My street on the west coast of the United States is one block long.  As I strolled along it this morning, I heard five languages as families got in and out of their cars – Spanish, Russian, Hindi, Chinese and French (that’s Philippe who lives right across the street from us).  Our block has one African American family – Shirley welcomed me with a potted plant when we moved in 30 years ago – and several gay couples. 

            This is of course nothing like St. Gaudens Road when Charlotte and William Westgate lived there in the last half of the nineteenth century, with the likely exception of a few gay people.  A typical 19th century farmer liked to see to it that at least one of his children lived nearby. (Who knows when he or his wife would need a caretaker?)  That is how William Westgate acquired the farm he operated: his future parents-in-law Daniel and Chloe Bryant (with their son Edward) sold it to him in 1862, a few months before William married Daniel’s daughter Charlotte.[1] 

            The Westgates’ nearby neighbors were the Bryants, Hildreths, Chases, Johnsons, Coles and Comings, many of whom had settled in the Cornish, N.H. area more than 100 years earlier and married with one another ever since.[2]  As a result, Charlotte (Bryant) Westgate was related to almost everyone in her social circle and her geographic area.  There were cousins everywhere.  Charlotte’s grandparents Israel and Mehitable (Wyman) Bryant had 13 children, most of whom made it to adulthood, and those 13 children produced 49 Bryant cousins.  On her mother’s Hildreth side, there were 10 cousins.[3] 

            This is all to suggest that it was a challenge to figure out who is in this picture of Charlotte Westgate and her cousins:[4]

            My own cousins and I can recognize Charlotte Westgate right away: she sits with her hands crossed in the middle of the front row.  Based on her apparent age (she died in March 1918, a week shy of her 77th birthday), I first guessed the picture was taken around 1910, when Charlotte was 69 years old.   Then I read William Westgate’s Diaries of the period, starting in 1909.  Bingo.  On May 13, 1909, William noted that “Lott had 5 cousins come to see her: Mrs. Pinney, Mrs. Fitch, Mrs. Melendy, Mrs. Reed and Abbie Gates.”  (It was William’s job to drive the wagon down to the train station in Windsor to pick up the ladies, which he did after he had “sowed oats and rolled the ground.”)  The cousins stayed overnight, leaving the next day in most cases.   

            So, who are these cousins? 

            We have another picture of one person in the picture who is identified, the lady wearing the light-colored dress. She is Elvira (Bryant) Reed (1838-1917), and was the daughter of Joseph Bryant, one of Israel Bryant’s six sons.[5] 

            Elvira had been a teacher in Cornish and Vermont schools before her marriage in 1865 to Edwin L. Reed (1839-1882), a bookbinder who lived in Claremont.  A long-time widow when Charlotte had her 1909 cousin party, Elvira lived in town rather than on a farm. She raised her only child, Clarence E. Reed (1868-1947), by herself.  He reciprocated by providing a home for Elvira and several boarders (including some of these very cousins from time to time).[6]  Clarence worked as a machinist at the Sullivan Machinery Company when the picture was taken, with his mother and small family on 30 Walnut Street in Claremont.  Elvira reported to the Census taker in 1910 that she had her “own income.”[7]  Elvira’s grandson Arthur Reed, born in 1894, was the first of Israel Bryant’s great-grandsons to be named Arthur.  (There were three.)

            The next problem was figuring out who “Mrs. Pinney” was.  William Westgate’s Diary gave me no first names to work with, and as a possible daughter of one of Israel Bryant’s daughters, she might be several surnames away from Bryant.  At this point I drew a family tree of Israel Bryant and his 13 children and their children, seeking any female first cousins of Charlotte Bryant who were born within ten years of her.  There were many candidates, and to complicate matters, several people favored the name “Mary” in either their wives or their daughters. 

                  Mrs. Pinney turned out to be one of the Mary Bryants, but was called by friends and family “Minnie Pinney” (1864-1913).  She was a daughter of Joshua Wyman Bryant, Israel’s fourth child.   I identified her partly by comparing the 1909 photo to another one in Peggy’s archive:

This picture commemorates a second gathering that took place at the Westgate farm in September 1912, three years after the first one.  Again, William Westgate enabled me to date it with a Diary entry: 

Thurs. 26 Sept. 1912. Lott’s Cousin Party today.  Mrs. Mary Hilliard and daughter and Angie Westgate here besides what came yesterday [Mr. and Mrs. Pinney, Mrs. Elvira Read, Mrs. [Susan] Melindy [sic], Mrs. Rowell, Mrs. Louisa Fitch and Abbie Gates]. 

            Mr. and Mrs. Pinney are in this photo, meaning that one of women in both pictures is Minnie Pinney.  (We can also identify Mattie Westgate Quimby and Angie Westgate,[8] the two younger women standing next to William Westgate.)  I came to the tentative conclusion that Minnie must be the one to the right of the man in the back row (the man on the left side of the picture is our great, great grandfather William Westgate). 

    The Pinneys, I think

            To make Minnie’s identification, I used a third picture, the sunniest one of all:

Here are the cousins again, with a rather priggish Arthur Quimby wearing his watchchain in the upper right corner, which dates the photo to around 1910.  (Arthur Quimby was born in 1898).  The little boy on the wall is Benton Pinney, Arthur’s second cousin, who was born in 1904 and grew up to be an orthodontist practicing in Woodstock as well as in several other cities in Vermont.  I haven’t yet determined who the little girl is – probably another second cousin of our grandfather Arthur.

            The stone house is the clue that helped me identify Minnie and her husband Benton Harte Pinney: it still stands at 12 Golf Avenue (near the corner of Maple) in Woodstock, Vermont.  This is what it looks like today:

            Benton and Minnie lived in the Golf Avenue house with their sons Arthur (1865-1919) and Burt for many years, worshipping at the Universalist Church in Windsor.  Burt Pinney (1868-1947) and Elvira’s grandson, Dr. Benton Pinney (1904-1972) kept the house while pursuing peripatetic lives.[9]

            It’s easy to identify “Mr. Pinney,” of course.  He is Benton Harte Pinney of Woodstock, Vermont, husband of Minnie Pinney.  I can well imagine that William Westgate enjoyed talking to Pinney when he visited – Benton and his construction firm built the Old Lincoln Bridge (wooden) in West Woodstock in 1868 across the Ottauquechee River.  The bridge is still standing and is still admired for its engineering.[10]

Picture by Jerrye and Roy Klotz MD

            To finish my goal of identifying the five cousins at the beginning of this piece, it remains to figure out who Abbie Gates, Mrs. Melendy and Mrs. Fitch were.  In the cases of Abbie Gates and Susan Melendy, I know some facts about them, but can’t be sure who is who in the picture.

            Abbie Gates attended both cousin parties in Cornish, so we know that she is one of the women who appears in all three pictures.  Abbie often visited the Westgate farm around 1910, according to William’s Diaries.  She lived in Plainfield when the picture was taken, working as housekeeper to Homer T. Cole (a male cousin).[11]  Abbie’s mother was another Mary Bryant (one of Israel Bryant’s seven daughters), who married a man named John Towbridge Gates of Claremont. 

            One of two unmarried women in the pictures, Abbie supported herself for much of her life as a dressmaker in Claremont, where she was born and where she is buried next to her parents.  (This makes the third known dressmaker among our paternal ancestors.) Only because I know what you need if you sew by hand or machine, I would guess Abbie is one of the two women wearing glasses.

            Mrs. Melendy also attended both cousin parties.  She was the daughter of Abigail (Bryant) Comings, one of Israel Bryant’s daughters.   Susan (Comings) Melendy also lived in Claremont, and was a widow with no children.  Could she be the severe-looking woman with the pulled back hair? 

            That leaves one unknown guest, Mrs. Fitch.  Elsewhere in his Diaries, William Westgate mentions a Louisa Fitch, but I can’t find any cousin by that name.  I leave it to some helpful reader to help me with this one!

            For the record, all of the five cousins and Charlotte died by 1919, all in their mid to late 70s.  Minnie Pinney went first in 1913 with “colitis,” Susan Melendy died a year later of “apoplexy” (a stroke), Abbie Gates expired in 1919 of “senile exhaustion” (I have that!), and Elvira Reed died in 1917.  Our Charlotte Westgate lived until March 1918 (and died of a “carbuncle,” which sounds like a tumor), leaving a widower who lived to be 88 (William died in 1929). 

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[1] N.H. Deeds, Book 77, page 15, deed recorded 1 February 1862; NH VR, Cornish.  In Daniel Bryant’s case, it was his son Edward Bryant, not Charlotte Westgate, who took in Chloe (Hildreth) Bryant in her old age. 

[2] The union of Marguerite Lewin and Arthur Quimby in 1921 was the last time anyone in my direct paternal line married a near-neighbor.

[3] For these names and numbers I relied on William Henry Child’s History of the town of Cornish, New Hampshire, Volume II (The Rumford Press, Concord, N.H., 1911).

[4] Uncle Tony was wrong when he suggested in his marginalia that two of the women were Charlotte’s sisters: she had no sister.

[5] The picture of Elvira (Bryant) Reed is in Peggy’s archive.

[6] See, for example, the 1880 Census records for Claremont, N.H..

[7] As I researched these cousins, it became clear that they moved naturally into one another’s homes as they aged, sometimes bringing some income with them, more often bringing a willingness to pitch in.  For example, Elvira’s son Clarence Reed boarded Minnie Pinney for a while (while Benton was still alive, curiously).  Earlier in her life while Edwin Reed was still alive (in 1880) Elvira had provided a home for her cousin Abbie Gates, who never married.

[8] Angie (Chadbourne) was the wife of William and Charlotte’s son Earle, a man I knew as “Uncle Earle.”  William had set up his son Earle as manager of the “Creamery” on the River Road in Cornish, to which he or Elwin Quimby carted milk three or four days a week.  Angie (Chadbourne) Westgate had no children.

[9] The Pinney family was very mobile by my paternal family’s usual standards: Minnie’s son Burt, for example, worked in the hotel business in Pasadena, California, Bermuda and the White Mountains for 20 years.  He also pursued several careers – printer, hotelier and salesman – and hunted and fished avidly.  His son the dentist, who practiced orthodonture in Woodstock for years, had at least as many interests as his father, appearing in plays throughout his life, running for school board, competing in bowling and golf leagues.  He even took part in a ping-pong tournament in 1942 (before serving in the second World War).

[10] See Wikipedia, “Old Lincoln Bridge, Woodstock, Vermont” and Vermont Standard

[11] Homer’s mother was Lucinda Bryant, one of the daughters of the prolific Israel Bryant.