by David Cardillo, DDNP staff
January is National Hobby Month! Hobbies can range from collecting, performing non-professionally, playing sports non-professionally, reading, writing, gaming, ceramics, and so on.
The April 13, 1918 edition of the Evening Journal tells of Selden S. Deemer, owner and head of the Deemer Steel Casting Company. While bordering more on a tradition, Mr. Deemer had the hobby of an annual Christmas party of some sort for disabled children of the area. This seems to be borne out of both a desire to entertain as well as a memorial to his own daughter, who had died suddenly as a child.

Evening journal. [volume] (Wilmington, Del.), 13 April 1918. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress.
The March 23, 1905 edition of the Evening Journal had a short snippet about Julia Marlowe’s hobby of the art of book binding and, presumably, book collecting.

Evening journal. [volume] (Wilmington, Del.), 23 March 1905. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress.