Sometime in 1916, a Milwaukee, Wisconsin, teenager named Amy Stephens became an amateur sociologist of sorts when she wrote a questionnaire. Over the next few years, nearly six dozen different people—most, teenage girls—answered Amy’s questions. In addition to basic personal information and telephone numbers, Amy asked for a long list of “favorites”: from stories to celebrities, names to games, and schools, books, and desserts.
Some interesting notions emerge from the answers provided by this community of girls. When asked for their favorite book, thirteen said “bank” and seven said “pocket.” The favorite desserts of thirty-nine involved ice cream, although one girl cheekily declared “good night kisses.” The favorite course of study was algebra; the second most popular was shorthand, with several writing the names of their choices for best-looking boy and girl in shorthand. (Not surprisingly, census records show that fifteen respondents—including Amy—worked as stenographers for at least a time after graduation.) The most popular “exclamation” was “Ye Gods”—including with the extension “and little fishes.”
The “Sport” and “Game” categories each included twenty different answers. “Sport” seems to have meant a pastime that young people could do as individuals or in groups, while “Games” usually involved competition and score-keeping. Ice and roller skating led the way in the former category, with swimming coming in second. Tennis and “500”—a trick-taking card game—were by far the favorite games. Eight girls mentioned flirty variations of games familiar to adolescents of any era: “Love,” “Game of Love,” and “Making Love,” as well as “Post Office.”
Their answers suggest three ways this community of young women maintained social networks:
- Proximity: Pockets of two or three girls lived on the same blocks and a significant majority lived in a relatively small section of Milwaukee’s East Side—the oldest section of the city with a mix of upper, middle, and working-class families.
- High School: As the percentage of youth attending high school rose, school became more important in creating and sustaining relationships. Fifty-six girls listed twenty-one different schools, with almost half (including Amy) attending St. John’s Cathedral High School, located a long walk or a quick streetcar ride from the East Side.
- Technology: Nearly 80 percent of the girls’ families had telephones, far above the national average. Although they no doubt had to compete for this 1910s version of “airtime,” it is easy to imagine the girls talking on the phone about the movie stars and best-looking boys and girls from their questionnaires.
In the end, one of the simple pleasures of the questionnaires is that glimpses of personality slyly emerge. One girl wrote that her favorite school subject was “Anything easy.” Another noted her favorite sport as “Anything where boys are.” A third claimed “horseradish” was her favorite dessert. Sometimes the past seems not so distant.
James Marten is professor emeritus of history at Marquette University and the founding secretary-treasurer and a past president of the SHCY. He is author or editor of more than a dozen books on the history of children and youth, most recently the Oxford Handbook of the History of Youth Culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2023) and A Very Short Introduction to the History of Childhood (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018).
