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.