I this blog I’d like to examine the circumstances behind how
the various couple in my family tree met. I’ll start by looking at my four sets
of great-grandparents, then my two sets of grandparents, then my parents, and
finishing up with describing how I met my own wife.
Great-grandparents
Louis Russell and Anna (Annie) Merchant – Louis was
the oldest child of Walter Russell and Lois Ann Cook. The family lived in Kent,
CT, a small town in NE Connecticut. When he was 11 his mother passed away. His
father remarried a few years later, to a woman by the name of Cornelia Sutphin.
The family moved to the nearest major population center, New Milford, CT, but
even New Milford had a population of less than 5000 people.
Annie had been born in Dutchess County, NY (right across the
border from the part of CT where Louis lived) to immigrant parents. By the
1890s it appears that the family may have moved across the border into CT as
that is where Anna’s older siblings had married and settled.
Louis and Annie met in New Milford. They were the same age,
and were both “newbies” in that small town, having lived elsewhere during their
growing up years. But with so many things in common, they would have had a
natural affinity to each other They were married in New Milford in 1892 when they
were not yet 21. They settled initially in Sherman, CT, a small town just a few
miles to the west along the CT/NY border, then later moved to Cornwall, CT, about
20 miles upriver from New Milford, and eventually back to New Milford.
Maurice Levy and Caroline Northrop – Like Louis and
Annie, Maurice and Caroline had much in common. Maurice had been born in Brooklyn,
NY to immigrant Jewish parents, but the family had moved to New Milford, CT
when he was only a few months old. Caroline had been born in Lee, MA, but her family
also moved to New Milford when she was only age 2. In 1880, Maurice and
Caroline were only a few pages apart in the census records, so they would have
been school mates during their growing up years, although he was two years
older than she. They married in New Milford in 1893, when he was 23 and she was
21. They moved back to Brooklyn shortly thereafter.
Wilson Pierpont and Annie Merrill – Wilson and Annie
were both from families who had been in Waterbury, CT for several generations. Both
families lived in the east end of Waterbury, and were fairly close to Wolcott
where they each had family connections. However, they were not neighbors like
my other great-grandparents, and since Wilson’s father was a farmer and Annie’s
father was a printer, they would not have had business dealings with each other.
However, it’s possible that both families attended the same church. I am not
able to state with any certainty how Wilson and Annie met each other.
Clarence Blackman and Alice Talmadge – The Blackman
and Talmadge families were both large families from the same section of the
town of Prospect, CT. Clarence’s father was the local blacksmith and would have
given services to Alice’s father who was a farmer. Being only seven months
apart in age and attending the same small school in Prospect, Clarence and
Alice would have also known each other in that environment. So, a link between
the two would be quite natural. I am fortunate enough to have a picture of a
joint Blackman/Talmadge family reunion taken about 20 years after their
marriage.
Grandparents
Erskine Russell and Vera Levy – Like their parents,
Erskine and Vera had much in common. Erskine’s parents had married in New
Milford, but he was born in Sherman, then later the family had moved to Cornwall.
The family moved back to New Milford when Erskine was about 7, but following
the birth of his youngest sister, his mother died. For a while the younger 3 siblings
were sent to live with relatives in New Milford. His father remarried and the
youngest daughter came back to live with the family. But Erskine’s youngest
brother had also passed away in the meantime and his second youngest brother chose
to remain living with relatives.
Vera’s parents had also been married in New Milford, but
they had moved to Brooklyn, NY where she and her sister were born. Vera’s
father passed away in 1910 when Vera was young teenager and her mother moved
the family back to New Milford almost immediately.
Thus, both Erskine and Vera found themselves in the 1910s in
New Milford – Erskine living with a father, step-mother, and three of his
younger siblings, and Vera living with her mother and younger sister. They married
in 1914, both of them being but age 19, apparently in an attempt to “escape”
their family life. They moved to Bridgeport, CT. But with the stresses in their
respective backgrounds and improper motives for getting married the marriage
did not go well. They had two children, then separated, got back together for a
short time, then divorced and each married someone older (in Erskine’s case, 10
years older, in Vera’s case, 30 years older). They were apparently each looking
for the mother/father figure that they had lost when one of their parents had
died.
Harold Pierpont and Sara Blackman – Harold and Sara
both grew up in Prospect, CT – he with foster parents with whom he had been
placed when his mother died only a few days after he was born, and she with her
parents. They were only two months apart in age and both attended the same
small school in Prospect for their education. They married just three weeks
after Harold turned 21.
Parents
Vernon Russell and Sylvia Pierpont – My father had
been born in Bridgeport, CT, but the family moved several times during his
growing up years – to Waterbury, back to Bridgeport, to Danbury, then to New
Milford. Then during 11th grade, he left home and went to live with
his grandparents in Waterbury. There he finally established some “roots” and
made a number of good friends. Just around the corner was the Hill family with
his best friend Harold and Harold’s older brother, Bob, who married Vernon’s
older sister. A block in the other direction was Mill Plain Church where he
made friends with the Pierpont family, especially the oldest son, Clarence
(Zeke). Vernon, Harold, Bob, and Zeke, all graduated from high school and
worked at one of the brass factories in Waterbury. During WWII, all of them
also served their country.
My mother was the younger sister of Zeke, and with four
years difference in their ages, did not have a relationship with the older
boys. She had also gone to hairdressing school in Hartford after graduation
from high school and so had been absent from the social scene in Waterbury. But
when WWII began, she returned to her home in Waterbury and rejoined the young
people’s group at church. At the time she was dating someone else.
Those in the young people’s group who were not serving in
the war began writing letters to those who were serving. Thus, it was that
someone mentioned that my mother was knitting “little things” for babies in a
letter that was sent to my father. When he wrote back asking why, she jokingly
replied in the next letter, “you should know, you’re the father.” This began a
repartee that went on for several months. In the meantime, my mother had broken
up with her former boyfriend, but my father didn’t know that.
Nonetheless, when my father finally returned from his
service abroad, he was staying temporarily with his sister and brother-in-law
who lived just a few blocks from my mother. He looked her up, found that she was
not “spoken for” and they became engaged just a few weeks later.
Myself and my wife
Unlike all my ancestors above, my wife and I did not have
any geography in common. I was born and raised in CT and she was born and raised
in upper MI. However, our paths crossed for a brief period of time and that’s
all it took.
I had chosen to go to college at Michigan State University.
I had finished my undergraduate degree and was working on a graduate degree,
but still living in the same off-campus housing unit. My wife had worked for a
year after high school, then enrolled in a local community college, and finally
into a program at MSU that was an intern program where she only spent two
quarters on campus – the summer before her junior year and the spring of her
junior year. Thus, the 10 weeks of that spring quarter were the only time that
we were on campus together.
A friend and I had come out the back door of the living
unit. The unit had a total of 100 residents, 50 male and 50 female, with a
shared dining room and student center in the middle, but the parking lot was
behind the male side. Thus it was that we saw a vehicle we did not recognize
with a pair of female legs sticking out from under it. We did not think that
was an appropriate thing for a female to be doing, so we pulled her out,
discovered that she had been trying to unjam the linkage in the transmission
(and she apparently didn’t know that you needed to have a second person pushing
in the clutch when you did so). We unjammed it for her and I thought to myself,
any girl who would try that is worth knowing. I found out who she was, then
asked her out a few days later. By the end of the quarter we were “pinned”, I
visited her nearly every weekend during the summer, we got engaged on Labor Day
weekend, then married the following summer. The rest, as they say, is history.
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