Young Alice Packard Studley: 1891-1921

When our Grandma Nute died in 1976, her obituary gave the standard information for a woman at the time - age, where she went to church,  how many children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, and where she was buried.  At the time she died, she was 84 years old, attended Perry Christian Church, had four children, 10 grand children and seven great-grand children, and was survived by her sister, Nettie.  She had been living with daughter, Jeannette, in Painesville, Ohio, and she was buried alongside Raymond, Sr., in Perry Cemetery.

Her unwritten history, though, is not revealed in an obituary, birth, marriage, death or census records.  With family photos, Alice’s scrapbook, and information about the times and people around her, perhaps we can stitch together her early life.

When Alice was born in 1891, Fall River was a thriving, prosperous city  with three daily newspapers, a host of textile mills, and daily steamboat trips to New York City.   The high school was a four story, towered, granite building that had its own astronomy observatory and telescope. BMC Durfee High School was built in 1886 in the upscale Highlands neighborhood, and is now designated as a historic building housing a probate and family courthouse.

BMC Durfee High School

Alice was descended from two Mayflower passengers, Richard Warren and William Bradford, from Revolutionaries, and two grandfathers who were Civil War Veterans.

Alice's father, Sidney Elmer Studley, was born in Maine months after his father went to the war, and lived in a blue collar, working class neighborhood in Boston most of his young life until marrying Martha Hathaway Borden in Fall River in 1887.  He had been a clerk in Boston, but the hard working young man worked his way up to owning his own grocery in Fall River.  The family lived in rentals but by 1910, Sidney had bought a home in a nicer neighborhood.

Sidney Elmer Studley (1863-1941)

Alice's mother, Martha, came from the Borden family who had been in the vicinity since the 1600's.   Her father, Stephen Bailey Borden, had also been away to the war when Martha was born.

Martha Hathaway Borden

Both photos appear to be around the time the young couple married.

Nettie was the firstborn child for the young couple in April 1889, and Alice followed in August 1891.  This is the earliest photo we have of the two girls, likely in 1892, the same year as the Lizzie Borden axe murders of her father and stepfather in Fall River.

Alice and Nettie,1892

Alice about a year later, very likely on her second birthday,

Alice, probably 1893

and both girls in matching dresses in the following year.

Alice and Nettie, 1894

The girls and Martha seem to be warmly and fashionably dressed while traveling about the city in the mid-1890's.

Alice, Mother Martha, and Nettie

We have little photographic record of the girls until the following family photo which appears to be turn of the century.

 Aunt Nettie Borden Howland, Martha H Studley, Uncle Harry Howland, Cousin Ida Borden
Nettie Borden Studley, Alice Packard Studley

Nettie Borden Howland is Sidney's sister, young Alice's paternal aunt. She was married to Harry Howland.  Ida Borden is a second cousin, niece to Stephen Bailey Borden.

We have a photo of Alice dated December 1905, and labeled age "14 years, 4 months",

Alice, December 2005

and another dated 1907, age 16, likely 10th grade at BMC Durfee, that wonderful high school with the observatory pictured above.

Alice in 1907

This full length photo appears to be around the same time as the portrait above, but may have been a year earlier.  She is wearing, as always, those beautiful embroidered dresses and the same gold locket.  I know it is gold as she and Raymond gave this writer a similar engraved gold locket.  I have wondered what happened to Alice's locket.

Alice in high school

A photo with Nettie on the left and three girlfriends is undated, and leaves to imagination what was the occasion.  A wedding, a graduation, or just going to church.  How ever did they keep these white dresses clean, what with all the horse poop there must have been in the streets, and that is the subject of a future post.

Nettie on far left, Alice on far right

The following two photos are a mystery, as they are labeled by someone else.  The labels refer to visiting someone in Tilton, New Hampshire.  She would have been old enough to travel on her own to New Hampshire after high school, but who did she know there?  Tilton is home to a private preparatory school which also gave degrees to women for a period.  She may have been visiting a girlfriend who went away to school.

"Alice P Studley, after Nute, as she visited me in Tilton, NH. Cross Road"

"Alice Studley as she looked when visiting Tilton"

Would she have had two portraits done in New Hampshire?  Or, made in Fall River and sent later to her girlfriend.  She is clearly maturing and beginning to wear hats.

She graduated in 1911, at age 20 from BMC Durfee and worked in the office at Fall River Gas Company where Raymond's father, Joseph, was manager.   

A 1914 photo shows a lovely young woman, perhaps her engagement portrait,

Alice in 1914

and the same year a photo with both Nute and Studley families, indicating Alice and Raymond had likely started their relationship by this time.  Very possibly, they knew each other at BMC Durfee High School as they were about the same age, or from Alice working for Raymond's father, Joseph, at the Gas Works.

From right: Aunt Jennie Borden, in back Susan Simmons (Harriett's servant), Mother Nute (Harriett), Aunt Annie Wilkins, Alice's mother Martha Borden Studley, and Alice in 1914

Raymond went off to school at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a year latter changed to Massachusetts Agricultural College, now University of Massachusetts, and graduated in 1914.  We first have a photo of Raymond and Alice together dated November 3, 1915.  

Alice and Raymond, Nov 3, 1915

Alice and Raymond were married on November 8, 1915 in Fall River and the occasion was reported in two newspapers.  A Fall River newspaper described a wedding held at the home of the bride in the presence of immediate family, followed by a reception for friends and relatives.

Home Wedding of Well Known Young People Last Evening

... The house was most artistically decorated for the occasion.  Southern smilax screened the walls and was entwined about the stair case and chandeliers.  The fireplace of the room where the ceremony was performed was banked with autumn leaves through which shone red electric lights.  Pink and white chrysanthemums were also used in clusters to good advantage in the decorative scheme.

As the bridal party left the upper rooms and proceeded down the stairs, Lohengrin’s Wedding March was played by Edmund Bottomly, piano, and Miss Helen Borden, violinist.  The bride was accompanied by her sister, Nettie Borden Studley, and by the sister of the groom, Helen Nute.  They were met under the nuptial arch by the groom and his attendant, Murray Lincoln of North Easton, a classmate at Amherst.  The ushers were Alden and Warren Nute, brothers of the groom.  The double ring service was used and during the ceremony, the musicians rendered “Perfect Love”, “O Promise Me’, and for the recessional, Mendelssohn’s Bridal Chorus.

There were about 150 present at the reception at 7 o’clock.

The bride wore a beautiful gown of white gros de londris, made en train and trimmed with pearls and Duchess lace.  Her tulle veil was caught in cap effect with lilies of the valley and she carried a bouquet of the same flower.  The bridesmaids wore watermelon pink crepe de chine trimmed with silver embroidered silk net and rosebuds.  They carried arm bouquets of Killarney roses.  Mrs. Studley wore a handsome dress of grey crepe de meteor with old rose vestee and silver trimmings.  Mrs. Nute wore the gown which she wore at her own wedding.  It was white faille silk trimmed with duchess lace.  The gift of the bride to her maids were gold brooches of filigree work set with pearls.  The gift of the groom to his attendant was a tie pin.

There was a handsome display of wedding gifts, including mahogany, silver, linen, china, heirlooms of both families and money in checks and gold.  The bride is a graduate of the Durfee high school and has been employed for some time in the office of the Fall River Gas Company.  Mr. Nute was a student at Durfee High School and M.I.T., and graduated from Amherst agricultural college in 1914.  He is at present manager of a farm in Lakeville, Mass.

Alice and Raymond made their home at the Lakeville farm, outside of Fall River, for the next 5 years and started their family with the birth of their first two children, Ray Jr. in 1916 and Jeannette in 1920.  Alice matured into a young farm wife and mother, but still elegant as shown at the 1917 wedding of Raymond's sister, Helen, held at the home of Joseph and Harriett Nute, yes in the fashionable Highland neighborhood of Fall River.

Raymond Jr. Alice, Raymond Sr, Joseph Nute and Harriet Gove Wilkins Nute, July 2, 1917

In 1920 Alice was 29 years old. The young woman used to her finery, the lace, the silver and chandeliers, along with Raymond, young Ray Jr. and infant Jeannette, took the bold step to migrate west to Kentucky, the first in their lines to move out of New England in 300 years.  The rest we know in Mr. Nute's Peach Fed Free Range Turkeys.

Mr. Nute's Peach Fed Free Range Turkeys

Three hundred years after the original Nute colonist arrived in New Hampshire, our grandfather made a bold move to leave New England for Medora, Kentucky, there to manage a successful and innovative orchard enhanced by thousands of turkeys. And this is the story.

Raymond grew up in a well to do family in Fall River, Massachusetts, and as a young man attended first Massachusetts Institute of Technology, then the Massachusetts Agricultural College, now the University of Massachusetts. Unlike his father who was a mechanical engineer, Raymond majored in "pomology", the study of raising fruit. Whatever possessed this young man to study fruit raising is anyone's guess. He came from a long line of farmers starting with the original Nute was killed in his garden by Indians in the 1600's, interrupted briefly when his farmer/teacher grandfather moved from New Hampshire to Boston.


He was an officer of the Rifle Club, ran a 5 minute mile, and went to school with young men with names like Murray Danforth Lincoln, Merton Chesleigh Lane, and Lewis Phillips Howard. He could have had a life of ease living in the city, but after graduating in 1914, he got himself a farm in Lakeville, Massachusetts, a few miles outside town with a good sized house,



and barn.


Nor was the family happy when Raymond soon took a young wife, Alice, who was the daughter of a grocer. "She wasn't good enough for them", Raymond's daughter, Jeannette, recalls. Over the next five years, they lived on the New England farm and had two children. What made Raymond and Alice move their young family to rural Kentucky in 1920? Was it Raymond's best friend at Mass Ag moving to Ohio to found Nationwide Insurance, a cooperative insurance company for farmers? Was he recruited to Kentucky Orchards by the owner?  According to Jeannette, he wanted a place to try out his ideas.

Whatever the reason, the young farmer brought scientific farming to Kentucky with a flourish. A 1924 article in the Farmers Home Journal says:

"R.E. Nute is one of the most remarkable fruit pioneers in Kentucky, and the constant wonder of his neighbors, who predicted loss from the start because of his ideas on scientific growing.

That hill-top of apparently worthless land is now the wonder of the countryside. To begin with, Mr. Nute had to build a road to the top that auto trucks could navigate. The road was built. A saw mill was constructed so that lumber on the property could be converted into houses and a packing shed.

The ground was torn up and prepared with the aid of a Fordson and various plows, harrows, cultivators, and the like. Trees by the thousand were planted where only a few old ones were on hand for a nucleus. None in those parts believed in such modern devices as thinning out and spraying and cultivating.

Nute did. He knew how. He came from Massachusetts with his family and buckled down to work. The trees were pruned, dusted, sprayed, cultivated. A big bean spray pump and duster, taking care of two or more rows at a time, destroyed all insects and pests. Borers were gotten rid of with "paracide" planted around the trunks every year. Lime sulphur dust took care of the upper works of the orchard.

Although Mr. Nute has already attained a one-pound peach, on rare occasions slightly over a pound, a two pound peach is one of his ambitions.

His packing house is another wonder to fruit growers, who now come for miles to see, and often to buy peaches. Not long ago visitors made the pilgrimage to the top of the hill in such numbers one day that $100 worth of peaches were sold in the front yard. Some of the peaches are snapped up at 10 cents apiece as curiosities. Last year a number of Mr. Nute's products took first prizes in the Kentucky State fair."

This photo was taken at the Massachusetts farm shortly before their move to Kentucky. They still have that refined New England look.


A short time later, they are looking more like Kentucky farmers.


Raymond's fame as an orchardist brought other agriculturists from around the country and he was sought as a speaker for meetings and radio. By 1928, Raymond was looking another way to boost his orchard's profitability and from this came the concept of raising turkeys in his 100 acre orchard. From a start of two hens and a tom, his flock grew to over 7000 birds, and a mill was added to the orchard to grind the grain. The birds provided natural and labor free fertilization, ate the insects, weeds, and dead fruit on the ground, and apple trees that usually produced fruit every three years were yielding fruit every year.

So grew Raymond's fame as a turkey grower and innovator, and he became known as the Turkey King of Kentucky. He collaborated with the University of Kentucky, presided over State Farm Bureau meetings, and continued to raise his family on the farm.


Then, in the midst of this tremendous success, it ends in 1937, and Raymond moved his family away to small town Washington, Kentucky, then to Vanceburg and became agricultural agent for Lewis County, never again to show the world what a hard working young man from Massachusetts with a Mass Ag education could do with a 100 acres of hard scrabble land, some peach and apple trees and a few turkeys. What happened? Jeannette says the owner of the orchard died and the land was sold.

This Thanksgiving as you all are enjoying your fabulous turkey dinner, eating until you can't push yourself away from the table, be thankful for the farmers in the country who have made it all possible with a few hours cooking on your part.