Helen's Heir Finds Me! The Diary Is Going Home!

In 2001 I found a 1919 diary in a South Lansing antique/flea market and brought it home. The writer's personality enchanted me but I did not know who she was until December 31 when she signed off as Helen Korngold.

Helen Korngold photo from Normandy H.S. yearbook where she taught

Since that time I have researched to know more about Helen and to understand the people and places and activities she talked about in her diary. I held off sharing the diary and her story, wanting to fill in some gaps, including how Helen, a career teacher in St. Louis, meet and marry a brilliant mathematician who was teaching at Cornell University in New York?

I had decided to begin sharing the diary and my research on my blog this year as part of my Saturday posts on family histories, and was preparing my work to be shared.

Then--This week I was contacted by a woman who told me I had her great-aunt Helen's diary! She, like most of us do, was noodling around the Internet seeing what popped up when she typed in family member names. And my blog post about the quilt I made for Helen came up.

The quilt I made for Helen included scanned diary pages

I am learning so much about Helen and her husband Fritz Herzog. She was as lovely and fun to be with in real life as she appears in her diary.

Today I will be mailing the diary to her family, along with copies of my typed transcription and research. Helen is finally going home to her family.

Read my posts about Helen:

https://theliteratequilter.blogspot.com/2012/03/helen-korngold-quilt-close-to-10-years.html
https://theliteratequilter.blogspot.com/2013/11/researching-helens-diary-on-ancestrycom.html
https://theliteratequilter.blogspot.com/2013/11/researching-helens-diary-on-ancestrycom.html

Helen Korngold photo from Normandy H.S. yearbook