Celia's Scrapbook and Rabbit Holes

This week I've spent many hours with Celia Sconce Cathcart Holton and her scrapbook from about 1913-1917. She captioned many of the pictures and included names of some of the people. Her writing is difficult to read and the ink has faded over 100+ years. Our digitizer/archiver advised me to write the captions in darker ink so they can be read when the pages are digitized. 

I'm trying to identify as many of the people and places as I can. Rabbit holes are around every corner. I go down some of them deliberately. Others I fall into accidentally. I don't always find what I was looking for, but I always find something that's interesting and somewhat related. I'm spending a lot of time in newspaper archives - publications from Illinois Woman's College in Jacksonville, Illinois where Celia was a freshman and sophomore, 1911-1913 and  Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois where she was a junior and senior. 

Questions and answers from this week-

A number of Celia's classmates from Illinois Woman's College also transferred to Northwestern. Many of them joined the Alpha Phi and were active in YWCA, Young Women's Christian Association, as was Celia.

Grandma, Florence Fisher Clark Holton (Toots) was also an Alpha Phi, in YWCA, and graduated the same year Celia did, 1915. 

There are many sorority pictures, such as the one above. I don't recognize Grandma in any of them. Did she not take part in the picnics, slumber parties, and so forth? She, her parents, and brother lived in Evanston, not far from the university where her father was a beloved professor. He died from appendicitis in 1911. 

In one of the publications I found an article about Celia's grandmother, Emma Sandusky Sconce, donating $5,000 towards a new music and arts building for Illinois Woman's College. That was a lot of money in 1907. 

In another search on Celia's name, I noticed an article from a Skagway, Alaska newspaper in 1909. I checked it out and found out Emma Sconce was the "Grandma" that accompanied Celia and her parents on a trip to Alaska in 1909. See blog posts about part of that trip back here (check out multiple posts in August and September 2015). 

I enjoy Celia's comments and pictures that reveal what college and small town life were like in the early 1900s.