Merry Christmas, Hamilton, Massachusetts, 1950

Merry Christmas! Here is my mother and her family at Christmas around 1950 at my grandparents home on Roosevelt Avenue in Hamilton, Massachusetts.  Seventy-three Christmases have come and gone since this photograph was taken.  

Back row, my Auntie Mamie (Mary Cecelia Horgan Allen) holding her son, Marty (Martin Michael Allen, born 1950), next to my Uncle Donald Franklin Allen holding Mamie's son, Mickey (Stanley Elmer Allen III), next to my grandfather, Stanley Elmer Allen, my Auntie Barbara, and her husband Edward Baxter Thacher.  

In the middle, my mother is in the plaid shirt.

The next row down is my Uncle Dickie (Richard Lewis Allen), my grandmother, Gertrude Matilda Hitchings Allen), my Uncle Bobbie (Robert Arthur Allen) and my great aunt (sister to my grandmother) Eunice Mary Hitchings Bunce). 

In the front row the two children seated on the floor are my cousins Sandra Lee Thacher and Allen Baxter Thacher. 

Nearly everyone in this photo has passed away since this photograph was taken in Hamilton, Massachusetts. Only four relatives are still living today.  My mother was one of seven siblings, and she is still with us, as well as her youngest brother Dickie.  Even most of my first cousins in this photo have passed away except for Sandra and Allen.

To cite/link to this photo: Heather Wilkinson Rojo, "Merry Christmas, Hamilton, Massachusetts, 1950", Nutfield Genealogy, posted December 24, 2023, ( https://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2023/12/merry-christmas-hamilton-massachusetts.html: accessed [access date]).    

Tombstone Tuesday ~ more tombstones in a Museum

These reproduction Cape Cod tombstones are on display inside the American History Museum building, one of several special exhibition galleries and buildings at the Heritage Museums and Gardens on Cape Cod.    The building is a replica of a Revolutionary War era fort originally in New Windsor, New York.  The original was known as "The Temple" and it was where General George Washington awarded the first three Purple Heart military decorations.

These tombstones include copies of the epitaphs from the following Cape Cod "residents": Mercy B. Baxter, the dog "Little Pilot", George Thacher Lowell, Thomas Nickerson, Elizabeth Howes Fossett,  Apphia C. Dyer, Anna Russell, Joseph Parker, and John J. Gaspe.  The exhibition was called "The Art of the Departed" and it included gravestone rubbings and photographs.

Previously I had blogged here about a real gravestone on display at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston: http://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2011/02/gravestones-as-art-tombstone-tuesday.html

A sampling of some of the stones:

Emily                                 Here lies my body
The                                   Mouldering to clay
eighth daughter of              Flown to the Realms
Reuben Howes                  Of day.
and wife of                        Where all can dwell
Thomas W. Fossett           In peace and love
Died Sep. 19, 1885           In the beautiful city
Aged 72 Yrs, 3 Mos.        The fair courts above.

She was, words fail            I conversed with the spirits
to tell what:                        Of the dead for forty years
Think what a                      As well as with the living
woman should be;
She was that.

Cobb's Hill Cemetery, Barnstable
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In memory of my dog
Little Pilot
Born July 15, 1904
Died July 2, 1917
For twelve years a loved companion
And friend gentle, faithful and brave

Then don't you worry old comrade
And don't you fear to die.
For out in that fairer country
I will find you by and by.
And I'll stand by you old fellow,
And our love will surely win
For never a heaven shall harbor me,
Where they won't let Pilot in.

Osterville Cemetery
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Here lies the body of
JOHN J. GASPIE
Born in Pico, Azores
August 8, 1884
Died in Provincetown
July 3, 1961

For many years the Shellfish
Warden of this town, a true
conservationist, a raconteur
and wit, beloved by all
who knew him.

Death, you old bugger, you
can't be proud of me.  I'm
just a handful of dust.

Gifford Cemetery, Provincetown              
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This display was photographed at the Heritage Museum and Gardens, Sandwich, Massachusetts
http://heritagemuseumsandgardens.org/

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Copyright 2012, Heather Wilkinson Rojo

A Blogging Connection!

A package arrived in the mail last month from the Cogswell Family Association, along with a very nice letter and a copy of their latest newsletter. This journal is published three times a year, and it was filled with news, stories, photos and histories. I help edit the New Hampshire Mayflower Society newsletter, but our little journal is not much compared to this valuable little gem. Malcolm Cogswell sent me this nice package; he is the editor of the newsletter. He had read my blog posting in November about the shipwreck of the “Angel Gabriel” and thus sent me the journal, and some more information about the shipwreck, as well as an invitation by the Cogswell Family Historian to add my lineage to their data base.

I thought this was not only an extremely kind gesture, but it was also evidence of the power of blogging about genealogy. Previously I had relied on sending snail mail or email to the folks who had genealogical websites, or perhaps posting information and brickwall conundrums on genealogical bulletin boards. I usually found distant cousin relationships, good clues to expand the family tree, and sometimes brickwall breakthroughs- but they often took many months or sometimes many years to receive answers. This is one of the fastest replies I have ever had to good genealogical information!

Malcolm sent me the April 2008 issue, which had some updated information on the shipwreck of the “Angel Gabriel” in Pemaquid, Maine on August 15, 1635. The hurricane which caused the disaster is thought to be a strong Category 4 hurricane, according to a recent analysis by the Atmospheric Oceanic Meteorological Laboratory. It also caused severe damage at Plymouth (houses blown down), and at Dorchester (from accounts by John Winthrop). It was the same storm that sank the “Watch and Wait” and shipwrecked Anthony Thacher and his wife on the island off Gloucester still known today as Thacher’s Island. It was a storm that touched the lives of many New Englanders, from Massachusetts to Maine.

See my blog about the shipwreck here.

Thanks to Malcolm Cogswell and the Cogswell Family Association!

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Copyright 2009, Heather Wilkinson Rojo