By Katy Savage, Standard Staff
The women of Prosper meet every Wednesday at noon with homemade dishes of their favorite recipes.
They gather at a brick building that was once a school, now called the Prosper Community House, and eat while they chat about their families and upcoming birthdays. They catch up and then plan events, make crafts and talk about how to give away money to make the community stronger — a tradition that started 100 years ago.
The women in the group, called the Prosper Homemakers Club, are celebrating 100 years of community betterment Dec. 5.
The Prosper Homemakers Club is the last club standing of the three that used to make up the Prosper Community Club. The Prosper Rifle Club stopped meeting four years ago due to dwindling membership and the Prosper Home Demonstration Club, called Home Dem Club for short, stopped meeting before Prosper Homemakers President Ann Wynia can remember.
The current members aren’t sure how the Prosper Homemakers have thrived while others have failed. It could be because meetings are low-key, because the women are so connected, or because it’s a tradition that they all view is important enough to uphold.
Nearly 50 members in the Prosper Homemakers Club, from Prosper and the surrounding communities, keep a tradition that their grandmothers and great-grandmothers started.
Forty homemakers work together every September to make mashed potato, coleslaw, squash, biscuits and deserts for the Chicken Pie Supper, which has taken place every September since 1928. The homemakers serve four seatings of 80 people. They make crafts for the event year-round and sell aprons, pillows, sweaters, socks and Christmas ornaments at the supper in addition to raffle tickets.
The Prosper Chicken Pie Supper raises a couple thousand dollars that the homemakers use to pay the utilities at the Prosper Community House—where they have their meetings. The homemakers give the rest to charities.
They give to senior centers, Kurn Hattin Homes for Children, the Woodstock Area Job Bank and the Upper Valley Haven. The homemakers give a yearly scholarship to a graduating senior of Woodstock Union High School and make Thanksgiving pies for the food shelf.
Not much has changed about the Prosper Homemakers in 100 years. The group has remained active just for tradition’s sake in some instances.
Members in the 1900s had to pay 10 cents to join the club and had to pay 5 cents every month to stay in it.
The homemakers still pay an annual 60 cent membership fee.
“The 10 cents to join got lost somewhere along the way,” Wynia said.
The first meeting of the Prosper Homemakers was Dec. 1, 1915. Seventeen women got together to “develop community co-operation as a means of obtaining every form of social and economic betterment,” meeting minutes say.
Women brought their children with them, sat with women friends and ate a lunchtime meal together. The homemakers made quilts for newborns, collected canned goods for the hospital and knitted bandages for soldiers.
“I think they tried to keep their eyes open for any place they could help out or make somebody’s life more comfortable or a bit better,” Wynia said.
It was a time for them to get out of the house. They traveled by horse and buggy to get to the meetings.
“They must have really wanted to be together,” Wynia said.
The monthly meetings gave them a respite from house chores. Wynia wonders if the monthly meeting was like a therapy session for women to get out of the home and talk with like-minded people.
“If you think about it, this was one opportunity, maybe the only opportunity, they had to get together,” Wynia said.
The homemakers talked about how to manage sugar use when it was rationed during the war. They talked about school lunch pails: “Foods should be simple and easy of digestion,” said Mollie Lewis in Feb. 2, 1916 minutes.
To celebrate the 100 years, Prosper Homemakers Club member Kate Olgiati is putting together a cookbook of favorite recipes that have been made at potlucks.
One person contributed the secret coleslaw recipe, which a former member, the late Bev Lewis, made every year for the Chicken Pie Supper. Wynia contributed pie recipes. Olgiati contributed a recipe for apple sauce cake from her grandmother.
“We’re trying to preserve the history,” Olgiati said.
Olgiati is one of the newest members of the Prosper Homemakers Club. She joined about five years ago.
It seemed like all her neighbors were part of the homemakers and she wanted to know why. The community gathering of food and neighbors has kept Olgiati involved.
“It’s difficult, especially when you’re working to get to know your neighbors because nobody’s home,” she said. “It’s a lovely, natural way to get to know the people who live in this watershed.”
Margaret Thomas, 82, joined the homemakers 20 years ago. She lived in Bermuda, Saint John and the Virgin Islands before moving to Vermont.
She’s gotten involved everywhere she’s lived because she said it’s the best way to learn about a community.
The people of the islands, who didn’t have much, taught Thomas to be content. The families in the homemakers club have taught her to be kind and share with others.
Many of the members have stayed in the group because their mothers and grandmothers were active.
Current President Wynia is a descendant of one of the founders: Mollie Lewis.
Wynia’s mother was in the group and now her daughter is, too. Wynia started going to the meetings as a baby.
She remembers the women wearing homemade hats on their heads for hat day. Some wore upside down funnels or bird cages just so they could have some fun and laugh about it.
“It was a group that really tried to keep the community life alive,” Wynia said.
The women used to wear their best clothes. Wynia used to polish her shoes and wash her shoelaces on the day of the meeting.
The Prosper Homemakers is an aging group. The average age when the Prosper Homemakers Club formed was 37. Now the average age of the members is 65. The youngest Jessica Burrell, 22, is a fifth generation Prosper Homemaker. The oldest is 93.
Wynia doesn’t spend time worrying about the future of the Prosper Homemakers Club. She remembers her mother’s friends having similar concerns about the vitality of the community club, but the next generation of women stepped up, devoting themselves to the group’s values and its motto: “Along the Friendly Ways We Journey Together to Achieve the Best Things for Country Life.”