Evening Girls SEG Club and the Paul Revere Pottery The Journal of Antiques and Collectibles Archived from the original on October 16 2007 Retrieved September 12 2018 Guerrier Edith 2009 Matson Molly ed An Independent Woman The Autobiography of Edith Guerrier University of Massachusetts Press ISBN 9781558497610 Holden Jessica February 19 2015 Barbara Maysles Kramer Saturday Evening Girls papers Now open for research Open Archive News Klapper Melissa R 2007 Jewish Girls Coming of Age in America 1860 1920 NYU Press p 114 ISBN 9780814748084 Larson Kate Clifford April 2001 The Saturday Evening Girls A Progressive Era Library Club and the Intellectual Life of Working Class and Immigrant Girls in Turn of the Century Boston The Library Quarterly 71 2 Chicago University of Chicago Press 195 230 doi 10 1086 603261 JSTOR 4309506 S2CID 141250519 Marchione William P Dr n d Boston s Paul Revere Pottery An Inspiring Experiment in Social Philanthropy Brighton Allston Historical Society Archived from the original on January 1 2018 a href Template Cite web html title Template Cite web cite web a CS1 maint multiple names authors list link Norden Margaret Kanof September 1962 Fanny Goldstein 1888 1961 American Jewish Historical Quarterly 52 1 68 73 JSTOR 23874352 Wright Livingston September 1917 Girls Club Establishes Pottery and Ultimately Makes It a Financial Success The Art World 2 6 578 579 doi 10 2307 25588119 JSTOR 25588119 North End Boston Women s Heritage Trail Fanny Goldstein Jewish Women s Archive S E G News 1914 1917 Internet Archive North End District The Boston Globe March 9 1910 via Newspapers com Further reading editBausman Margaret October 2016 A Case Study of the Progressive Era Librarian Edith Guerrier The Public Library Social Reform New Women and Urban Immigrant Girls Library amp Information History 32 4 276 doi 10 1080 17583489 2016 1220782 S2CID 152113879 Gadsden Nonie 2006 Art amp Reform Sara Galner the Saturday Evening Girls and the Paul Revere Pottery MFA Publications ISBN 9780878467167 Scheuerell Ella Audrey March 13 2018 A story in clay Sara Galner and the Saturday Evening Girls Smithsonian American History The Saturday Evening Girls Make Pottery History New England Historical Society S E G News 1952 Internet Archive Fiction edit The Saturday Evening Girls Club by Jane Healey Lake Union Publishing 2017 tells the story of four best friends coming of age in the North End at the turn of the 20th century The women are young working class Italian and Jewish immigrants whose lives are changed by the Saturday Evening Girls Club Helen Storrow Edith Guerrier Fanny Goldstein and other actual people involved in the club make occasional appearances in the novel The Boston Girl by Anita Diamant Scribner 2014 is a novel set in Boston in the early 20th century several characters belong to the Saturday Evening Girls club referred to in the novel as the Saturday Club and work in the pottery Under Copp s Hill by Katherine Ayres Open Road Media 2014 part of the American Girl History Mysteries series is set in Boston s North End in 1908 and features Edith Guerrier s library club External links editRecords of the Saturday Evening Girls 1915 1991 Schlesinger Library Radcliffe Institute Harvard University Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Saturday Evening Girls amp oldid 1181164380, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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