Princess Peggy

While looking around Pinterest, I found this vintage ad for Princess Peggy, Inc., and a little lightbulb lit up over my head.  I was certain I could remember that there was a Princess Peggy factory in Chillicothe, Illinois, which was just three miles from Rome where I grew up.  I can even kind of remember where it was - or about where it was - and it seems to me it was some distance south of the public library on Second Street.  Later, when I was in high school in Chillicothe, I am sure it had been turned into a roller rink.  It also is strong in my mind that my late husband's Aunt Ethel worked at Princess Peggy.  That would have been when he was maybe in grade school.   On the ad above, I saw that "Peoria, Ill." was  listed as the location of Princess Peggy.

So, I googled it. 

I found this old postcard of the Chic Manufacturing Company and an article about Princess Peggy.  But more interesting to me was one of the comments which follows:

Sandie Says:
April 26th, 2009 at 8:03 pm
I have a 1990 issue of Quilt Magazine. There is an interesting article on Princess Peggy Dress Factory in this issue, which is how I discovered this blog, when I googled Princess Peggy Dress Factory.
Here are a few more items of interest about Princess Peggy Dress Factory in the article :
The idea for the factory began in 1906, when the industry was started as the Chic Apron Company……located on the third floor of a building on S. Adams Street in Peoria.
There were two more plants, located in Chillicothe & Belleville, IL.
Princess Peggy was personified by a succession of attractive young blonde girls whose picture appeared before millions of newspaper readers every month.
If anyone would like a copy of the complete article, email me at sandiesquilts@actlink.net

 

Looking at more of the entires as I googled, I found the following:

 

Princess Peggy

A few weeks ago while visiting my girlfriend Evi....

she gave me three adorable tiny dresses.

They are not doll dresses, but salesman's samples of actual dresses made by the Princess Peggy Clothing Company.

Posted 6 months, 12 days ago

Manikin
(179 items)

The Princess Peggy manikin was used to display salesman samples of the Princess Peggy Clothes line in 1940 to 5o's. The clothes had her face in label on salesman dress's minature size for manikin and on adult clothes. Her dress's seem to have that house dress look or everyday wear for ladies of the day . This Manikin belongs to Ivydi not me . The pin on the dress is for 5 years of service .

These little manikins were about 24" tall.  

Labels for the Princess Peggy frocks.

When I was a little girl and all through my adolescence, women did not wear jeans or slacks or shorts working around the house.  My mom never had a pair of slacks in her life.  Housedresses were the uniform of the day for homemakers!   They  wore  aprons when cooking or doing other housework that might soil their dresses.  The wearing of pants by woman for all occasions got rolling in the 70's while I was working at Hesston Corporation in Kansas.  Pants suits came into fashion and now lots of us never wear dresses anymore.    My, how times have changed! 

I am also going to let this post count for Postcard Friendship Friday!  There is a postcard on it way back at the beginning.  So a tip of the hat to Beth, at http://thebestheartsarecrunchy.blogspot.com/ 
for hosting.  

Postcard Friendship Friday

Here is a sweet little postcard from a fella to a gal - and I think he may be smitten.  Love the illustration - she is sweet, shy and very open to his attention.  Looking very spiffy in his straw hat, the fellow is looking at her with adoring eyes and so sweetly sincere as he talks to his sweetheart----

  Say what you would say

If I were to say

What I want to say

Today

The message on the card is not that romantic, but he most certainly is taken with Mattie or he would not have picked out the post card he did.   It would be so interesting to know if this budding romance almost 100 years ago between Mattie and  C. C. ever culminated in marriage.  What do you think?

 Thanks, Beth, for hosting PFF through your delightful blog - http://thebestheartsarecrunchy.blogspot.com/.

For Keeping Warm and Cooking

I started to thinking about our life when I was a little girl growing up in Rome, Illinois.  I have posted pictures of the very modest home we lived in - my parents, my brother, sister and I.  There was no bathroom - and, of course, no central heating.  This is a picture of a heating stove that is similar (as I remember) to the one that was in our living room.  I don't think it had the ornate doodad on top, but it did have a fender.   The fender was chrome and had cutouts in it.  That is clear in my mind since, when we were little, we would put kitchen chairs on either side of the stove and put our basin of water on the seat of the chair.  That is where we gave ourselves a "bath" so we didn't freeze to death!  One morning my little sister backed her little bare bottom against the fender and had imprints of the fancy cutout on her poor little butt.  It is such a vivid memory.

This is similar to the cookstove in the kitchen, and, of course, it helped heat the house.  The doors over the top were for the warming oven where you could keep food warm until dinnertime.  What a handy place, also, to hide things like dirty skillets that you hated to wash!  Jo and I were responsible for the dishes getting done and did hide things in the warming oven sometimes.  The right side of the stove had a reservoir of hot water that could be used for instant hot water when the stove was being used.  Oh, my, so many memories stirred up with this post. 

In the summer, of course,  it was way too hot to use the coal stove so we had a kerosene stove similar to this.  The four little cannister like things along the bottom had a reservoir of kerosene in each with a wick that could be turned up and lit (like a kerosene lamp).  I can't remember how the oven was heated - probably one of them was for the oven.  There were little windows made of something called micah (I think) in the cannisters.  I was always fascinated by that. It's been a long, long time since I have thought about all this.

 Here are a couple of accessories for the coal cookstove.  The top one is to attach to the stove and shake the ashes down into the ash receptacle.  The other with the coiled handle is to life the lids from the surface of the stove.  There would also be a poker.  I would say alll this is quite a stretch from the microwave!  I marvel at all the things that have come - and so many of them gone - in my lifetime.  What on earth will another  83 years bring? 

Postcard Friendship Friday

This little fellow evidently discovered that smoking a pipe just wasn't what he thought it would be and was feeling a little green around the gills.  This side is cute, but the back has me puzzled--

Miss May Babcock in New Mexico is getting a message from what looks to me like Beckie.   The message, as I read it, says "This is simply to inform you that I don't love you any more.  Why don't you write, you fickle.   Beckie".  Another mysterious little message on a postcard.

PFF is hosted by Beth at  thebestheartsarecrunchy.blogspot.com.    Thanks, Beth, and hope all is well with you! 

Love What They Can Do With Old Houses

This picture has been in the blog before, but I thought of it immediately when I looked at pictures on Pinterest this afternoon.  That is Sherry, our daughter, sitting on the steps of the little house we lived in when Bill, our son, was born back in 1953 in Chillicothe, Illinois.  It was a two bedroom, one bath, dining room, living room and kitchen with a coal burning furnace (that was lots of fun - we got a stoker after a year which was better but not much!).  Anyway, when I looked at the picture right below----------

 I immediately thought, that looks like our little house on Truitt Avenue!  And it does, seeing them together.
The porch could have been enclosed, newwindows, new paint, darling new storm, screen door and window boxes, all that would change it completely. Add a white picket fence and lots of flowers-----I'd be willing to move right back in!

Ephemera

I am so drawn to everything about the 1920's and 1930's - the artwork, fashions, etc., and I have found such wonderful examples of what came out of that time.  I was born at almost the end of the Roaring Twenties (1928) and many of the old pictures of my family and that of my late husband are from that time.  My childhood was in the 1930's - I finished 8th grade in 1942.  Yes, I am old!!  So, along with other things, I will do posts from Pinterest as part of Pieces of the Past.

Today, I post this piece of sheet music for "When the Moon Comes Over the Mountain" which was sung and was kind of a theme song for a woman named Kate Smith.  I can remember hearing her on the radio and I also think she might have sung in a movie or two.  Her other big hit was "God Bless America".

 Here is Kate and if you wish to here her sing the song for the first time, click on the arrow.  Enjoy a big Piece of the Past.

Postcard Friendship Friday

 

Here is a sweet little Easter card from a mother who is evidently away to her little daughter, Gladys.  I love the messages on the old cards and always wonder about the situations under which the cards are written.  Gives a person something to mull over and imagine what the circumstances could be.  For whatever reason the mom wasn't there, I hope she returned home safe, well and happy.  

Thanks to Beth, at http://thebestheartsarecrunchy.blogspot.com  for hosting PFF.   Wishing a lovely Easter to all, Carol.