family history notes
Jul. 10th, 2007 02:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fleaMostly stuff I learned new this weekend:
When we came into my grandfather's apartment he noted that I struck him as very reminiscent of his mother ("although obviously I haven't seen her in many years".) My mother thinks it's because she had thick, sandy hair (I've mentioned my current hairpocalyse, right?) Her name was Jane Augusta Spurr, and she came to Boston as a nurse from Nova Scotia, when she was from. Her family had apple orchards near Annapolis Royal. At dinner my grandfather talked about his Uncle Gene - presumably her brother - who was angry that his eldest son (who flew a bomber) had been killed in World War 2 and volunteered, became a prisoner of war camp guard, and was shipped off to Alberta. Surviving children - my grandfather's cousins - included Alden Spurr (who is still living and looks just like my grandfather) and Shirley. (Though possibly Shirley was Alden's wife. In any case, she recently died.) Jennie (my great grandmother) married Ormon Earl Bassett and they had a daughter, Rosemary, who died in infancy, and then my grandfather (in 1922). My mother reports she saw little of "Jane and B" ("why B?" "maybe Jane called her husband 'Mr. B'?") - her paternal grandparents. I think they and Rosemary are buried in Mount Vernon Cemetery (in Boston). Jane died in 1970 or 1971, of cancer. B had predeceased her.
She was much closer to her maternal grandparents, Mary and Bill, both of whom I knew when I was a child. Bill (William Kyle Smith) taught at St. John's College, Annapolis (he was a PhD in Philosophy, possibly from the University of Chicago?), and his wife, the former Mary Dickey, was a former schoolteacher. Martha Porter Smith (called Porter), my grandmother, attended Gaucher College for a year and was not asked to return; she then did a secretarial course and worked at the MD State House before meeting and marrying my grandfather (who was USNA '46). Not sure why she was so unintellectual, as the child of two educators. Her younger brother Billy (WKS Jr) did his undergraduate work at St. John's and got his MD at UVA. Porter died of a stroke at 49 in 1974. She and Billy had had rheumatic fever as children and she had untreated high blood pressure. He still has heart problems - and was a cardiologist. Bill died in the early 1980s, I think, and Mary went into a nursing home near Richmond (where Billy and his wife Nancy live). I remember visiting her there and she thought my mother was Porter. She died in the fall of 1988, when I was in France. Billy is now 80 or 81. Mother mentioned that she remembers Mary and Bill having a black cook named Jane, whom they drove home to Eastport (the black side of Annapolis) after work.
When we came into my grandfather's apartment he noted that I struck him as very reminiscent of his mother ("although obviously I haven't seen her in many years".) My mother thinks it's because she had thick, sandy hair (I've mentioned my current hairpocalyse, right?) Her name was Jane Augusta Spurr, and she came to Boston as a nurse from Nova Scotia, when she was from. Her family had apple orchards near Annapolis Royal. At dinner my grandfather talked about his Uncle Gene - presumably her brother - who was angry that his eldest son (who flew a bomber) had been killed in World War 2 and volunteered, became a prisoner of war camp guard, and was shipped off to Alberta. Surviving children - my grandfather's cousins - included Alden Spurr (who is still living and looks just like my grandfather) and Shirley. (Though possibly Shirley was Alden's wife. In any case, she recently died.) Jennie (my great grandmother) married Ormon Earl Bassett and they had a daughter, Rosemary, who died in infancy, and then my grandfather (in 1922). My mother reports she saw little of "Jane and B" ("why B?" "maybe Jane called her husband 'Mr. B'?") - her paternal grandparents. I think they and Rosemary are buried in Mount Vernon Cemetery (in Boston). Jane died in 1970 or 1971, of cancer. B had predeceased her.
She was much closer to her maternal grandparents, Mary and Bill, both of whom I knew when I was a child. Bill (William Kyle Smith) taught at St. John's College, Annapolis (he was a PhD in Philosophy, possibly from the University of Chicago?), and his wife, the former Mary Dickey, was a former schoolteacher. Martha Porter Smith (called Porter), my grandmother, attended Gaucher College for a year and was not asked to return; she then did a secretarial course and worked at the MD State House before meeting and marrying my grandfather (who was USNA '46). Not sure why she was so unintellectual, as the child of two educators. Her younger brother Billy (WKS Jr) did his undergraduate work at St. John's and got his MD at UVA. Porter died of a stroke at 49 in 1974. She and Billy had had rheumatic fever as children and she had untreated high blood pressure. He still has heart problems - and was a cardiologist. Bill died in the early 1980s, I think, and Mary went into a nursing home near Richmond (where Billy and his wife Nancy live). I remember visiting her there and she thought my mother was Porter. She died in the fall of 1988, when I was in France. Billy is now 80 or 81. Mother mentioned that she remembers Mary and Bill having a black cook named Jane, whom they drove home to Eastport (the black side of Annapolis) after work.
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Date: 2007-07-10 11:54 pm (UTC)Indeed, all in one plot, and a flat stone the size of a tea tray. The logic we came up with is that Rosemary was buried there, and then Ormon died and Jane kept his ashes on the mantel or something, till she died, and they were buried as a package deal in the plot Rosemary already had. Mt. Vernon is in Cambridge, near the river, and our plot is a tiny one in the back not terribly far from Bernard Malamud.
(There's a separate double-barrelled 6-person Bassett plot in there, of which I remember few details except one of the husbands was lost at sea on his way to back up Commodore Perry butting in on Japan, in the 1850s.)