It’s That Time Again!

Saturday night means genealogy fun with Randy Seaver! This week’s challenge on Genea-Musings is the other half of last week’s challenge, where we shared male relatives with great facial hair. This week, it’s the ladies’ turn to show of their in vogue hairstyles.

I have always loved the elegant confidence that this young lady exudes.

Mary A. Vickery

This very fashionable young lady is Mary A. Vickery, daugher of Charles Stiles Vickery and Elizabeth (Lizzie) Tarbox. Lizzie was the sister of my 2X great grandmother, Nellie Tarbox Adams, so Mary was her niece.

I inherited this photo, which was part of the Tarbox family pictures handed down to my care.

The opportunity to visit Boston with her father (I have a matching photo of him taken at the same studio), traveling all the way from Calais, Washington Maine, must have been a very exciting prospect for Mary.

Not only is her hair the very current style for the mid-1880s, her accented high collar and tight fitting dress were also in vogue. I have to wonder if, as part of her trip to Boston, her father allowed her to have her hair professionally done and perhaps bought her a pretty new dress for this formal portrait.

Mary was born in May 1872 in Calais, the eldest of five children born to Charles and Lizzie. However, her family story is quite sad. She married Vernon Margrove Wentworth on New Year’s Day 1895 in Calais.

Mary died on 10 February 1909 and was buried at Calais Cemetery. Vernon, born 5 March 1870, also died very young, passing away on 3 November 1922.

Daughter Nola and son Lester were the only family members left. Their loss must have been heartbreaking, as both left Calais. There are no descendants of this family today.

Vernon and Mary had three children of their own:

1. Nola, born 4 July 1905, Calais, Washington, Maine; died November 1978, Wilton, Hillsboro, New Hampshire. Nola became an accomplished teacher, but never married and has no descendants.
2. Lloyd Vernon, born 24 August 1896, Calais, Washington, Maine; died 1917 and is buried in Calais. He never married and has no descendants. I have not been able to find his cause of death.
3. Lester R., born 30 October 1901, Calais, Washington, Maine; married Eva Ludgate MacLay, 26 January 1926, St. Stephen, New Brunswick, Canada. Lester and Eva were living in Croton-on-Hudson, Cortlandt, Westchester, New York in 1940 and he was working as a chemist at a paper company. Lester and Eva reportedly had no children.

An aside to this photo is that it was taken by a female photographer, Miss Addie M. Gendron, known to have worked in Watertown, New York in the 1870s and in Boston, Massachusetts in the 1880s and 1890s.

Wikimedia Commons

NOTE: Addie M. Gendron was single, born about 1846, possibly in Sorel, Quebec, Canada, where she was living in 1861 with her father Joseph Gendron, her mother Nathalie Ayott and her brother, George. She died on 9 March 1904 of heart failure in Stoneham, Middlesex, Massachusetts and was buried there in Lindenwood Cemetery. Her death certificate gives her age as 49, but I wonder if she wasn’t quite upfront about her age or the informant guessed.

Thanks, Randy, for another fun SNGF.