exhibit #2: Mrs. Patterson

[walkitout]

Mrs. Fred Patterson of Pottsville, PA is described as having taken a ledger from Howard & Co., and turning it into a recipe/scrapbook/commonplace book. She clipped etiquette advice and article about miners strikes. Generic speculation about how Mrs. Patterson was "a middle-class woman frightened or preoccupied by the potential of violence on either side and who saw herself as nothing more than an observer, an archivist of her times."

Then again, she might have been married to a banker at Miner's National Bank:

http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~paschuy2/1884.html

Who may or may not have had a lease on a coal mine:

http://www.sil.si.edu/SmithsonianContributions/HistoryTechnology/text/SSHT-0015.txt

Which might or might not have involved a lawsuit that made it to the PA supreme court (Patterson v. Silliman).

Any or all of which wouldn't make her some interested housewife on the side, but someone who was desperately trying to make sense of her own personal world.

As long as we're making up stories...