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.

Lost Hikers: Sound familiar?

This article ran in the Fall River Herald in about 1915-6.  Helen is a great aunt to my generation, sister to Raymond Sr.   The article is undated but at the time of this experience she is teaching at a high school in Orleans, MA, a town just at the elbow of Cape Cod.    She graduated from Mt. Holyoke College and was a teacher until her marriage in 1917 at age 28.

YOUNG WOMEN LOST IN WOODS OF CAPE

Miss Helen E Nute of This City and Companion found in an exhausted state

Will suffer no serious effects from their way walking from Brewster to Orleans

Miss Helen E Nute of this city, daughter of J.E. Nute, manager of the Fall River Gas Works Co., and Miss Bertha Wilson of Thomasville, Me., assistant principals of the Orleans High School, had an extremely unpleasant experience Sunday night in the Brewster woods, in which they were wandering about from dark until after midnight.

Mr. and Mrs. J.E. Nute drove down from this city in their automobile Sunday morning to spend the day and started on their return about 3 PM.  Their daughter and Miss Wilson accompanied them as far as Brewster, intending to walk back to Orleans.

Not having arrived home after dark, Mr. and Mrs. Higgins, with whom the teachers board, became worried, and soon afterward made inquiries by telephone of Brewster residents, and ascertained that two young women had been seen entering the woods about 4 o’clock.  Fearing that the two teachers had become lost in the woods, Mr. Higgins notified the selectmen who also notified Deputy Sheriff Boland.

A general alarm was sent out about 9 o’clock by ringing the church bells, and searching parties were organized under the direction of Sheriff Boland, Dr. Lemuel Pope, Elnathan Eldredge, George Steel and others from different sections, who started out to search the various cross-roads and wooded paths.

Mr. Nute, who had arrived at home in this city, was notified by telephone about 9 o’clock, and he said the girls had spoken of taking a cross cut through the woods from Brewster to Orleans.  About midnight, one of the automobile searching parties penetrated the road leading through Roland Nickerson’s deer preserve near Cliff Pond in East Brewster woods, and learned that the young women had been there just before dark and inquired the way to the village.

The caretaker had directed them toward the Brewster road, but they had evidently become undecided again and had got lost before getting out of the woods.  This was the first clue to the young women since the search began.  The party took different paths, and Mrs. Higgins and his searchers soon found footprints.

On reaching a point about half way between Cliff pond and Baker’s pond they were overjoyed at meeting the two exhausted and frightened girls coming toward them, hardly able to speak from hoarseness, after shouting at their utmost for hours.  They reported having lost they way, owing to the density of the woods and the intense darkness which came on very early, owing to fog and cloudiness, when they left the Nickerson bungalow.

They were considerably worn out from their long tramp and the prospect of spending the entire night in the dark woods.  They had heard the bells and the tooting of automobile horns and whistles of every description, and could at times see the rays of the automobile headlights turned upward when climbing steep hills but, of course, were absolutely unable to make themselves heard by the searchers by screaming or shouting.

Every sound in the deep darkness, even after the rising moon had lightened it slightly, and every big tree seemed an object of terror, owing to their failing strength.  The searching parties had covered every road where automobiles could penetrate in that entire section between Brewster, East Harwich, and Orleans.

Meantime, Mr. Nute had become so alarmed that he and Mrs Nute started again from this city for the Cape about 11 PM, reaching Orleans about 3 o’clock Monday morning.  They were rejoiced to learn that their daughter and her companion had been found and that neither of the young ladies was in serious condition.  It is believed that they will suffer lasting effects from their experience.

Newspaper reporting is just not the same as a hundred years ago.

I think I may have inherited some of Helen’s genes.

Nettie: The Other Studley

Every child needs a doting aunt, and ours was Nettie Borden Studley (1889-1990), older sister to our grandmother, Alice Packard Studley (1891-1976).  They came from working class backgrounds whose New England customs meant you had a family name passed down at birth.  

Our Nettie was named for a maternal aunt, Nettie H. Borden (1869-1923),

and Alice received her middle name from a maternal grandmother, Harriet A. Packard (1827-1893).

Nettie's and Alice's father, Sidney Elmer Studley (1863-1941), grew up in the ethnic, working class neighborhoods of Chelsea and Hyde Park, Boston, and likely did not finish high school as he was already working as an express clerk at the age of 17.  

Their mother, Martha Hathaway Borden (1863-1936), also grew up in a working class family in Fall River, Massachusetts.  Martha's father, a Civil War veteran, was a laborer, machinist, and meat salesman at various times in his life.

The couple married in Fall River in June 1887 - both were 24 years old - and  settled into a neighborhood on the hill overlooking Taunton River as it empties into Mount Hope Bay.  Sidney got into the grocery business, perhaps with help from Martha’s father, Stephen Bailey Borden, and worked his way up over the years until he was manager, then owner, of a grocery on Linden Street in Fall River.  Martha must have been a good mother as pictures of the girls indicate they were well cared for, perhaps even indulged.

The little girls' photo was likely taken in 1893, the same year Lizzie Borden was accused of the axe murders of her father and stepmother in Fall River.  Both Grandma Alice and Aunt Nettie vehemently denied any blood relation to Lizzie.   Uh, seems unlikely as Bordens in that area descend from two Borden brothers.  

A mid-to late 1890's photo shows a well-dressed family on a sleigh ride outing.

Alice, Martha, and Nettie

In 1900, the family was living in a rented duplex at 594 Bradford Avenue, a nicer neighborhood, and Sidney was working as a grocery clerk.

This photo of Nettie may well be around the 8th grade, but perhaps taken when she graduated from BMC Durfee High School in 1908.

By 1910, the family owned a house at 972 Maple Street, indeed a nice neighborhood.  Sidney is a grocery store manager, Alice is 18, still attending BMC Durfee, and Nettie is 21 years old, working as a bookkeeper at Small Brothers, one of the textile mills for which Fall River was known.  Nettie remained with this company for her entire career, finally retiring at age 72.  Sidney became the owner of the grocery store on Linden Street.

In 1915, Nettie's sister married a young man from Massachusetts Agricultural College, now University of Massachusetts, and left the family home to be a farmer's wife - and we have seen what an amazing farmer he was.  When I was growing up I had heard Nettie had a fiance or young man she liked very much who was killed in World War I.  For this or whatever reason, she never married and lived with her parents for the rest of their lives.

In 1921, Sidney, Martha, and Nettie moved down the street to 724 Maple Street where they remained until just before Martha died in 1936.  In 1935, the parents and Nettie moved into a house at 172 Hanover, just behind the 724 Maple Street address, and Sidney lived with Nettie until he died in 1941.

Nettie's house at 172 Hanover Street
I believe 724 Maple is the house in far left of photo

Nettie had a way of making everyone her family, and likely her co-workers at the thread factory filled in for the absence of her parents and sister.  Alice's family, children and grandchildren became the focus of her travels, and often she of theirs.  As a youngster growing up on the farm in Lewis County, we looked forward to the Christmas gift we always knew we would get from Aunt Nettie.  I can still remember the visit when she bought me a pair of red boots.  She visited there by train,

Vanceburg Station in 1940's
Alice, Nettie, and perhaps Helen Plummer

and followed us to northern Ohio.

Jeannette, Aunt Nettie, George
Ray & Kathie
Joellen, Janie, young George

No trip to New England was complete without stopping off "to see Aunt Nettie".

Aunt Nettie, Jeannette
Donald, Joellen, George "Clif"

Fall River Herald News ran an article in 1960 on her retirement at age 72,

Bookkeeper Feted by Firm after Fifty Years' Service

Small Brothers Mfg. Co. last night honored a woman who has been with the organization for 50 years.  She is Miss Nettie B. Studley, the thread-manufacturingfirm's head bookkeeper.
When Miss Studley joined Small Brothers in 1910 to begin her first job, the firm was only 25 years old and still operated by its founders, Elisha H. and Reuben C. Small. The bookkeeping department was small; in fact, she was it. 


As a retirement gift, they gave her a TransCanadian Rail trip which she took by herself - age 72 no less.

In 1968, Nettie  gave up her residence and moved into senior living at the Fall River Home for the Aged at 1172 Highland Avenue.  She loved to show off her room and the elegant setting, pointing out they took every meal with linen tablecloths, silver, and crystal glassware.  She continued to be a prolific letter writer.  She was mentally sharp and  at age 87 amazed my Ohio Republican Chairman then-husband with her command of politics over lunch.

Throughout her life, she had a hobby of needlepoint and some of the family are lucky to have beautiful pieces she gifted.    She continued to crochet and knit afghans through her later years.

Nettie at the Fall River Home for the Aged

Fall River News in November 1980 covered a ceremony with Nettie as the guest of honor in which a tree planted by Sidney in 1940 needed to be moved and replanted.

"I remember when poppa planted the tree", she said, reflecting a remarkable memory that can summon people and dates that have long since passed.  "He wanted to brighten the area around the Haffenreffer House on Hanover Street (then owned by the hospital).  So he donated a garden that he planted himself."

The article went on to say,

The nonagenarian observes the local scene with a keen eye from her present domicile.  She marveled at the prospect of a new five story patient care facility that will consolidate Union and Truesdale services at the Union site.  

"Change is welcome", she noted, "when the old is accommodated to make way for the new".

The Fall River Herald News covered her 100th birthday party, noting she supervised all the arrangements herself.  

100th Birthday Party

Nettie died in 1990 at age 101.   Her obituary noted she was acknowledged as one of the first women in the area to hold a major corporate position in the city.

Alice died in 1976 at age 84, seventeen years younger than Nettie.  Alice had a more active lifestyle on the farm, and I have long thought the longevity difference was related in part to Nettie's positive outlook, evident even in that 1893 photo.

Wednesday, 8/17/11: Glenbeigh to Cahersiveen – The Trail Starts

After a lovely breakfast (how does Anne make such fluffy eggs?), we took off for Cahersiveen, pronounced like cursive with an ine at the end, only car for the first syllable.  Here’s Kathie at the head of the trail.

We could not have asked for more beautiful weather or scenery. 

 

 

 

 

Of course, there were sheep and cattle to ogle along the way.  They ogled us; we ogled them.  No herding was necessary this time, however. 

 

Walking along, noticing the flora, I couldn’t help but think of leprechauns and trolls.

Pretty but treacherous – see the rocks in the trail? 

 

 

In some places, we couldn’t sidestep the rocks but rather had to plow right through them.  In others, the rocks were mixed with boot-sucking mud.  I mean, literally, in a couple of places, one or the other of my boots was sucked clean off my foot.  I took to making up haikus in my head:

Rocky flat good for legs.

Rocky up good for heart.

Rocky down good for naught.

or

The walkers are walking

The buzzards are circling

They say, “Look!  Tasty treats!”

 

As usual, I was dillydallying way behind Kathie and Kathleen.  Can you see the tiny figures way up ahead?  If you’re anything like me, you’re more focused on the spectacular view in the background…and also on the horsie moseying up to see if I have a treat to offer. 

 

 

What was supposed to be a twelve mile hike turned out to be an eighteen mile walk, due to a lack of clear directions where we left the trail.  Between the three of us, along with Mary (a Catholic University nursing major), and Bree (a Harvard pre-law student), we simply could not figure out which way we were to go to get to the Southern Sun, our B&B for the night.  After several false starts and asking directions of a couple of people, we did however arrive safely.  (That last stretch along the busy 2-laner was a little scary, eh girls?) 

Our hostess referred us to Frank’s Pub for dinner, where I had homemade vegetable soup, soda bread, and salad.  Yum!  The young waiter/bartender was very sweet.  I loved his accent!  He recommended the apple pie, so we took a slice to go and stopped by the Daniel O’Connell Catholic Church on our way out.  Supposedly, this is the only Catholic church in the world named after a person who is not a saint.  Huh.

Back in the room, I noticed blisters starting on my right heel and both big toes.  Not good.

(If you want to see a description of the hike we took, go to the Macs Adventure site here)

Tuesday Traveling – Taxi, Train, Bus, and Feet

Our taxi pulled up at 6:45 on Tuesday morning to take us to Heuston Station for the 7 a.m. train to Limerick Junction.  There, we quickly switched over to another train to take us to Limerick, where we caught a bus to Glenbeigh.   

 

In Glenbeigh, we found our lodgings for the night – the Emir View House, where we were greeted by proprietress Anne and her daughter, Louise, a high school rising sophomore at the time, and Louise’s little sister.  Lovely people!  They advised us to take the 2-mile walk to Rossbeigh Beach, which we did, (getting a little lost along the way, as usual).  According to its website, “An extensive sandy beach in a rural environment, Rossbeigh is a designated natural heritage area and a Special Area of Conservation with an important habitat and flora and fauna present.” 

 

After hiking the 2 miles back, we stopped by Rumours Bistro for dinner.  The black, grey, and red modern interior was quite pleasing, and the food was great. 

Then back to the Emir View to ready ourselves for our next big adventure…

 

Monday, Our Last Day in Dublin

We took off along the canal to get to Dublin Castle, where I was fascinated by an exhibit of sand sculptures in the courtyard.

Close by the castle, we visited St. Werburgh’s Church of 1178 origin.  I thought this was a handsome little church, strangely military-ish, especially given the fact St. Werburgh was actually a woman.  The organ pipes were especially pretty.

Back on the castle grounds...

Behind the photographer who took the shot above (that would be me) sits the Chester Beatty Library.  Chester was an American mining engineer/magnate back in the first half of the last century who enjoyed traveling and collecting books, art, manuscripts, New Testament texts, etc.  He retired to Ireland and bequeathed his collection to a public trust that is supported by the Irish government.  So admission is free!  While we were there, a special exhibit of Mattise’s works was going on.  Nice.  Truly a lovely place to visit and then have lunch, which we did. 

A hop, skip, and jump from the castle is Christ Church Cathedral, an Anglican cathedral built in the 1800s on a 1171 foundation, which in turn was built on the site of a church built by a Danish king of Dublin in 1038.  Whew!  Did you get all that?  The current structure is huge, and the 12^th century crypt is very cool.  Supposedly, the heart of St. Laurence O’Toole is encased in a heart-shaped box somewhere in the cathedral; I didn’t see it, did you guys?  Well, no matter – it was stolen in March of this year.  Now why would anyone want a moldy old heart from the 12^th century, even if it was a saint’s?  Shocking.

From there we walked along the Liffey River to get to the train station for schedule information, then on we went – by bus – to the National Botanic Gardens in Glasvenin.  Even on a gray day, it was so beautiful.

After a quick walkthrough (it was getting late by now), we bussed back to town and had fish and chips for dinner before heading home to prepare for the next day - traveling to Glenbeigh.

Sunday in Dublin

Sunday, August 14, 2011

You just can’t go to Dublin without visiting the Trinity College Library to see the Book of Kells.  So what did we do bright and early on Sunday?  We hit the Trinity College Library, along with a slew of other people who thought Sunday morning would be a good time to see it.

From the library’s pamphlet: 

Over 1000 years ago, when the Book of Kells was written, Ireland had a population of less than half a million people living in fortified homesteads along its coasts and inland waterways. 

The Irish church was largely monastic in organization.  Monks lived in communities devoted to the study of God’s word, fasts, and manual work.  The message of the life of Christ was spread primarily through gospel books, and the scribes and artists who produced them held an honored place in Irish society. 

The Book of Kells contains lavishly decorated copy in Latin of the four gospels.  It has long been associated with St. Colum Cille who founded his principal monastery on the island of Iona, off the west coast of Scotland, in about 561.  The Book of Kells was probably produced early in the 9^th century by the monks of Iona, working wholly or partially at Iona itself or at Kells, county Meath, where they moved after 806 AD, when Iona was attacked by Vikings in a raid which left 68 monks dead.  The Book of Kells was sent to Dublin around 1653 for reasons of security during the Cromwellian period.  It came to Trinity College in 1661.

Have you ever read How the Irish Saved Civilization by Thomas Cahill?  It’s enlightening.

While Kathleen and Kathie lingered over the Book of Kells, I moseyed on over to the Long Room, which houses 200,000 of the library’s oldest books and, in cases down the center of the room, a bunch of medical exhibits.  In the cases I saw a book by Robert Graves (of Graves’ disease fame) and an 1811 diary of a lady who had a mastectomy without anesthesia.  Ouchie!  One book opened to a Jonathan Swift play, in which he wrote that “The best doctors are Doctor Dyet, Doctor Quiet, and Doctor Merryman.”  Of course, I was fascinated by the skeleton of a 7’ tall guy who had a pituitary adenoma.

From there we headed over to Dublin Castle to hit the Chester Beatty Library.  Since it was closed on Sunday, we went to St. Patrick’s, the national cathedral (Anglican).  St. Patrick supposedly baptized converts at a well that once existed in what is now the churchyard, and that is why there has been a church in this location since the fifth century.  Most of the current building is 13^th century vintage.  Jonathan Swift, dean of the cathedral from 1713 until 1745, and his Stella (Esther Johnson, whom some say he married in 1716) are buried in the southwest end of the nave.  Of course, we know Jonathan Swift best as the author of Gulliver’s Travels.

On a column was a plaque with the following poem by Jonathan Swift.

Stella's Birth-Day

Stella this day is thirty-four,

(We shan't dispute a year or more;)
However, Stella, be not troubled,
Although thy size and years are doubled
Since first I saw thee at sixteen,
The brightest virgin on the green;
So little is thy form declined;
Made up so largely in thy mind.

O, would it please the gods to split

Thy beauty, size, and years, and wit!
No age could furnish out a pair
Of nymphs so graceful, wise, and fair;
With half the lustre of your eyes,
With half your wit, your years, and size.
And then, before it grew too late,
How should I beg of gentle fate,
(That either nymph might have her swain,)
To split my worship too in twain.

Do you suppose he was trying to tell her she needed to join Weight Watchers?

After we left the cathedral, we walked along and found the place – now an alley - where Handel’s Messiah was first sung in 1742 by the combined choirs of St. Patrick’s and Christ Church cathedrals.  If you listen closely, you can hear the ghosts still singing the Hallelujah Chorus…or was that Kathie? 

From there we went to Subway for lunch - because we obviously can’t get enough of it in the States, and then to the National Museum to see the 8^th century Celtic Brooch of Tara and the bog mummies.  Eww.  I erased that from my mind’s eye by doing a rubbing of a Celtic design in the kids area.  Never let it be said that I don’t know how to have a good time.

The weather that day was great.  Walking along the main drag, Kathie spotted the front door of a Georgian rowhouse that she just had to have a photo of.  The only thing is that the door was at the top of a set of stone steps.  Of course, she mounts the steps and is getting the shot when the owner walks up.  He patiently waits for her to take her picture then says, “Would you like to see the inside?”  And do you suppose that Kathie could turn down an offer like that?  Not on your life.  I must admit, it was a perfectly lovely house, but what if he’d been a serial killer, Kath?  I can just imagine the headlines – “American ladies just had to see the inside of the killer’s house…”

We had dinner at Taste again, and then headed over to the Gaiety Theater, built in 1871, for Riverdance – which was so, so good.  We had perfect seats and of course the music and dancers were just fabulous.  What a treat!

All in all, it was a very good day.

Joseph Nute and Harriet Gove Wilkins: Was it the Genes?

In April 1909, the Fall River Gas Works Company purchased a Model 20 Knox motor truck to supplement its traditional horse-and-wagon fleet. Just two days after his seventeenth birthday, my grandfather Raymond Nute rode in the new vehicle with his father and two brothers. The motor truck industry was in its infancy when Joseph Nute, general manager of the Fall River Gas Works Company, took his boys for an outing.

The outing was documented with a photograph, perhaps retained by the Nute family and later supplied to a Fall River newspaper. The paper republished it as a historical photograph on April 19, 1948, thirty-nine years to the day after the outing.

The accompanying caption reads,

COMFORT IS RELATIVE.  This was a gala holiday trip, April 19, 1909, on one of the first motor trucks purchased by the Fall River Gas Works Company. Judging from the happy smiles of the passengers, one gathers this vehicle had more to offer than a surrey. In the front seat, right, Joseph E. Nute, general manager of the Gas Company, with George Hadley, the driver. In the second seat are Mr. Nute's sons, Raymond, Alden, and Warren. Charles Leonard, superintendent of the Pond Street gas works, is facing in the rear seat. Behind him are Matthew Kelly, spare office, and Fred J. Hopkins, Paymaster. Many people may remember this truck.  It had coil springs in the rear - what we call today "knee action" - was chain driven, and had solid rubber tires. Background is probably the Narrows.

Joseph Edson Nute (1863-1949)

My great-grandfather, Joseph Nute, born in 1863 in Woodstock, Maine, was the seventh of Orsamus Nute’s children and second child born from the marriage of Orsamus and his second wife, Lovina Dunn Davis (1835-1880). 

Joseph was an infant when his oldest half-brother, Samuel Ambrose Nute, died. A twenty month-old half-sister, Emma, had died in 1857 and Orsamus’ first wife, also named Emma, died in 1860. Whether so many deaths in a short time influenced Orsamus' decision to leave rural Maine is speculative, but in 1864 he gathered the family and moved to Boston. Two more of Joseph’s siblings died there before the end of the decade.

Joseph graduated from Massachusetts Institute of Technology with a degree in mechanical engineering. Fresh out of school, he went to Philadelphia to work as an engineer for the United Gas Improvement Company. Two years later, he married Harriet Gove Wilkins (1864-1941), a young music teacher from Boston. Harriet descended from the Gove family in Lincoln, Massachusetts and the Wilkins family of New Hampshire and the Salem witch trials.

Joseph and his bride moved to Jersey City, New Jersey, where he spent the next three years as superintendent for United Gas. Their first child, Helen Elizabeth, was born there. In 1890, Joseph moved his young family to Fall River to become general manager of the Fall River Gas Works Company. He remained with the company until his retirement in 1924.

Joseph Edson Nute

Harriet Gove Wilkins

The family lived at several Fall River addresses, including 11 Maple Street in 1891; 47 Durfee Street in 1893; 94 Lincoln in 1896; 14 Bedford from 1897 to 1899; and 94 Wilkens Avenue in 1899. Their home at 914 Highland Avenue, a lovely Colonial Revival, was completed in 1900. It is now included in the Highlands Historic District on the National Register of Historic Places.

914 Highland Avenue

Life in Fall River

News articles in Fall River and Boston offer glimpses of Joseph and Harriet's life. In 1902, they vacationed in South Paris, Maine, likely with Orsamus. A fire broke out in a kitchen closet at the Highland Avenue home in May 1904. The news article indicates Joseph and his family occupied the second-floor apartment on the second floor and another occupant lived on the first floor. 

The motor truck outing in 1909 gave Joseph and his three sons the opportunity to experience the transition from buggy to motorized vehicles. In 1910, Joseph took the family camping at Camp Madockawando. The following year, a surprise birthday party was given for Warren, a junior at B.M.C. Durfee High School. In 1914, the newspaper reported Helen and a girlfriend had become lost in the woods on Cape Cod. In 1928, Joseph and Harriet took a winter vacation cruise to San Juan, Puerto Rico.

The newspaper articles document Joseph's extensive civic work, much of it in fundraising and the Boy Scouts.

• Treasurer of a 1914 relief fund for victims of a devastating Salem fire;
• Treasurer of a Belgian Relief fund drive during World War I;
• Treasurer of the Fall River Chamber of Commerce in 1916; 
• Chairman and treasure of a 1917 campaign to raise funds for Boy Scouts;
• Chairman of Fall River's Red Cross War Fund during World War I;
• Director of the Fall River Chamber of Commerce in 1918;
• Committee chairman for a hospital building campaign in 1920; 
• Leader of a European Children's Relief Fund drive in 1920; and 
• Toastmaster for a YMCA fund raising effort in 1921. 

In 1932, Joseph received the first Silver Beaver award for distinguished service to the Boy Scouts. His certificate was signed by President Herbert Hoover, then honorary president of the Boy Scouts of America.

A biographical sketch in Alanson Borden’s Our County and Its People: A Descriptive and Biographical Record of Bristol County, Massachusetts, describes Joseph as a member of the American Gas Light Association and the New England Association of Gas Engineers and as a recognized authority on gas-plant construction. 

A Fall River newspaper also reported Joseph ran over a man who jumped from a trolley car into his path in 1917.

In 1929, Joseph entered a partnership with his son-in-law, Arthur Wadsworth, to operate a “baby” dirigible from South Dartmouth airport. The blimp was destroyed in El Paso on Mar 24, 1932, and Joseph filed a $60,000 equity action against the insurance company to recover his loss. 

Children of Joseph Edson Nute and Harriet Gove Wilkins

Joseph and Harriet had five children. Helen, the eldest, was born in Jersey City; the three boys - Raymond, Alden, and Warren -  and the youngest child, Katharine, were born in Fall River.

Helen Elizabeth Nute (1888-1985)

Helen taught on the faculty at Mount Holyoke College. In 1917, at age twenty-eight, she married nineteen-year old Arthur G. Wadsworth who had been her student.  The ceremony was officiated by Arthur’s father and grandfather, both clergymen. Helen and Arthur had one child, Ann, who died at home in Fall River at age three. The family moved to South Dartmouth in the 1930s. 

Arthur served in both world wars: with dirigibles in WW I and as a Major in the U.S. Army Air Force during World War II. As an oil financier, he lived in Tulsa, Oklahoma at intervals from 1940 until 1960 during which he drilled an estimated 300 wildcat oil wells in Oklahoma, Kansas, Texas, and Kentucky. When the venture in Kentucky failed in 1961, he took his own life at home in Dartmouth. His obituary reports he died from a heart attack.

My father, Raymond Nute, Jr., lived with Helen's family in the mid-1930s in order to attend a New England high school. His parents, Raymond Edson Nute, Sr. and Alice Packard Studley, lived in Kentucky at the time and felt the experience would better prepare him for college. 

During my childhood, our family often returned to Helen's home, a beautiful estate with three-car garage and guest house overlooking the water and abutting the Hawes-Wadsworth Reserve. Helen was actively involved in conservation, habitat preservation, and anything having to do with wildlife. 

Helen donated about six acres of her estate land in 1972 to help create the Preserve. In addition to creating the Hawes-Wadsworth Reserve, she also gifted a neighboring 2.5-acre parcel of her estate on Gaffney Road to the New Bedford Garden Club, now known as the New Bedford Garden Club Reserve. Inside the New Bedford Garden Club Reserve is a kettle pond, a fascinating geological feature created during the last Ice Age. Most kettle ponds have been covered over by residential development, but Helen's gift has preserved this pristine example. What makes this specific kettle pond famous locally is that it is completely encircled by massive rhododendrons and mountain laurel. I remember well how proud Helen was of this pond.

Helen lived in the South Dartmouth home until her death. She was cremated at Forest Hills.

Raymond Edson Nute (1892-1958)

Raymond began his studies at Massachusetts Institute of Technology but transferred after a year to study pomology - the science of cultivating fruit - at the University of Massachusetts School of Agriculture, still ranked as the #1 agriculture program in the United States. He married Alice Packard Studley in 1915 at the Studley family home. A newspaper account noted Harriet wore her own wedding dress to the ceremony.

Raymond managed a cranberry bog in Lakeville, Massachusetts until 1920. He and Alice moved the family to the Louisville area where he introduced “scientific farming” to Kentucky. 

Warren Wilkins Nute (1894-1960)

Warren enlisted in the U.S. Navy in July 1918 and served during World War I aboard USS SC-259, one of the wooden-hulled submarine chasers collectively known as the “Splinter Fleet.” Service aboard these small ships was considered hazardous duty.

After the war, Warren worked as a bank clerk. He married Maud Bamford Tattersall, settled in New Bedford, and later worked as a clerk at the New Bedford Gas and Edison Light Company. He carried on his father's interest in the family genealogy.

Two of their sons served in World War II. Warren Wilkins II was in the Navy. Gordon Bamford Nute, a first lieutenant and navigator in the Army Air Corps, flew thirty-five missions in the European theater. 

Warren was cremated at Forest Hills in Boston and buried in New Bedford.

Alden Davis Nute (1895-1971)

Alden graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1917 and served in the Army’s Chemical Warfare Service during World War I. He married a fellow MIT student, Loretta Mildred Dakin, who also graduated from MIT.  An article in a 1920 M.I.T. paper reported,

"Miss Loretta Mildred Dakin Sp  '18 has just been appointed bacteriologist for the United States Health Service at New Haven, Connecticut.  Ms Dakin goes to New Haven from the health department of Toledo, Ohio

After graduation from the Toledo Normal School, she came to the Institute and specialized under Professor William T. Sedgwick of the Biology Department in bacteriology and chemistry, leaving in 1918 to take further work at Harvard Medical and Columbia University.

The appointment of women in the health service has been found to be better than filling the positions with men.  The war gave the first impetus to this movement and the women have become more and more prominent in health work."

Alden spent his career as a chemist. He became the assistant superintendent of a Fall River cotton company and later worked for the Calco Chemical Company in Connecticut. In 1923, Joseph, MIT class of 1885, and Alden, MIT class of 1917, attended an MIT Alumni reunion together in 1923. Alden was cremated at Waring-Ashton in Fall River.

Katharine Nute (1899-1833)

The youngest child, Katharine, graduated from the Boston School of Occupational Therapy and worked as an occupational therapist at the Lakeville Sanitorium for tuberculosis patients. She lived at home and never married. She died from lymphoma at only thirty-four and was cremated at Forest Hills.

Raymond Edson Nute, Sr. Joseph Nute holding Raymond Nute III, Raymond Edson Nute Jr.
1944

Joseph’s Later Years

In 1920, Joseph and Harriet still had three of their adult children living at home: Warren who was working as a bank clerk, Alden a chemist in a cotton mill, and twenty year-old Katharine. The household included their longtime housekeeper, Susan Simmons, whom Joseph remembered in his will.

Joseph retired from the Gas Works in 1924 at age sixty-one, and became involved in business partnerships, including with Helen's husband, Arthur, for a dirigible to operate at the South Dartmouth airport. The blimp was destroyed in El Paso in 1932.

Joseph devoted years to researching the Nute genealogy with a distant cousin, Percy Elmer Nute (1884-1965) of Lynnfield, Massachusetts. Together, they traced descendants of the early Nute family of Dover, New Hampshire. Amy Emery compiled their Information into book form; a copy is held in the New Hampshire Historical Society. Joseph’s research papers were donated to the New England Genealogical and Historical Society in Boston and are available on request.

After Harriet died on May 21, 1941, Joseph, then seventy-seven, went to live with Helen and Arthur in South Dartmouth. He died September 15, 1949, and was cremated at Forest Hills in Boston.

So, was it in the genes? Joseph’s restless curiosity, devotion to public service, and willingness to try something new echo through the lives of his children: a teacher, an agricultural innovator, war veterans, a chemist, an occupational therapist, all college or vocational graduates. Not by genes alone - Joseph and Harriet created a home that valued education, service, scientific inquiry, and hard work.