Posted on by Sydney Johnson · 1 Comment

Who is in the Club?

This past week I was put in charge of looking into who the members were and where they lived and also when they paid their dues to the Club. The notebook that we found was in box seven and contained a lot of different notebooks of various shapes and sizes. The one that I began to look at was kept by the treasurer and documented in alphabetical order where the members lived and the date that they paid their dues.

I found this task interesting but also somewhat mundane. After a day or so of doing this I started to rummage through box seven looking at the other notebooks that I had mostly skipped over. In the box I found a notebook that was simply the names and address of the different members in various “seasons” dating from 1898-1899 to 1915-1916. Although  there are some years missing, it is interesting to see the development of the members of the Club and to see some of the key members in the founding of the Club begin to resign.

The addresses are enough to make this type of transcribing engaging, I found myself keeping a mental track record of the ladies and where they lived. Many of them lived in the same areas, which makes sense. But talking to Hunter (a local Marylander) it is surprising to learn that many of these areas have gone through great transformation from the elite upperclass women that resided there during the turn of the century and early 1900s to the families that live there today.

An interesting aspect of this new notebook that was found is that it gives the Board of Management for each year. In this case throughout the years I can see certain members moving up from being just directors to secretaries and then some become vice presidents. All the while Mrs. Wrenshall remains the president for many years.

Another notebook that was found documents just the year of 1912-1913, even though this year is documented in the other notebook with many of the other years. I am curious to try and find out through reading the minutes of the meetings why there was the same information kept in two separate notebooks.

Something interesting about this notebook is that for certain years there is a list of the members signatures for when there was an election. I assume that this was just a roll for who was there and who was voting but it is interesting to see each members’ unique signature. It almost helps to make them seem like real people—not just names on a page.

Posted on by Sydney Johnson

Forming Their Identity

The first day I spent most of my time transcribing the Constitution and By-Laws which focus on what the club is and how it is run. The main point that I found of intrigue was concerning who are considered residential, non-residential and honorary members.

In the article of the Constitution that addresses members and their responsibilities and functions there is a section that defines the different types of members that are in the Club: residential, non-residential and honorary. The ladies defined residential to be those who resided within a ten mile radius of Baltimore City. Those living outside of this ten mile radius were considered non-residential and then they did not define the stipulations for who was an honorary member.

The section of this article did not go into detail about why there was this distinction of why it was a ten miles compared to a different distance. They also did not determine where the ten mile radius started. Going along this point, when the Constitution got to the section about the dues that the members would have to pay, the residential members had to pay ten dollars per year, while the non-resident members and honorary members had to pay five dollars per year. Non-resident and honorary members also were not eligible to hold a leadership position or to vote in the Club. I am curious why there is such a distinction of the members of the Club.

My guess is that the founding members and all members of wealthy or powerful families lived within the ten miles of the City and wanted to keep the power of the Club within these confines. It will be interesting to be able to see the log of the members and their addresses and also if the ladies kept track of who was a residential, non-residential and honorary member of the Club.