About This Blog

While visiting my mother's house for Thanksgiving in 2014, I found a diary from 1955 written by my great-grandmother, Lena Fiedler. To the best of my knowledge Lena was not a world traveller and did not have any grand adventures. Nor does the diary seem to hold any deep, thoughtful writing or salacious gossip. Still, having read through similar diaries from medieval England, I feel compelled to copy out the contents of this small volume. If nothing else it should provide an insight to the daily life of a 74-year-old woman in northern Indiana.


About Lena

Lena was born as Lena Anna Futter in 1881.  She married William Fiedler and lived in South Bend, Indiana until her death in 1960.

She was the mother of 5 children; Eugene Fiedler (1906-1906), Frederick Benjamin Fiedler (1908-1986), Mary Magdaline Fiedler (1912-2001), Ruth Ann Fiedler (1917-2001), and John Edward Fielder (1919-1999).

She is listed in the 1901 South Bend Directory as being a stenographer for the Jay Manufacturing Company, and in the 1905 South Bend Directory as being a bookkeeper.


Her Obituary

Mrs. Lena Anna Fiedler, 1113 Van Buren Ave., died at 12:30 p.m. Wednesday in the home of her daughter, Mrs. James R. Crawford, 204 Tonti St., after an illness of eight months. She was born in South Bend on April 25, 1881, and was married on April 6, 1906, in South Bend to William Fiedler, who died in 1945. Surviving are two sons, Fred and John E.; two daughters, Mrs. Crawford and Mrs. Elwood Anderson, all of South Bend, and 11 grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. Friends may call after 7 p.m. today in the Welsheimer Funeral Home where services will be conducted at 10 a.m. Saturday by Rev. Walter D. Oberholtzer, pastor of Holy Trinity Lutheran Church. Burial will be in City Cemetery. Mrs. Fiedler was a member of the church.

Lena's marker at City Cemetery, South Bend, Indiana
Image from Find A Grave

[Note: While the 1910 and 1940 census records list Lena's birthplace as Indiana, Find A Grave lists it as Erie, Pennsylvania]