[Oklahoma]. [Women]

[Scrapbook of Berta Abrams' Junior and Senior Years at Central High School, of Marlow, Oklahoma, with Numerous Photographs, Inscriptions, and Ephemera]

[Marlow, Ok. 1926-1928]. Oblong large octavo album with sixty leaves, containing 105 original photographs in varying small formats, many cut to size, plus hundreds of printed ephemera, manuscript annotations, tipped-in letters, and additional realia. Stiff leatherette covers, string-tied. Moderate wear to corners, light rubbing to covers. Photos and ephemera affixed directly to album leaves. Light wear to individual items, some photos torn to fit available space. Album leaves somewhat browned, with light edge wear and occasional short, closed tears. About very good. Item #2131

A lively memory book kept by Berta Abrams to commemorate her final two years at Central High School in southern Oklahoma during the late 1920s. The school, founded just five years previously in 1922, lay between Marlow and Lawton, and was established to serve an area whose towns could not support their own high schools. Remarkably, although the four-room school building burned down in 1952, the small community that grew around it incorporated as the town of Central High in 1995.

Abrams' collected photographs, ephemera, and manuscript annotations from classmates and teachers provide an intimate view of life in rural Oklahoma youth during this period. Over 100 photographs include portraits of classmates and family from the surrounding areas, the small school building, group outings and activities, local points of interest in Marlow or Lawton, and further afield in Chickasha and Medicine Park. The notes and inscriptions, though occasionally of the trite yearbook variety, offer further insight into education and teenage life on the plains of Oklahoma during the 1920s. A very good example of this genre, from a rather unusual and isolated location.

Price: $575.00