The Lucky 13 aboard the Hudson Dayliner, 1935

In the 1930s, the young ladies who were friends together in The Lucky 13 Club worked in the shirt factories in Cohoes and Troy. The cotton mills were gone and many of the girls were sewing machine operators who did "piecework".  My mother left grammar school when she was twelve years old to work in a shirt factory sewing men's collars onto shirts.  She was paid for each one and if the supervising inspector felt the work did not meet the standards it was discarded and she did not get paid.  Most of the salary went to parents and family. However, the girls kept a little for fashion and some small pleasures like going to the Cohoes movie theater and a few local trips. One such trip was on a Hudson Dayliner, probably from Albany to New York City and back, sometime in 1935 in the company of a few young gentlemen.


SSColumbia Project has shared this film clip on YouTube

Exactly which boat the group boarded is unknown...

Elizabeth Frances Wills 1913-1937

Postcard to Elizabeth from a suitor

John Wills and Libby Bissonnette had nine children: three boys and six girls. The oldest three children were girls- Celena, Julia and Anna.  Then there was Johnny and three more girls - Elizabeth, Dorothy and Etta. The youngest two were boys- Earl and Bobby. The oldest group of girls were close in age and identity as was the younger group of girls. Elizabeth Frances born 1913, Dorothy in 1916 and Muriel Etta in 1917 were often together. Dorothy and Etta often described Elizabeth as stunningly beautiful, intelligent and angel like. She was sanctified in the many stories they told of her.  It is not surprising they elevated her because Elizabeth died a few days before her 24th birthday in the midst of the Great Depression. Cause of death was pneumonia.  She was called "Betty" when she was alive but after her death, she was always referred to as Elizabeth.

In our house while I was growing up was a very small cedar box, about the size of a jewelry case.  It contained a few items that belonged to Elizabeth when she died in January 1937. The contents contained two diaries, one from 1931 and the other 1935, a few postcards, a valentine card, two address books, a small hand fan that was stamped "Capitol Albany, N.Y." and a few photos of Elizabeth with boyfriends.
Her diary secures her place as a popular young lady of Cohoes and it seems young men were eager to give her rides to the theatre picking her up and bringing her here and there.  She loved to write to pen pals and the two little address books are full of friends in Scotland, Nova Scotia, Ohio, Hamilton Ontario, New Brunswick.  She kept diaries. She was beautiful and full of life. Her untimely death was another event in the downward slide of the family.  Her mother, Elizabeth "Libby" Bissonnette Wills, died eleven months before.  Her father, John Wills, would die less than two months after her. For her sisters and brothers, it was a most difficult period emotionally and financially.

Young Elizabeth

Elizabeth Wills

Elizabeth Wills

Contents of Betty's Box:

1931 Diary

January 12th, 1931 - Entry on her 19th Birthday

Elizabeth's two "miniature" address books

Inside Elizabeth's Address Book

Hand Fan with "Capitol Albany, N.Y."
with the Lucky 13 Club when they visited Albany.
Oct 4, 1932 is handwritten on the fan

 Her diary entry for January 12th 1935 tells us the girls in the Lucky 13 Club gave her a black silk umbrella and pocketbook. 

And finally the Valentine Card for Elizabeth who would be 98 years old this year (2011):

The Lucky 13 Club, Cohoes, NY, circa 1933

Do you know someone who was one of the "Lucky Thirteen"?

What was "The Lucky Thirteen Club" in Cohoes circa 1933?  It was thirteen teenage girlfriends who shared ups and downs, triumphs and failures, happiness and heartbreak and some local adventures during  "The Great Depression".   Mom always talked about them and she even had some newspaper clippings because they would even make news on the social page!   I do not know the full names but here they are ...If alive today they would be in their late nineties!

Elizabeth Wills

Etta Wills

Dorothy Wills

Claire Rivet
Flo Charlebois
Fannie
Lily
Agnes
Rita Ouimet
Nellie or Nettie
Camille

Eva Bouleris
Ida Gaynor

9 of 13

11 of 13

6 of 13

5 of 13

6 of 13

6 of 13