School Days

Edgerly School Second Grade- 1931

My mom came from a mid-sized factory town in central Massachusetts. Fitchburg was almost past its best days even when she was a girl. But a university was established there: Fitchburg Normal School, later Fitchburg Teachers College and now Fitchburg State College. The schools around the university became "lab" schools for the trainees. This is where my mom and her cousins went to school in the lower grades.

From my mom's house on Garfield Street it wouldn't have been a terrible walk, but very cold and treacherous in the winter. My mom recalls wearing layers of clothes against the cold winds whipping down North Street.  Brrr...

The second grade picture above shows my mom- second row far right grinning at the camera. That might be her friend Pauline Morency (Punky) right next to her. On the first row with the very straight bangs and shiny dark hair is Jane Tapply. We think the little girl with the white collar to Jane's left would be Ferne Tapply. The three cousins were in school together all 12 grades.

Edgerly School Grade 6- abt 1935

Here's some of the same group again in 6th grade. This time, my mom is the one at the end of the arrow. Second row, second from right. I can't be sure, but I think Jane is right in front of her. Jane was always very dark-haired and petite. We believe Ferne is to the far left on the front row with her hands clasped.

School is back in session. It's picture day this month in a lot of schools. It made me dig out these pictures and take another look.

Throwback Thursday

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In honor of a hot July day, I thought I'd take a trip to the beach. My family liked to go up to the Maine beaches, but the back of the photo doesn't tell us where this was taken. From the back we have:
Lotta Smith, Primrose Rogers Tapply, Clara Smith, and Primrose (Primsy) Rogers. Love those bathing costumes and the bathing shoes. This was about 1930.

Sophronia Richardson Smith

Or Genealogical Coincidence....

South Russell Street

Yesterday I was exploring the recently indexed records that have been added to FamilySearch and of course that led down another rabbit hole. Before I knew it I was exploring the unindexed records (which you have to browse) using dates from my tree to narrow the search. I found the death record, or I should say the coroner's report, for my 2X great grandmother Sophronia Richardson Smith. Sophronia came from Litchfield, Maine, married Reuben Lowell Smith and raised their family in the area around Boston. They lived in Waltham, Groton, Concord, and Littleton. What caught my attention was the address on this record:

44 South Russell Street is an area on what's called the "back side" of Beacon Hill. The large houses were broken up into small apartments. So in 1894, at the time of her death, Sophronia was living in an apartment in that neighborhood. Maybe with one of her children. But that address seemed awfully familiar. So I did some poking in my records and found this:

This record is from the City Directory files on Ancestry. This is the 1948 directory from several pages

of Rogers living in Boston. In 1948, my mom Primrose Rogers, had left her hometown of Fitchburg and was a secretary living in Boston at 54 South Russell in a little apartment. As a child I heard many stories about her life in Boston at this time just before she married my dad.

Sophronia's great grandchild ended up living just a block away from her last home. Not a wild coincidence, but considering the size of the city of Boston??  I thought it was interesting.