Josie’s Ledger

On By mcphilbrickIn Hammond

I shared a poem written by my 2nd great grandfather, Washington Marion Crawford. While discussing this poem with my cousins, one shared a comment about his having a copy of Josie’s ledger of poetry. This comment reminded me that I have the actual ledger. In remembering this ledger, I realized that I hadn’t done enough to share with future generations.

When the Internet was young, I did transcribe some of these poems and contributed them to the Kansas Memory project. However, I did not submit all of the poems. Evidently, I also had never scanned the ledger. I have since scanned the ledger and created a document with the scanned image on the left and the transcription on the right. This PDF file has been uploaded as a memory to Josie Hammond’s profile on FamilySearch. I’ve also uploaded Josie’s Ledger to Archive.org. Thus, I’m hoping that her ledger will be preserved well into the future.

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Today’s Entry

Written for circle No. 7
M.E. Church

Circle No. 7 served lunch at a sale
Which is the reason for this little tale.
We extracted money with very little pain.
If we get the opportunity we’ll do it again
We had a fine time as any will tell
So let me introduce you to our personnel


First, there was dear Esther
How she loves to pester
But she kept us all working just the same.

Then Mrs. Dilly
Whose form is hilly
With a car load of groceries came flying down the hill

In hurried Mrs. Waite
Fearing she’d be late

Mrs. Morgan came by parcel post
Mrs. Sullivan did love
To poke cobs into the stove
And kept that corner warm as toast

There is another whom you all know
Tho her name is Lighter, her form isn’t so

We have two sisters of that name here.
One called “want some doughnuts?”
The other “you pay here.”

There was Mrs. Robb
How she did bob
When asked “What kind of pie have you?”

And slender Mrs. Ott
Always on the dot
When asked for a sandwich gave them two.

Then Mrs. Lon
With a clean apron on
Borrowed all the others that she could
When it comes to washing dishes
She takes to water like the fishes.
But we doubt much if she dried them like she should.

There were some others
But their part was so small
It isn’t really necessary
To mention them at all.