Priscilla Study Club: 100 years and going strong

POLSON — Events and exhibits were widespread throughout this year as the city of Polson celebrated its centennial in 2010. An interesting sidebar to the centennial celebration, Polson’s first social club, the Priscilla Club, was also founded in 1910, the year the Flathead Indian Reservation was opened to homesteaders.

For current members, president Joann Reksten and longtime member, Kay Witham, the club’s history mirror’s theirs, as both of their grandmothers were founding members.

“Young ladies, married women, that came with their husbands started the club to keep in touch with the goings on and news in the world,” Reksten said. “They came to a town that didn’t have streets, and the ladies didn’t have anything much to do.”

Arriving in Polson from all over the country, women with various backgrounds and skills came together at bi-weekly gatherings.

“It was an excuse to get out and visit with the other ladies in town,” former club president Bette Kirscher said.

Beginning as a sewing club called the “Thimble Bee,” the Priscilla Study Club wasn’t officially organized as a study club until Oct. 14, 1914, inspired by the outbreak of the Great War (WWI).

At the time, there were no computers, there was no television and even the radio had yet to be invented. With limited access to news, discussion leaders researched related topics in an effort to keep up with the war. In the minutes from one particular meeting in 1914, the ladies discussed the “characteristics of the Germans” followed by an “update on the war in the last two weeks.”

The symbol of a pansy has decorated almost every Priscilla Study Club program since 1919, and according to the dictionary, is derived from the French word “pensée” meaning “thought.”

Twice a month, the program for each meeting kicked off at 2:30 p.m. and dinner was served at 5, so “they got a lot of information,” Witham said. At earlier meetings, the hostess served elaborate dinners.

One menu from 1914 listed “scalloped oysters, beet salad, light rolls and jelly, ice cream and coffee for dessert.

It’s much more informal now, Reksten said. Full-course meals eventually became lunch buffets and now are reduced to coffee, tea and desserts at the hostess’ home. Sometimes, even the husbands were invited to the evening meal and the group played games into the night. Every meeting was opened with the singing of God Bless America and closed with the Star Spangled Banner.

“I’m glad we don’t sing anymore,” Reksten said.

“And that was before the days of karaoke,” Witham added with a laugh.

Over the course of 100 years, things were bound to have changed every so often. The original club had about 20 members. Now, there are less than a dozen, Reksten said.

“They were very adventuresome back then,” Witham said in reference to one particular trip where ladies from the club took the overnight train to Kalispell and went shopping. “Even when my grandmother was in her 90s, no one could keep up with her, she wore us all out. My grandfather used to say she’d go all over looking for a new feather for an old hat.”

In 1923, 15 ladies in five cars drove to Missoula. They arrived in 2.5 hours and, according to Reksten, that was before the roads were built.

“They must have really put on the gas to get there in 2.5 hours,” she said.

Minutes read that the ladies “had delightful conversation, shopped and played around.”

After the Oct. 18, 1918 meeting, club members were arrested for violating an edict by Dr. Marshall, Polson’s mayor, who said that there would be no public gatherings because of the flu epidemic. Members had to appear in court and its three officers, president Alda Williams, vice-president Etha Cline and secretary Eva. N. Trow were each fined $5. The club then published a notice in the newspaper denying knowledge of the edict, which added to the overall cost of the ordeal. As dues were only 50 cents a year at the time, the treasury couldn’t afford to pay the damages. So, a fine of five cents was levied at each meeting for not answering roll call with an item of interest.

In September 1917, club members took a break from studying and instead opted to knit for the Red Cross. Trips to areas of interest like the Yellow Bay Biological Station, Somers and St. Ignatius to meet with the Leon Study Club were also recorded in the minutes.

Over the course of 100 years, many interesting programs and conversations have taken place, Reksten said, on music, composers, painters, travelogues, history, poetry and geography.

“I enjoyed it so much when I was in it,” Kirscher said. “I met a lot of wonderful people I would have never met otherwise.”