Happy 100th Anniversary, Nana and Grampy!

 Today is my grandparents' 100th wedding anniversary.  They were married on Valentine's day in 1925 in Hamilton, Massachusetts.  

There is no wedding photo. Not a single one.  And very few photos of my grandparents alone together.  

My grandparents with me, around 1962

A photo of my grandfather from my grandmother's little photo album.

She wrote his name on the sticker. 

My grandmother's high school photo.  She was supposed to graduate from Beverly high

school, but never did because she moved from Beverly to Hamilton and never finished. 

My Dad took this photo in the 1970s when

he caught Nana and Grampy under the mistletoe! 

In 1975 there was a very big 50th anniversary party for my grandparents,

at the Commodore restaurant in Beverly.  It was attended by all seven of their children

and dozens of cousins and relatives. This photo was in the local newspaper.

Was there a wedding cake 100 years ago?

My grandfather, Stanley Elmer Allen, son of Joseph Elmer Allen and Carrie Maude Batchelder, was born 14 January 1904 in Cambridge, Massachusetts.  He married Gertrude Matilda Hitchings, daughter of Arthur Treadwell Hitchings and Florence Etta Hoogerzeil, on 14 February 1925, in Hamilton, Massachusetts.  She was born 1 August 1905 in Beverly, Massachusetts.  Both young people were neighbors in Hamilton, a case of falling in love with the boy next door?  Why no photos?  Was it a "shot gun" wedding?  My uncle, Stanley Elmer Allen, Jr., was born in June. 

This is a real love story. My grandparents went on to have seven children between 1925 and 1942.  These children were born and grew up in the Great Depression and World War II.  When the oldest child went off to serve his country during WWII, the youngest child was born.  They had 29 grandchildren, mostly born during the baby boom following the war, but some as late as the 1970s.  

My grandparents lived in a tiny house, a former "camp" near Asbury Grove in Hamilton. This was a Methodist campground where both sets of my great grandparents lived. My grandparents house still stands on Roosevelt Avenue, and it is hard to believe seven children (five boys and two girls) all lived there together.  Several relatives all lived nearby.  Most of the extended family worked at the local estates at one time or another.  Hamilton is known for its large estates owned by wealthy Boston families such as the Winthrops, Appletons, Mandells (now the site of the Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary) and General George S. Patton.  

10 Roosevelt Avenue in Hamilton, photographed in 2004

My daughter standing in front of the Patton tank

in Patton Park, Hamilton, Massachusetts

My grandfather worked hard almost all his life since the 8th grade.  He had to drop out of school to support his older sister when her husband died in the 1918 Spanish Influenza epidemic, leaving her a widow with two babies.  He worked in a leather factory, on the Charles Tainter estate, the Palmer estate, and on 7 August 1927 he began to work as a glazier at the United Shoe Manufacturing in Beverly, Massachusetts.  He worked there for 41 years. 

Stanley died on 6 March 1982 at the Beverly Hospital.  Gertrude died 3 November 2001 at a nursing home in Peabody, Massachusetts.  

For the truly curious:

My ALLEN Surname Saturday blog post from 2012:    https://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2012/09/surname-saturday-allen-of-manchester.html   

My HITCHINGS Surname Saturday blog post from 2014:    https://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2014/10/surname-saturday-hitchings-of-lynn.html   

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To cite/link to this blog post:  Heather Wilkinson Rojo, "Happy 100th Anniversary, Nana and Grampy!", Nutfield Genealogy, posted January 14, 2025, ( https://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2025/02/happy-100th-anniversary-nana-and-grampy.html