Harriet Packard, a 2nd great-grandmother

The Packard surname carried down through the generations ended with the marriage of Harriet A. Packard, to Lt. George Studley, grandmother of my grandmother, Alice Packard Studley, Harriet undoubtedly got to hold her grandchild, Alice, but died when Alice was two years old. Our Packard ancestral line in America extends from the Packard immigrant in 1638 to Hingham, Mass., traversing through Maine for several generations, and ending with Harriet’s death, a full circle back to Massachusetts in 1893.

Harriet Packard (1827-1893) was a 5th generation immigrant whose grandparent ancestors lived in Massachusetts until they left the security of settled Easton for new lands in New Hampshire and finally Maine. Her paternal grandfather, Samuel Packard (1751-aft. 1810), was a Revolutionary veteran of the Battle of Rhode Island before his move to the north. Her grandmother, Bethiah Waters, was a Mayflower descendant of William Bradford, governor of the Plymouth Colony.

This photo was likely taken in the 1880s while living in the Hyde Park area of  Boston. She is wearing pierced earrings, a large cameo brooch, and a double lace collar.

Harriet was born in the coastal town of Thomaston, Maine, in 1827, in that section set off to form East Thomaston in 1848 and a subsequent name change to Rockland in 1850. She was the second of four children born to Samuel Packard (1788-1866), a farmer, and Harriett Young (1800-1856), second marriages for both. Her dad was already 39 years old when Harriet was born.

The town of Thomaston itself was a prosperous lumbering, shipbuilding, marble, lime center in Harriet’s day, and Maine had been admitted to the Union only seven years before her birth.

The famous Revolutionary War hero, General Henry Knox, retired to Thomaston in 1795 - just a few years after our Packards moved to the area - and built a magnificent four-story mansion named Montpelier. General Knox was coincidentally the son-in-law of the heir holder of the Waldo patent for the area,. The irony is not lost that General Knox's grandfather-in-law and original holder of the patent was a Crown sympathizer. The general’s mansion was razed in 1871, but reconstructed by the community in 1929, still standing and worth a visit. He is buried in the Thomaston cemetery. Such a small town, likely Harriet and her dad hob-knobbed with the general at the early 19th c. town establishments.

In 1845, 18 year-old Harriet married 21 year-old George Studley in Thomaston, a marriage that lasted 48 years and produced six children.

Part of Thomaston was set off to be East Thomaston in 1848 and renamed Rockland in 1850. The 1850 Rockland census showed Harriet’s family living in Rockland. Harriet, George, their two young children, George’s brother Benjamin, and 4 other young men also carpenters were living in some type of group living, perhaps a tenement house.

By 1860, Harriet and George are living in Camden, the next town up from Rockland, with their six children and George is farming.

In August 1862, George enlisted in the 19th Maine Infantry and went off to war. He quickly rose through the rank to the level of lieutenant. His brothers Benjamin and John, also enlisted in different Maine regiments. George fought in many of the eastern campaigns, including Fredericksburg, Gettysburg, Cold Harbor, the Wilderness, and Spotsylvania Courthouse.

Meanwhile, back home, Harriet had been pregnant when George enlisted, and she delivered their youngest and last child, Sidney, our great-grandfather, in February 1863. Many of the officers were given leave during the wintering of 1863-64, and George likely went home to Maine to see his newborn son.The oldest son, Albert, would have just turned 18 and soon after George’s visit Albert enlisted in the 6th Light Artillery. Both he and his dad were at the Battle of the Wilderness, but Albert didn’t see action until a few days later at Spotsylvania Court House. He was killed there at the Bloody Angle, on the same battlefield as his father, only 18 years old.

How do parents cope with the loss? Harriet had been left to raise six children ranging from toddler to teenagers, and to take care of the farm by herself for the three years George was away. Her mother died eight years before and her father was elderly, living close by with another son, Samuel. Indeed, the 1860 census shows several Packards nearby. Several other family members and men in the community were away at war. Likely, the remaining women banded together for support. We can just hope.

Just a month after Albert’s death, George was fighting at Gettysburg as an officer and all the way to Appomattox. He and his two brothers survived the war, and five years later the 1870 census shows the family had moved to the Chelsea area of Boston, a blue collar neighborhood. He and his 21 year-old son, also named George, are working as carpenters, and the four younger children are still in the home.

In the 1880 census, two of the children have married and moved out, Alice is working as a seamstress, and 17 year-old Sidney, our great-grandfather, is working as an express clerk.

Over the next decade, three more children were married, including Sidney’s marriage to Martha Borden Hathaway. Sidney relocated to Fall River as a 21 year old in 1884 and worked his way up through the grocery business to owning his own store.

The Boston Herald noted Harriet attended the 250th anniversary and reunion of the Packard family held in Boston in August 1888.

Harriet died in Boston in January 1893 with an “abdominal tumor, probably carcinomatous.” They were living at 2 Brookside Avenue in Boston at the time of her death. No cemetery or headstone has been located for either George or Harriet, nor is burial mentioned in Harriet’s obituary. Very likely they were both cremated; Forest Hills Crematory was established in Boston in 1893 around the time cremations were beginning to take off in the US.

Sixty nine year-old George remarried within the year to a 33 year old-daughter of Catholic Irish immigrants, Harriet Sweeney, but moved shortly thereafter to a disabled veterans home in Camden, Maine, his hometown, and remained a resident until 1898. After returning to Boston, by this time in his mid-seventies, he fathered two more children, both of whom died as infants.

Harriet and George’s children:

Albert E Studley, b. 1846 in Rockland, enlisted at age 18 in the 6th Maine Light Artillery, tragically killed in his first battle at Sportylvania Court House during the Civil War.

George Leslie Studley, b. 1848 in Rockland, died 1931 in Boston; a carpenter and house joiner like his father.

Aramenta Dormer Studley, b. 1853 in Rockland; twice married, the first to a man who ran off to Canada; worked as a housekeeper; died in 1940 in Malden, MA, age 87.

Alice M Studley, b. 1856 in Hope, ME, a very small town inland from Camden/Rockport. She married an older guy, a Boston merchant, and by 1900 they moved to Parsonfield, Maine, where they were farmers. By 1910, she was divorced, living with her sister, Aramenta, and working as a dressmaker. She made lovely dresses for her niece, my grandmother, Alice. She died sometime after 1930.

Lisette Studley, b. 1860 in Camden, ME; twice married with one chlld, and died after 1930 in Chatham, MA.

Sidney Elmer Studley, b. 1863 in Camden, ME; married Martha Hathaway Borden in Fall River, two daughters, died in 1941.

Next installment: The ancestral Packards, 1638-1827

Young Alice Packard Studley

When Alice Packard Studley, - "Grandma Nute" to us - died in 1976, her obituary gave the usual information for a woman at the time: her age, where she went to church,  how many children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren she had, and where she was buried.  

At her death, Alice was 84 years old. She attended Perry Christian Church, had four children, ten grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren, and was survived by her sister, Nettie.  Alice had been living with her daughter Jeannette in Painesville, Ohio, before entering a nursing home. She was buried in Perry Cemetery beside her husband, Raymond Nute, Sr., who had died in 1958.

Alice's unwritten history, however, is not revealed in an obituary - or in birth, marriage, death and census records.  Fortunately, she kept a scrapbook with photographs and newspaper clippings about the times and people around her. With those fragments, perhaps we can stitch together her early life.

When Alice was born in 1891, Fall River was a thriving, prosperous city with several daily newspapers, scores of textile mills, and regular steamboat service to New York City. Its high school was a four-story, towered, granite building with its own astronomical observatory and telescope. B.M.C Durfee High School, formally dedicated in 1887, stood in the fashionable Highlands neighborhood. This historic building now houses courts of the Massachusetts Trial Court.

B.M.C. Durfee High School

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

The Studley Family

Alice's father, Sidney Elmer Studley (1863-1941), was born in Maine just months after his father, George Studley, left to serve in the Civil War. When George returned, the family lived in a working-class Boston neighborhood where he worked as a carpenter.

As a young man, Sidney moved to Fall River where he married Martha Hathaway Borden (1863-1936) in 1887. Sidney had worked as a clerk in Boston, but the industrious young man worked his way up until owning his own grocery store. The family lived in rented homes until about 1910, when Sidney was able to buy a house in a more prosperous neighborhood.

Sidney Elmer Studley (1863-1941)

The Borden family

Our Fall River Borden family descended from Richard Borden (1595-1671), an early settler of Portsmouth, Rhode Island.

In 1714, Richard’s descendants strategically secured the water rights along the Quequechan River valley. Those holdings eventually helped position later generations of Bordens among Fall River’s most influential and wealthy industrial leaders. 

Around the time of Martha’s birth, her father, Stephen Bailey Borden (1838-1901), was away serving nine months in the Civil War.

There is a connection to that Fall River Borden family. Lizzie Borden, infamous for being accused - and acquitted - of murdering her father and stepmother with an axe, is my third cousin, four times removed: a distant relative, but a relative nevertheless.

Stephen Bailey Borden and Lizzie shared an ancestor, Richard Borden (1722-1795), who was the second great-grandfather of both. The murders occurred in Fall River in 1892, a year after Alice was born.

Martha Hathaway Borden

Alice's sister, Nettie Studley, was the elder of Sidney and Martha's two daughters. Nettie was born in April 1889, and Alice followed in August 1891. This is the earliest photograph we have of the two girls, likely taken about 1892.

Alice and Nettie,1892

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

Alice, probably 1893

And here are both girls in matching dresses in the following year.

Alice and Nettie, 1894

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

Alice, Mother Martha, and Nettie

We have no other photographic record of the girls until this family portrait which appears to date from around the 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 was Martha’s sister, young Alice's maternal aunt. She was married to Harry Howland.  Ida Borden was a second cousin, niece of Stephen Bailey Borden.

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

Alice, December 2005

Another, dated 1907, shows her at age 16, probably in the tenth grade at B.M.C. Durfee - the wonderful high school with the observatory pictured above.

Alice in 1907

This full-length photograph appears to have been taken around the same time as the portrait above, although it may be a year earlier.  Alice is wearing, as always, a beautifully embroidered dress and the same gold locket.  I know it was gold as she and Raymond later gave this writer a similar engraved gold locket.  I have wondered what became of Alice's locket.

Alice in high school

Another undated photograph shows Nettie on the left, Alice on the right, and three girlfriends. It leaves the occasion to our imagination - a wedding, a graduation, or simply going to church.  How ever did they keep those white dresses clean, what with all the horse manure there must have been in the streets? That is the subject for a future post.

Nettie on far left, Alice on far right

The next two photographs are a mystery because they are labeled by someone other than Alice. The inscriptions refer to Alice visiting someone in Tilton, New Hampshire.  Alice would have been old enough to travel on her own to New Hampshire after high school, but whom did she know in Tilton? The town was home to a private preparatory school that, for a time, awarded degrees to women. Perhaps Alice was visiting a girlfriend who had gone 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 were they taken in Fall River and sent to her friend. She is clearly maturing, and beginning to wear hats.

She graduated from B.M.C. Durfee High School in 1911, when she was 19, and went to work in the office of the Fall River Gas Company, where Raymond's father, Joseph, was manager.   

A 1914 photograph shows a lovely young woman. Could this have been her engagement portrait?

Alice in 1914

A photograph taken that same year included both Nute and Studley families, suggesting that Alice and Raymond had probably started their courtship by then. They may have known each other at B.M.C. Durfee High School, since they were about the same age. Or perhaps they became acquainted through Alice’s work for Raymond's father, Joseph, at the gas company.

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

A photograph taken that same year included both Nute and Studley families, suggesting that Alice and Raymond had probably started their courtship by then. They may have known each other at B.M.C. Durfee High School, since they were about the same age. Or perhaps they became acquainted through Alice’s work for Raymond's father, Joseph, at the gas company.  

Alice and Raymond, Nov 3, 1915

Alice and Raymond were married in Fall River on November 8, 1915 and the occasion was reported in two newspapers. One Fall River newspaper described a ceremony held at the bride’s home 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 five years and started their family with the birth of their first two children, Ray Jr. in 1916 and Jeannette in 1920. Alice settled into life as a young farm wife and mother, but remained as elegant as ever, as this photograph from the 1917 wedding of Raymond's sister, Helen, shows. The wedding was held at the home of Joseph and Harriett Nute - yes, in the fashionable Highlands neighborhood.

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

By the time the family left Massachusetts in 1920, Alice was 29 years old. This young woman, accustomed to beautiful dresses, lace, silver and chandeliers, joined Raymond, young Ray Jr., and infant Jeannette, in taking the bold step of moving west to Kentucky. After roughly 300 years in New England, theirs was the first generation in their direct family to leave it behind.

The rest we know in A Thanksgiving Story: Raymond Nute’s Peach-Fed, Free Range Turkeys.