Clarabelle Cayhoe’s Memory Book

Scrapbooking is now a billion dollar a year business, but it has been done in a variety of forms for centuries. Throughout history people have kept scrapbooks of newspaper clippings, funeral cards, photographs, and greeting cards to keep a record of special memories. Thomas Jefferson kept a scrapbook of poetry and prose. The Hayes Presidential Center has both diaries and scrapbooks of former President Rutherford B. Hayes. Often a grandmother’s clipping book is a prized family heirloom.

Clarabelle Cayhoe’s memory book is one of the many scrapbooks housed at the Archives Research Center of the Sandusky Library.

Clarabelle was the daughter of Charles G. Cayhoe, who taught writing and drawing in the Sandusky Schools from 1909 through 1919; he was also one the organizers of Sandusky’s First Christian Church.

Clarabelle graduated from Sandusky High School in 1922.  Some of the items which Clarabelle kept in her memory book are: grade cards, candid photos of her classmates, notes and photographs from trips, newspaper articles, mementos from parties, and several poems and autographs.

Charles E. Frohman, who later became noted as a local historian and author, signed Clarabelle’s memory book on page 42.

On June 29, 1921, Clarabelle and several family and friends went to Put in Bay.

Though she had many friends, Clarabelle Cayhoe never married. She worked as a bookkeeper for the Citizen’s Banking Company. She died the same year as her mother, Eliza, in 1947. Clarabelle Cayhoe is buried in Oakland Cemetery with her parents and brother.

If your ancestors lived in Sandusky, you can learn interesting details about their lives by looking through old yearbooks, city directories, and several histories of Sandusky and Erie County.