Walkersville Homemakers Club disbands after 91 years

By CARYL VELISEK
Staff Writer

WALKERSVILLE, Md. — After 91 years, the Walkersville Homemakers Club is no more.
Recently, six of the eight remaining active members disbanded and took their memorabilia to the Thurmont (Md.) Library to add to the library’s agricultural history collection.
The reason for the disbanding of the club? Low membership.
But there is much more to the story, according to Kathryn Nicodemus, who is parliamentarian of the Frederick County Homemakers, a county-wide organization consisting of a dozen community clubs.
She also served as president of the State Homemakers Council from 1986 to 1988, and was a long-time member of the Walkersville club.
Nicodemus grew up on the farm, was a 4-H member, and just retired as organist, after playing a total of 51 years at the Walkersville United Methodist Church and the Lutheran church there.
The Walkersville club started out as the Women’s Club of Walkersville, and had as many as 60 members at one time. They were down to 10 members lately, with only eight of them still active.
“Families are busy today, involved in their children’s sports and other activities,” Nicodemus said.
Homemakers clubs are becoming less relevant when information is only a mouse click away, she noted.
The Homemakers clubs began in the early to middle years of the 20th century and offered a means to get information to women at a time when cooking, food preparation and cleaning took up most of a woman’s day.
Many of the members grew up in 4-H and considered the Homemakers an extension of that. The clubs have always had a close relationship with the University of Maryland Extension offices.
In the early days meetings often focused on household chores such as cooking, sewing, ironing and parenting.
“In the beginning,” Nicodemus said, “the purpose of the clubs was to help teach women how to be homemakers. There followed later, lessons on how to use a blender, a microwave, and things like cookie making.
“We always had an Extension agent to help officers and directors plan programs.”
In the latter part of the last century, most of the meetings at Walkersville were held at night, but as members retired they were shifted to daytime.
“In the past, we usually featured a speaker on a topic that was relevant to homemaking,” Nicodemus said.
Recent Walkersville meetings have featured topics such as how to deal with stink bugs, gardening during a drought, Frederick tourism and memory enhancement.
“We met in other member’s homes, except for special occasions like holidays, and picnics,” Nicodemus said. “And we would meet with the Frederick County Homemakers two times a year.”
The Walkersville club colors were blue and gold, the same as the local high school colors.
They also had a banner, which Nicodemus helped to make, a flower, the daffodil, and a motto, which is credited to Edward Everett Hale that reads:
“I am only one, but still I am one. I cannot do everything, but I can do something. And because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do something I can do.”
“We had many special programs including a Christmas tour of Walkersville homes we called ‘Home For The Holidays’ from 1989 to 2007.
Six homes were featured each year.
The tour was discontinued when people who had signed up started calling and backing out.
“Walkersville used to be a farming community of 800 residents. Now there are 6,000 living here. There are many lovely homes in town, built by farmers and their families when they retired. The tour made as much as $6,000 each year. We would end up at local churches or the fire hall and serve cookies and punch.”