Four or more generations of all the people on my father’s side lived in peace, prosperity and little (but some!) scandal for over 200 years in the Connecticut River Valley around Windsor (and Caledonia County), Vermont and Sullivan County, New Hampshire.  Today I will consider Wilbur and Lucinda (Marshall) Quimby, who were Arthur Quimby’s paternal grandparents.  They lived over the hill from the Westgate farm close to Cornish Flat in what started as a brick house, the so-called Milton Wyman farm. As a child, my grandfather Arthur was taken to their ill-heated house (according to Martha Quimby’s Diary) for dinner on many Sunday evenings. 

            The Quimbys bought the Milton Wyman place in 1880 at auction for $1,718.  It comprised 140 acres and the homestead.[1]  The original house burned down, according to Myron Quimby, a grandson (son of Ernest Quimby) who was raised there by his grandmother Lucinda after his mother died.  “The chimney had burnt out, and the fire began in the attic.  Back then they had the bucket brigade so we couldn’t do anything.”[2]  His grandfather Wilbur rebuilt, making sure to include an ample front door on the house so that there would be room for him to exit in his coffin when the time came, which it did not long after the reconstruction.[3]

            Wilbur (1834-1908) had been brought up in Unity, N.H. by Benjamin Quimby and Persis (Gee) Quimby (along with his two brothers and a sister).  Lucinda Marshall (1839-1930) was also raised in Unity, by her mother Maria (Abbot) Marshall, along her younger sister Lavina. John Marshall, Lucinda’s father, had died when she was seven, after the other four children had left home.  The Marshalls were renting a room to a boarder in 1860.

            In their late teens, Wilbur and his future wife went to work in a mill in Marlborough, New Hampshire, according to Myron Quimby.[4]  (The mill most likely manufactured woolen goods, since Lucinda would probably not have been good at fashioning pail handles or bucket staves, some of the other products produced in Marlborough’s mills at that time.)  Wilbur left to work in Wisconsin in his early twenties.[5]  Lucinda travelled there to marry him around 1857 or 58, although I haven’t found a marriage record.  Their first son, Frederick, was born in November 1858.  

            Wilbur’s father Benjamin Quimby died in 1859 (at age 59), which is probably what brought Wilbur and Lucinda home to New Hampshire.  Using money from selling their rights in the land that Wilbur inherited from his father to his brother Milan/Meland, the couple put out tentative roots in Charlestown, N.H.[6]  They purchased a number of small lots in that town, and had three more sons while living in Charlestown: the twins Elwin and Erwin born in 1863

and Ernest, born in 1868.[7]

            Although my father didn’t remember Lucinda well – she died when he was five – Grandma Quimby appears to have been an affectionate woman who was especially attached to her grandchildren.   In most pictures I have of her, Lucinda is holding a baby. (She wrote to Arthur Quimby in 1925 that she wanted “to see the baby [Conrad] so bad dear darling how Granma loves him”). At around five feet tall, she was lovely as a young woman and stayed trim all her life.    During the 22 years of her widowhood – she lived to be 91 – Lucinda Quimby continued to run her farm with the help of Myron, who lived with her until her death. 

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[1] N.H. Deeds, Sullivan County, Book 113, p. 97).  The Quimbys sold the farm a few months later to Hiram A. Day for nearly the amount they had purchased it for, $1,700; my guess is they were short of cash and opted to rent from Day until they could afford to buy the place back in 1891, which they did (Book 149, p. 223). 

[2] Susan Gilman, “Myron Quimby Gives Up Politics, But Not His Farm,” Valley News, March 1, 1984, p. 14.

[3] This according to Myron’s daughter, who still lives in the house. Wilbur suffered a stroke about 18 months before he died; his death certificate states that the cause of death was “senile debility.”

[4] Letter from Arthur Quimby to Conrad, Carol and Tony Quimby, January 1, 1981: “[Myron] reports that the family did live in Marlboro, that Grandpa Q. worked in a mill there & Grandma also briefly.  Seems that Uncle Erwin took Grammy, father, Hoyt [Erwin’s son] & Myron to an Old Home Day there and were shown the mill where the parents had worked.  Another bit of family history uncovered.”

[5] Henry Cole Quinby’s Genealogical history of the Quinby (Quimby) family in England and America, Part 2, (New York City, 1915), pp. 405-6.  So far I’ve found no records of their time in Wisconsin.

[6] Another brother, Francis Levi, became a leading light in Unity, N.H.  (The Manchester Union Leader wrote this about Francis when he was 82 years old:  “Glorious, invigorating New Hampshire!  There’s Francis L. Quimby of Claremont, for example, who fells trees, loads them upon sleds, teams them home, and cuts them up into firewood in winter and tills the soil at a good profit in summer.”  (Henry Cole Quinby, Genealogical history of the Quinby (Quimby) family in England and America, Part 2, (New York City, 1915), p. 404.)

[7] Persis shared her house in Unity with Wilbur [mistakenly recorded as William B.] and Lucinda in 1860 (1860 Census, Charlestown, N.H.).  By 1870, Wilbur and Lucinda lived in Unity.  They moved to Cornish in their mid-forties, in 1880.