dead relatives #1

[flea]

Before Mount Auburn cemetery, we went to Woodbrook Cemetery in Woburn, established 1854. It's right downtown, between Salem and Beech streets. (http://www.yeoldewoburn.net/Woodbrook.htm)





My family plot was purchased by M. G. Wheeler, Lot 563. It's located on Pilgrim Ave, within eyeshot of the cemetery's office building. Seven people are buried there:

William Watson Hill (1851-1934), and his wife Frances Wheeler Hill (1958-1928). These are my great-great grandparents. Their stones are granite and in good shape; they match, and hers does indeed say "She was and is a Saint."





I found these notes at a website made by my father's first cousin, Kenneth Coar:
[1993-04-19, from notes by Edward Sears Castle] [my note: also a first cousin of my father]
'WILLIAM WATSON HILL was a druggist in Woburn, Mass., at the time of
his marriage to Cornelia Frances Wheeler in 1882. His father had died
when he was seven, and he must have started work early in support of
his widowed mother and his two sisters. William's wife had been taught
by her mother, had attended high school, and had earned enough as a
teacher to spend a year at Wellsley College; William always seems to
have exaggerated the educational gap between him and his adored wife
and her relatively intellectual family environment. After the birth of
their two daughters, Avis Wheeler (1885) and Elizabeth (1895), William
sold his drugstore and became an insurance agent, based in Boston. The
family lived for many years in the celebrated North Woburn house,
moveing to Winchester, Mass., after their daughters' marriages; many
summer vacations memorable to their visiting grandchildren were spent
at the beach at Bay View (Saco), Maine. The success and strength of this
marriage were fittingly symbolized by William Hill's insistence, even in
the face of family disapproval, that the epitaph on his wife's grave
should read: "She was and is a saint".'

I know a fair amount about Frances (named Cornelia Frances) because of a manuscript written by my grandmother, who loved her very much.

Then we have my great-great-great grandparents, Frances Cochran Parkinson Wheeler (1819-1905) and Rev. Melancthon Gilbert Wheeler (1802-1870), parents of Cornelia Frances.



Melancthon is sadly broken. Remaining reads: in Charlotte VT May 22 1802 Died in Woburn Feb. 9 1870.

Again from Coar's website:
[1993-04-19, from notes by Edward Sears Castle]
'MELANCTHON GILBERT WHEELER was born in Charlotte, Vt., a Lake
Champlain town immediately south of Burlington. He became a minister,
married, and lost his first wife after the birth of two children. In 1848
he married Frances Parkinson at a time when he had relinquished his
pastorate for reasons of health and was clerk for a missionary society.
The family lived for several years in Auburn and in Auburndale, Mass.
Melancthon then took up the ministry again and the family moved
successively to S. Dartmouth, Mass., Grafton, Vt., and finally in 1865 to
North Woburn, Mass. Here until his death in 1870 he was minister of the
North Congregational Society, living in a charming galleried, colonial
house that figures much in family annals and memories. This sometimes
mis-named "Count Rumford House" had been built in anticipation that the
famous (and traitorous) Count Rumford would return to Woburn from
Europe and occupy it, which he never did. Melancthon's death left his
widow and five children born to them. The oldest boy, John Henry
Wheeler, became a professor of Greek, and his daughter Frances
Parkinson Wheeler later achieved distinction as an author, writing under
her married name Frances Parkinson Keyes. But Melancthon's daughter
Cornelia Frances Wheeler is foremost for our purposes, since in 1882 she
married William W. Hill.'

[my note: I think he is wrong by a generation about Frances Parkinson Keyes - I think she was a first cousin and contemporary of my great-grandmother Avis Wheeler Hill Berle, Frances and William's elder daughter; her birthdate in Wikipedia backs me up. It's an understandable mistake in a family where multiple people in every generation are named Frances!]



Transcribed as best I could: Frances C. P. Wheeler, wife of Rev. M. G. Wheeler Born Mar. 9 1819 Died Jan. ? 1905 [note: burial card from cemetery suggests Jan 4.] Thy word have ?? mine heart ?? not sin against him/them

[1993-04-19, from notes by Edward Sears Castle]
'FRANCES PARKINSON attended local schools in New Boston and beginning
at the age of 16 taught for two summers in a Mont Vernon, N.H., school.
On the death of her mother in 1837, the family moved to Nashua where
better schooling was available. Frances attended the Nashua Academy
there, taught at the Milford (N.H.) Female Seminary, and was herself
accepted as a special student at the Female Seminary opened in
Massachusetts by Mary Lyon in 1837 (later Mt. Holyoke College). Next she
was for four years principal of the Girls High School in Northampton,
Mass., and then at the age of 29 married Melancthon Wheeler, a former
minister aged 46 with two children by a former marriage.'

Also in the plot are, I think, two other daughters of Melancthon, and a son-in-law. Mary Wheeler Almy married Captain John C. Almy.





Transcribed: Capt John C. Almy December 8 1825 April 27 1906 his wife Mary Wheeler March 9 1834 September 27 1904

This would presumably make Mary a daughter of Melancthon by his first wife, since Melancthon and Frances did not marry until 1848. John Almy was presumably a Captain as a result of Civil War service.

The last grave is Caroline Parkinson Wheeler's, and nothing could be read of the inscription but the first two names:



She's listed as Caroline P. Wheeler on the lot card from the cemetery. She's not in the genealogy, nor is Mary, and there are no dates of birth or death visible on the stone or in the lot card.