This is a photo of my Auntie Janet and Uncle Bill Blades. My cousin sent me this photo, but we don't know the year or place. Janet is my grandfather's little sister. She was born 14 June 1898 in Salem, Massachusetts to Albert Munroe Wilkinson and Isabella Lyons Bill, my great grandparents. In 1927 she married William John Blades, who was born 14 June 1894 in Belfast, Northern Ireland. They lived in Beverly at 111 Essex Street in Beverly, next door to her aunt Georgia and Uncle Charles Marshall, and not far from where my grand parents lived on Dearborn Avenue. This house was built in 1675 by an ancestor, William Woodbury. It was bought by Uncle Bill in 1927, around the time of their marriage. The house was sold in 1968 when Aunt Janet was widowed and moved into an apartment for the elderly in Beverly.
Bill Blades was a veteran of World War I, where he lost a toe to frost bite in the trenches. There is a family story that he was General Pershing's chauffeur. His military papers list him as a driver, but there is no proof about the General Pershing story! After returning to civilian life he worked in the automobile industry as a repairman (1920 census), and for an auto dealer (1930 census). He joined the Masons in 1920, in Dorchester where he lived with his parents before he married Auntie Janet.
Uncle Bill died in 1962 when I was a baby. I don't remember him. He is buried with a veteran's gravestone at Central Cemetery in Beverly, next to Janet, who died in 1981. They never had any children.
Auntie Janet worked for many, many years for the Salem Electric Lighting Company (a public utility). She earned a small gold brooch every five years she worked there, and after her death my father had the pins made into mongrammed pins for the women in the Wilkinson family. I received one, as well as my sister, mother, aunt, and cousin.
I remember my father picking up Auntie Janet from her apartment in Beverly and bringing her to our home in Holden, Massachusetts for Easter and Thanksgiving dinners. She was a tiny lady, and always smiling, but I never knew her well. The only story I remember about Auntie Janet was from my grandmother:
"And of course we were married on a Thanksgiving Day 1926. I think the date was November 25th, 1926. I remember that day was quite hectic but we had the family, and an Episcopalian minister married us. We went to Boston for just a couple of days. My sister stayed with my mother and then I kept on working. Oh, when we went away for our honeymoon Don's sister tried to pull away his suitcase for him. And he kept hanging on to it and he got a black eye from the door banging into his eye. So he had a black eye on our honeymoon and people joked about that but he really didn't feel a bit good."
For the truly curious:
Tombstone Tuesday 2015, William John Blades: https://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2015/03/tombstone-tuesday-william-john-blades.html
The House at 111 Essex Street in Beverly, built by William Woodbury in 1675: https://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2011/01/house-built-in-1676-by-william-woodbury.html
Surname Saturday WILKINSON from 2011 (my lineage back to our first WILKINSON immigrant ancestor in New England, Thomas Wilkinson of Portsmouth, New Hampshire) https://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2011/09/surname-saturday-wilkinson.html
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To cite/link to this blog post: Heather Wilkinson Rojo, "Aunt Janet and Uncle Bill Blades for Photo Friday", Nutfield Genealogy, posted February 21, 2025, ( https://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2025/02/aunt-janet-and-uncle-bill-blades-for.html: accessed [access date]).
