Lenore Emerson (unknown birth and death dates) was the daughter of a Pullman, WA merchant who operated Emerson Mercantile. She graduated from Pullman High School in 1915, and entered the State College of Washington (WSC, later Washington State University) that fall. She earned her degree in Home Economics from WSC in 1919. She and her two sisters were members of the Pi Beta Phi sorority.
Carl G. Johnson (unknown birth and death dates) was a son of Swedish immigrants from Spokane. He never went to high school but instead apprenticed to a watchmaker. Desiring education he moved to Pullman, WA. He graduated from preparatory school in spring 1916 and entered WSC that fall. He was elected president of the preparoty school student body and then president of his freshman class in 1916-1917. He was a member of the Sigma Nu fraternity.
Johnson joined the Navy in the summer of 1917, shortly after the United States entered WWI. After training he served on the USS Santa Cecilia which traveled to France. After the war he worked a short stint farming in Rosebud, Alberta and eventually returned to WSC to resume his studies part-time while continuing to work as a watchmaker at Miller’s Jewelry Store. He graduated in 1925 and went on to be a teacher and school administrator in eastern Washington before he became a school superintendent in Battle Ground, WA from 1939 to 1956.
Lenore Emerson and Carl G. Johnson met as students in a history class at Washington State College and, when Carl joined the Navy in 1917, they began an active correspondence. They married August 24, 1920 after his return from the war.
The Carl Johnson and Lenore Emerson correspondence consists predominately of handwritten letters with small number of postcards, telegrams, holiday cards, photographs, newspaper clippings, flyers, and small selection of Gob (sailor) poetry. Some correspondence is written on stationary from the places like the Davenport Hotel, Miller’s Jewelry Store, Officer’s House in New York, Hotel York, and the YWCA. The envelopes feature wartime postage stamps (including Canadian stamps), post marks and metered stamps reminding everyone to “Buy War Savings Stamps and Help Reconstruction.”
The correspondence provides a first-hand account of a woman’s experiences at WSC in 1917-1919, Navy and radio training experiences at the end of the first world war (1914-1918), and of the effects of the influenza pandemic (alternatively called the Great Flu or Spanish Flu) on daily life. Pullman, WA history is mixed in with WSC history. Subjects include the domestic war effort (Red Cross, YWCA, YMCA, Women’s league, etc.), the local merchants in Pullman and Moscow, outings to Moscow Mountain, school life (student elections, fraternity/sorority life, sports, commentary on the Evergreen publication, Crimson W’s, Soronians, practice cottages, dress-making, student assignments), farming practices in Calgary, weather conditions, fishing on Loon Lake, and many anecdotes about traveling during this period.
Overview of box contents:
Box 1. Letters, 1917 August 26 - 1918 July 10
Box 2. Letters, 1918 July 15 - 1919 June 3
Box 3. Letters, 1010 June 5 - 1920 April 9
Box 4. Transcriptions of letters (transcribed and with an introduction by Barbara Potter), 1990s.
Letters and transcriptions arranged chronologically.
This collection is open and available for research use.
Copyright undetermined. Consult MASC staff with questions.
[Item description]
Lenore Emerson and Carl Johnson Correspondence, 1917-1920 (Cage 965)
Manuscripts, Archives, and Special Collections, Washington State University Libraries, Pullman, WA.
Barbara Johnson Potter, a WSU alumna, 1964 Diamond Grad, and daughter of Carl Johnson and Lenore Emerson, donated this collection to Washington State University Libraries in 2017 (MS 2017-09).
Kelly J. Wieber processed this collection in 2024.
This collection was originally in chronological order with 136 letters from Carl Johnson to Lenore Emerson in one box and 222 letters from Lenore Emerson to Carl Johnson in another box. However, the transcription put all the letters into a single chronological sequence. For ease of access, the letters were placed in a single chronological sequence matching the transcriptions. Kelly also removed letters from their envelopes and unfolded them. No materials were discarded in processing.
A personal note from Kelly: Deciding to place all the letters into a single chronological sequence gave me a personal chance to really skim through all of the letters and get a better feel for what the collection was about. There were endearing words of affection towards each other, gossip and news of family and friends, and glimpses of what life was like at WSC for a woman and, what the US Navy was like for a man. It felt like stepping into a different time and place. It was a surreal feeling to think one would write a letter every day, put it on a train, and have it arrive at its destination in a day or two. Daily handwritten letters to a loved one is not something that exists often today. Deep connections to time, place, people, culture, and sense of duty and loyalty permeate these correspondences.
Dasch Family Papers, 1856-2009
Johnson Family Papers, circa 1906-1947
This collection is indexed under the following headings in the online catalog. Researchers desiring materials about related topics, persons, or places should search the catalog using these headings.