Sunday's Obituary ~ 1891 Sudden Death

Mary E. Ashby is one of my second great-grandmothers. It appeared that she died rather suddenly.

The following death notice is from page 3 of the July 8, 1891, Chicago Tribune, found at Fold3.

Mary's daughter, Mrs. Charles C. Adsit, is her younger daughter, Mary Bowman Ashby, who had married Charles Chapin Adsit the previous October 30, 1890.

I will be sharing more information about this second great-grandmother in the next few days.

(Almost) Wordless Wednesday ~ Hurstmont Photos

Thank you to a reader of my blog, whose great-grandfather, Rudolph Hermes, was superintendent gardener at Hurstmont when James Tolman Pyle owned it. Below are a few pictures that he shared with me.

The first two are mounted photographs that he found in his father's home.

One view of one of Hurstmont's gardens

Another view of the gardens. At the far right is the house.

A postcard of "Pyle's Residence, Morristown, N.J."

You can see more pictures and a description of the home in 1907 in the June 1907 issue of American Homes and Gardens, which is found at Google Books, searching for American Homes and Gardens Hurstmont.

Wells and Willis Family in Brookline in 1860

My 3rd great grandparents household in Brookline, Massachusetts as enumerated in the 1860 U.S. Federal Census. (Thomas' middle initial should be G not D.)

Ancestry.com, database online. Year: 1860; Census Place: Brookline, Norfolk, Massachusetts;
Roll: M653_514; Page 747; Record for Thomas D. Wells [sic]

Thomas D. Wells is 54 years old, no occupation listed, and incorrectly listed as being born in New York. (He was born in New Hampshire.) $10,000 represents the value of his real estate and $3,000 represents the value of his personal estate.

His wife, Elizabeth S. Wells, is 49 years old with $150,000 as the value of real estate owned. This was a lot of money in 1860 (assuming it's not an enumerator error)! (See an interesting online calculator at MeasuringWorth.) And, yes, she is correctly listed as being born in Maine.

Their children are listed: Eliza (age 21), Henry (age 19, and a sailor, who died in 1864 - see Forest Hills gravestone), and Louisa (age 12, and in school) were born in Massachusetts, and Benjamin (age 4) was born in New Hampshire.

Wordless Wednesday ~ Eliza May Wells

This branch (Willis / Wells / Greeley) of the family is one with quite a few photographs. Following are several of my second great grandmother, Eliza May Wells (20 Aug 1839 - 18 Sep 1880).

Eliza May Wells circa 1857

Eliza May Greeley
Wife of Samuel S. Greeley
almost 18 yrs. old

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Matrilineal Monday ~ Eliza May Wells

Eliza May Wells, my second great grandmother, was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on August 20, 1839, to Thomas Goodwin Wells and Elizabeth Sewall Willis.

She spent her childhood in Merrimack and Walpole, New Hampshire, based on the fact that I find her father and family in Merrimack, Hillsborough, New Hampshire, in the 1840 U.S. Federal Census and I find the family in Walpole, Cheshire, New Hampshire, in the 1850 U.S. Federal Census.

Louisa May Alcott was a cousin who spent time with her "Wells cousins in New Hampshire."

By 1860, her family had moved to Brookline, Norfolk, Massachusetts and in 1866, she married, as his second wife, a first cousin of her mother, Samuel Sewall Greeley, in either Brookline or Cambridge, Massachusetts. (See their marriage record here.) See Samuel Sewall Greeley's obituary for more about him.

Eliza May (Wells) Greeley then moved to Chicago, where she gave birth to five children:
Elizabeth Sewall Greeley (1867 - 1868)
Ann Percival Greeley (1869 - 1876)
Henry Sewall Greeley (1871 - 1877)
Ethel May Greeley (1875 - 1931), my great grandmother. See a photograph of her.
Ruth Lyman Greeley (1878 - 1975), who deserves her own blog post one of these days.

She was also step-mother to three sons of Samuel and his first wife.

She applied for a passport application on September 25, 1879 in Chicago, Illinois. Her brother Benjamin W. Wells confirmed that she was who she stated she was.

Ancestry.com, U.S. Passport Applications, 1795-1925. Record for Eliza M. Greeley (1879)