Community Corner

"Montgomery Girls" Keep History Alive With Annual Tradition

Once a year, a group of women who grew up in Montgomery in the '30s and '40s gets together to reminisce. Your faithful editor got to sit in on this year's meeting.

It’s not every day you get to have lunch with hundreds of years of living history. I got that chance last Wednesday, when I sat in on the annual meeting of the Montgomery Girls.

Who are the Montgomery Girls? They’re a group of seniors who grew up in old Montgomery, and remember it well. About 20 years ago, they decided they would meet annually, just to catch up and talk about old times. And they’ve been doing it ever since

When they started, there were about 18 of them, according to , whom everyone calls Betty. Spitz, who will soon be 88, said the group seems to lose one or two every year now—at Wednesday’s lunch at Grandma’s Table on Douglas Road, there were six, with another two surviving members unable to make it. But the six who were there all seemed to treasure their time together.

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Three of them are sisters, and all three were once named Mosley: Alice Seidelman, Jeannie Wollenweber, and Barbara Peck, a relatively new addition to the Girls. (“I was invited when I was 75,” said Peck, now 80. “I guess I was a bit too young before that,” she chuckled.)

Spitz and another pair of sisters, Betty Washburn and Doris Milligan—the daughters of former Montgomery Mayor —rounded off the group.

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We ate delicious sandwiches, looked at pictures, and discussed what the grandkids are up to. And for more than an hour, I got to hear tales of how Montgomery used to be.

Seidelman said the first time she understood what the word “population” meant, she was 13, and the village had 500 people. That was around the time Montgomery erected its first population sign, she said. And everyone knew everyone else.

“You walked the streets at night, and people were all sitting on their porches,” she said. “You’d sit on your porch and talk to people. You knew everyone in town.”

The Mosley sisters (and their three other siblings, including Montgomery Patch history columnist Pat Torrance) grew up in the yellow house on River Street built by the village’s founder, Daniel Gray. That house is now known as Settler’s Cottage, and serves as a museum. The other Montgomery Girls all lived close, so their memories of growing up in Montgomery are similar.

Wollenweber remembered walking the three blocks for a gallon of milk at Michaels Brothers grocery store, and struggling to carry it back. Spitz recalled door-to-door celery salesmen. And Washburn remembered living through the Great Depression as a young child—her grandfather, she said, would always put money in a coffee can and bury it outside.

At the time, there was only one grade school: Montgomery School, which subsequently became on Main Street. Students could choose between West Aurora and East Aurora high schools. Washburn remembered one time a boy named Harold Miller brought sneezing salts to school.

“He had to write his times tables 144 times,” she laughed. “Now they don’t even learn the times tables.”

I asked if the Girls could all remember their multiplication tables, and they all said yes.

The Girls recalled walking down to the post office to meet the mail train, and catching up with neighbors there. They talked about attending roller skating nights organized by St. Peter’s Church—they were members of the Methodist Church, but St. Peter’s invited them anyway.

“It was a close community,” Seidelman said. “Not only because a lot of us were related, but it was just that kind of community.”

After graduating high school in 1940 and 1945, respectively, Washburn and Milligan went to work at the Miller, Bryant and Pierce typewriter ribbon factory, for 43 cents an hour. Wollenweber worked at Jewel Tea before raising her family, and then embarking on her 26-year U.S. Post Office career.

Spitz worked at Anchor Brush for 12 years and put together enough money to attend nursing school. She worked at Rush-Copley Medical Center in Aurora from 1970 to 1985. When Milligan’s oldest daughter went to Copley to have her own daughter, Spitz was the nurse.

And Seidelman spent 25 years as an EMT with the Moecherville Fire Department, in addition to other jobs she held. That makes sense—her husband is Don Seidelman, who served as chief of that department.

They all have large families. Spitz alone has 25 grandchildren, and two great-great grandchildren.

Naturally, at some point, the conversation turns to those who should be at this year’s meeting, but aren’t. The first name that comes up is , who died in August at age 94. Stathis had lived on Railroad Street for most of her life, and was a longtime member of the Montgomery Girls.

And the Mosley sisters mentioned their aunt, , who died on Oct. 1, less than a month after her 100th birthday. Every year, the Girls say, their numbers go down, and Montgomery loses more of its past.

That’s why these annual meetings are so important, and so cherished, Seidelman said. The Girls see each other, but not as often as they used to, and they look forward to this yearly tradition.

“It’s fun to be with someone who remembers the things you have forgotten,” she said. “It’s your roots, and it’s important, especially with a community like this.”

And with that, the living history of Montgomery got up, posed for a photo, paid their bill and left, promising to meet right back here next year.


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