52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks.  Week #33  Theme - Service

This theme could generate all sorts of posts ... military, helpful people, civil or community service. But I immediately thought of Gerry's Gt Grandmother Lucy May Hayward, who was, according to family lore, a Harvey Girl...serving as a waitress or hostess at the famous Fred Harvey Restaurants of the west.   As I search her history, Lucy May was born in 1856 in Christian County, Illinois, daughter of Robert Hayward and America Indiana Leigh.   Lucy's father and mother had both died by the time she was 11 years old, and she was taken in to the home of her older married sister, Nancy Hayward Johnson, during the Civil War.  After the war, Lucy followed her brothers who moved to Kansas.  She was not married until 1881 in Montgomery Co, KS.  So there could have been a period of time that she may have worked for the Harvey Chain of hotels which had sprung up along the Santa Fe Railroad depots, beginning in Topeka, Kansas.  We only know that Lucy's descendants passed along the "story" that she had been a Harvey Girl.

Fred Harvey had a vision to build excellent hotels and dining halls along the route of the Santa Fe railroads.  He put out ads asking for single young women to apply as servers. The women would be housed, properly dressed (usually in black dresses with white aprons) and trained to serve efficiently, but in a pleasant manner (the train stops were not long, and on a tight schedule).  I have read a couple of books about the Harvey Girls.   "Diary of a Waitress" by Carolyn Meyer is a teen fiction novel set in the latter days (1920s) of the Harvey House restaurants in Arizona.  Another is "The Harvey Girls - Women Who Opened the West"  by Lesley Poling-Kempes,  a thorough history of this unique venture.

A fun movie "The Harvey Girls" starring Judy Garland (1946) is very loosely based on the Harvey hotels and the very respectable waitresses, as opposed to the women of the town saloon.  Several other MGM names will be found, including Angela Lansbury, as well as the great song "The Atchison Topeka and the Santa Fe".   And NO, this is not a photo of Gerry's Gt Grandmother, Lucy.  But Judy Garland made a cute Harvey Girl.