Looking Back: A Story of a Judge and His Family

Contents

Preface

Early Queenans in Salem

Grampa Queenan and Young Dad

Mom and Dad’s Courting Years during Prohibition

The Donovan Clan and a Future Cardinal

The Woods—Back to the Mayflower

The Many Breivogels and Young Arthur A. Wood

Arthur Meets Milly

The Scholls and Young Milly

Milly and Arthur—Early Married Years

Queenans in Irish Catholic Roslindale

Youth at Sagamore Beach

Living in Upscale Waban

Boston College and Helen

Dating in Lively Scituate

The Army—Weekends Home

Law School—Young Couple in the City

In the Court’s Ivory Tower—Brinks Robbery and Sacco

& Vanzetti

A Reader in West Roxbury Surrounded by Relatives

An Irish Catholic Lawyer in a Yankee Legal World

Pittsfield—Learning to Practice Law without a Teacher

Booming Old Worcester

Years at 220 Mower Street—Babies, Marriage Advisors and Missiles

Business Practice at Bowditch & Dewey

Bobby Kennedy—Campaign with a Tragic End

Years at 43 Metcalf Street—Parties, Kennebunkport

and Schools

Skiing in Eaton Center

Unguided Travel—Caribbean, Europe, Rio and Kenya

An Evolving Legal Career—Trials and Reorganizations

Bad Judge Commission—Court Committee on Legal Education

A Doomed Business Venture

Early Married Years at Sagamore Beach—House Addition and a Club

Kentucky Derby

Years at 10 Phillips Road—Barbecues and Lobsters

Children in College—Their Struggles and Ours

On the Bench Making Law

Two Civic Activities—A Road and A College

European House Swaps—Alaskan Trip with

a Special Guide

Children’s Weddings—England, Armenia and Elsewhere

Children’s Careers

Retirement—Changing Worcester and War Protests

Sarasota and Sunrise Cove

Grandchildren

More Travel—Europe, Hawaii, Costa Rica, Australia and Baltic Ports

Road from Here

To my parents, James F. and Helene A. Queenan, and

my wife Helen’s parents, Arthur A. and Emelia R. Wood

Preface

There is a lot here about lawyers, legal training, trials and my role as a judge. I tell of my attempt, as a young law clerk, to convince the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts to reverse the convictions entered in the Brinks armored car robbery case on the ground the convictions were influenced by prejudicial newspaper articles instigated by the district attorney. The injustice of the Sacco & Vanzetti case was also exposed in the year of my clerkship when that old cause célèbre resurfaced on the occasion of a request for posthumous pardons.

I give an account of my career as a lawyer who dealt in business transactions and tried cases representing businesses, and of one case where the losing party sent a bomb in the mail to my client. I tell of becoming a specialist in chapter 11 reorganizations in bankruptcy court under a legal system that does not certify specialists. One of my bankruptcy cases concerned a Ponzi scheme involving some of the same stratagems employed by Bernard Madoff.

I describe the role a judge plays in the conduct of trials and in shaping the law, dealing with questions such as these: Does a judge make law or only take rules off the shelf? Is our bankruptcy system a haven for the dishonest and lazy? Can a judge do anything to reduce the length (and cost) of trials? What are the earmarks of an abusive leveraged buy-out of a company and what legal tools are available to curtail the abuse? If there is both a divorce and a bankruptcy of the spouse having financial obligations from the divorce, how should a bankruptcy judge deal with those financial obligations? Should debt that has been run up on a credit card be denied a discharge in bankruptcy on the ground it is based on an implied misrepresentation of the cardholder’s intent to pay?

My legal career was influenced, indeed shaped, by events in significant chapters of this country’s social and economic history. I left old Yankee Boston in 1959 largely as a result of the prejudice then existing in that city’s legal community against Irish Catholics. The country’s increasing and toxic fascination with debt later in the century often led to a bankruptcy or a business reorganization under Chapter 11 and my services as a lawyer or judge working in that field. The country’s transition from the industrial age to the age of information and high technology also caused a need for bankruptcies or reorganizations in which I was involved. I recount how the consequence of that transition currently poses challenges to my own city of Worcester, Massachusetts, which was once bursting with companies manufacturing all types of products.

Anything concerning my career as a lawyer or judge was not envisioned at the start of this project. This was initially intended to be a response to the request of our son Stephen P. Queenan that I give an account of our family’s past, on both the Queenan side and the Wood side of his mother, Helen Emelia Queenan (née Wood). Stephen, and our other children as well, want some genealogy, but more than that they want word pictures of our departed relatives and friends that bring them to life. I have tried to do that, but in doing so I found it impossible to talk about those folks out of the context of my dealings with them. Once I became involved in the story I suppose my ego took over and I began writing about myself, which in turn brought my love of the law to the fore.

My interest in politics has also inserted itself into this family history. There are stories here about James Michael Curley and Joseph P. Martin, two of the best known politicians of Massachusetts. I tell of how riots following the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. prompted me to work for Bobby Kennedy in his bid for the presidency in 1968. I also give an account of the gripping court contests that took place over ballots cast in Florida in the 2000 presidential election and the decision of the Supreme Court handing the election to Bush. I give a critique of that decision.

I conducted a protest against the war in Iraq, before the war began, outside the Sarasota office of Representative Katherine Harris. I later joined in demonstrations in Worcester calling for our troops to be brought home from Iraq. Included here is a description of the political fallout from that war, especially how Kerry’s vote favoring the war, combined with his later one against its funding when the troops were already over there, formed a package that effectively handed Bush the presidency in 2004. Turning to the current political scene, there is a panegyric on Barack Obama praising his accomplishments to date.

In short, this has evolved into the story of my life and interests. My enjoyment of foreign travel, that great educator, is apparent from the many trips described in these pages. Being a lifelong baseball fan, I tell of watching the Boston Red Sox play the Saint Louis Cardinals in the 1946 World Series while perched at the top of the elevator shaft of a building across the street from Fenway Park. There are tales here about our children, stories which I hope their own children will enjoy. I recount my many years as a summer resident of Sagamore Beach, a small colony on Cape Cod Bay with a children’s camp and tennis courts. Also included is something of my winter home of Sarasota, a lively, cultural city of barrier islands and water views.

The Mayflower genealogy of the Wood family given here is due to the work of Helen’s aunt, Helen Chartrand (née Wood). I have been aided on the Wood genealogy by a book that bears out much of Aunt Helen’s research—Mayflower, by Nathaniel Philbrick. I have received great help in giving an account of the large Breivogel family, the family of Helen’s paternal grandmother, from Helen’s cousin, Jean Lothrop (née Kelsey), of Weymouth, Massachusetts. Thanks, Jean—the Breivogel branch had always confused me.

Thanks go also to our daughter Mary Beth Papcsy for her interviews of Helen’s mother, Emelia Rose Wood (née Scholl), in which Helen’s mother so vividly describes her early days. I couldn’t have typed the original manuscript (I’m a hunt-and-pecker) without the help of our son Arthur, who with great patience navigated me through the mysterious world of Microsoft’s Word Perfect and, on one occasion, recovered an entire draft that my bumbling fingers had somehow sent off into the ether.

The brief account of Queenan genealogy is derived largely from the efforts of two cousins—Jack Queenan, of Lynnfield, Massachusetts and his sister Betty Ann Williamson (née Queenan), of Canton, North Carolina. The sharp memory of my sister Mary-Louise Borges has been a valuable aid in describing the days when we were children.

Well, kids, here it is—a tome on your family, warts and all. It’s probably more than you want to read about law and the doings of your parents, perhaps even more than (or not what) you would like written about yourselves. But you have to read every page. As they say, be careful what you ask for!

James F. Queenan

Worcester, Massachusetts

June 12, 2011

Early Queenans in Salem

The first of my Queenan ancestors to immigrate to this country was my grandfather, James J. Queenan. Coming at the tender age of 12 from Taunagh, Ireland, a small town about 20 miles south of the county seat and port city of Sligo, he arrived in New York City by boat on April 10, 1875. He presumably came by sail rather than by a modern and much more expensive steam ship. Imagine what an adventure it must have been for a boy of that age to travel on his own across the cold and rough North Atlantic.

His older brother Dominick, named after their father, met him at the boat and shepherded him to Salem, Massachusetts, where Dominick was living. Dominick, who was nine years older than James, had left Ireland for this country two years earlier, finding work in a leather factory in Peabody, which is next to Salem. Both brothers became U.S. citizens in 1883, eight years after my grandfather arrived, swearing to renounce all fidelity to every prince, potentate, state or sovereignty whatsoever, and particularly to Victoria, Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland… Renouncing allegiance to Queen Victoria would not have been difficult for two young Irishmen nurtured in an atmosphere of, shall we say, no love for the English.

Dominick and James came to Salem because their mother’s older brother was already there. John Kerins, born in Sligo in 1818, emigrated from Ireland to this country as a young man many years before, perhaps during Ireland’s potato famine of the 1840s. My father’s cousin Alice Sullivan (née Queenan) had this to say of John Kerins’ marital life: This old goat was married three times but never had any children. (We should give him an A for effort anyway.) In 1869 John Kerins built what became the family home at 126 Boston Street in Salem.

Dominick and James’s mother Ellen Queenan (née Kerins) appeared on the scene later. After John Kerins’ third wife died in the 1880s, he wrote to his younger sister Ellen asking her to come to Salem to keep house for him. Ellen, a widow living in Taunagh with her unmarried daughter Margaret, was delighted to be able to see her sons once again. Another son, John F. Queenan, who was unmarried and working in England, met them and joined in the emigration. Ellen’s other daughter, Bridget, who had married Terance Keany, stayed at home with her husband and children.

John Kerins died in 1889. Ellen and her daughter Margaret continued to live on the second floor at 126 Boston Street after his death. Ellen died in 1899 and Margaret in 1931.

Ellen Kerins Queenan had a sister, Katherine Kerins Hever, who never came to this country but whose son emigrated from Ireland to Salem. The 1900 census shows a cousin of John Queenan named Thomas Hever also living at 126 Boston Street. (My cousin Betty Ann Williamson, who discovered the Hever connection, has met with one of Thomas’s descendants.)

My grandfather James and his two brothers John and Dominick remained close while living in Salem. Let’s first turn to the brothers and their families before catching up with my grandfather.

John Queenan married Anne Dolan and had four children, two of whom lived to adulthood—daughters Alice and Ann. John and his family lived on the first floor of 126 Boston Street after the death of John Kerins. At John Queenan’s death in 1938 the house passed to Alice and Ann, who sold it because by then they had their own homes and families in Salem. Our family visited Alice and Ann in Salem when I was a child. My most vivid memory from those visits is of the Willows, a small amusement park near the harbor.

Alice Queenan married Timothy J Sullivan. They had two children, Marie and John. Marie, a librarian, married Walter Curley. They lived in Casanovia, New York and had four children, all adopted sisters from South America. My family kept in touch with the Sullivans and their children over the years. Marie and Walter paid occasional visits. Mom and Dad are buried in the same group of six plots in Salem’s St. Mary’s cemetery (purchased by Ellen Queenan) with Alice and Timothy Sullivan.

Ann Queenan married John Rogers. They had two children: John, a Salem firefighter, and Edward, occupation unknown. We have lost touch with all the Rogers family.

Dominick Queenan, my grandfather’s other brother, lived at 57 Weaver Street in Salem with his wife Margaret (née Lynch) and their children, three of whom lived beyond childhood—John, Richard and George. Dominick died in 1889 while still a young man in his thirties. His son John, born in 1880, lived in Salem and never married. Richard, born in 1882, married a Brooklyn girl, lived in New York and had four children—Ann and Eleanor (twins), Margaret and Richard.

Dominick’s youngest son George, born in 1884, lived in New York until 1923, when he returned to Salem to be employed as a superintendent at a printing plant. George married Kathryn Murphy in 1910. They had five children: Margaret, Dorothy, George, John and Richard. Margaret and George resided in Salem, George and John in Beverly, and Richard in California. Margaret, the treasurer of an express company, apparently never married. Dorothy, a bookkeeper, married and had a daughter and two sons. George, a machinist with General Electric, had two sons and a daughter. John, an engineer with New England Power, was the most prolific, siring four sons and five daughters. Richard, a vice-president with Hughes Air West, had one son and three daughters.

Dad kept in touch with his Uncle John’s children, but he seems to have lost track of his Uncle Dominick’s children, which is understandable because they were much older than he.

Grampa Queenan and Young Dad

My grandfather James J. Queenan continued to live in Salem, working as a morocco dresser in a leather factory in nearby Peabody. In 1890 he married Mary L. Sheridan, who was then a student at Salem Normal School (now Salem State College) and working part-time as a dress maker. They had these five children: Mary B. (Molly) (1892-1949), Eleanor L. (1893-1918), Louise (1897-1897), my father James F. (1901-1968) and John S. (Jack) (1907-1974).

When my father was a boy the family lived at 19 Fowler Street in the same two-family house occupied by the Sheridans, my grandmother Queenan’s family. That family then consisted of my grandmother’s father John and mother Sarah, my grandmother’s sister Elizabeth (Lizzie) and her brother John. I never knew John but I did know Lizzie. She remained single and had a successful millenary shop in Salem, retiring to live in the South End of Boston.

Dad enjoyed his childhood in Salem. The circus coming to town was a big event, beginning with the parade of elephants down Chestnut Street. On the night the circus arrived Dad would rush to the city’s common to watch the roustabouts pitch the three main tents to create the traditional three-ring circus.

Fenway Park opened in 1912. Mayor John (Honey Fitz) Fitzgerald threw out the first pitch while his daughter Rose—not yet married to Joe Kennedy—looked on. Fenway was different then. There were no bullpens. It featured a ten-foot-high sloped area in front of the left field wall called Duffy’s Cliff (after left fielder Duffy Lewis) from which overflow crowds watched games behind ropes.

Grampa Queenan took Dad to see a game at Fenway in that first Fenway year of 1912. That was the year the Red Sox beat the New York Giants in the World Series, due largely to their star pitcher Smokey Joe Wood winning three games. A few years later, Grampa and Dad enjoyed the Sox winning the World Series in 1916 and again in 1918 with a team that featured one Herman Babe Ruth as the pitcher. Oh how they suffered when Ruth, after hitting 29 home runs in 1919 (the most by any player until then), was traded in 1920 to the New York Yankees!

Grampa and Gramma Queenan did not have a good marriage. I gather she was somewhat of a snob, due perhaps to having attended Salem Normal School. College education for a woman was unusual in those days. She and Grampa Queenan separated around the time of World War I. By 1920, according to the census of that year, Gramma Queenan was living at 31 Cherry Street in Somerville with her three surviving children—Dad (age 19), Mollie (age 27) and Jack (age 12). Also then living in the same house were my grandmother’s brother John Sheridan and his family. Gramma Queenan died in 1931, before I was born.

Mom and Dad’s Courting Years during Prohibition

Mom and Dad met in the early 1920s when they both worked on Atlantic Avenue in Boston for the Clyde Line, a steamship (coal burning) line which carried passengers and freight all over the world. Mom, then Helene Ann Donovan (her gravestone incorrectly spells it Anne), was a skilled secretary and Dad a cashier who could add long columns of figures in a flash. Mom was lovely and petite, with long, flowing locks of blond hair. Dad was tall, slim and handsome with prematurely gray hair at the temples.

While working at the Clyde Line Mom and Dad formed a lifelong friendship with another employee, Tom Cone, who worked as an engineer on board ship. Tom was a native Floridian whose forefathers had plantations and slaves before the Civil War. He would jokingly refer to Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, as the b—who put the Cone boys to work. My brother Tom Queenan was named after Tom Cone. Tom Cone’s brother became governor of Florida in 1937 but, to Mom’s later regret, the folks did not go down for the inauguration because of the expense.

Mom had gone to Chevrus Secretarial School, which was named after the first Catholic bishop of Boston and was affiliated with Sacred Heart Church in Jamaica Plain. Amazingly, its $150 tuition was the same as Harvard’s at the time. Dad did not finish high school, leaving school after attaining the minimum work entry age of 16. Mom would razz him about that, saying he thought he was smarter than the teachers.

They had a courtship of several years. Many of their good times took place at a fishing and gunning camp in Brewster on the Cape, which Dad rented with several friends, including Martin Spellman, a doctor brother of the future cardinal. Dad was proud of his 12 gage Parker shotgun. Mom was less impressed with her gun—a small 410 gauge shotgun (later used by our son Arthur as a young boy). A Native American named Clinton Black was caretaker of the place.

It was a shifting crowd in Brewster on most weekends. Practical jokes were the order of the day. On one weekend, John Adams, not yet married to my Aunt T, left his suitcase open with a carton of cigarettes in full view. Adding a harmless garter snake to the suitcase before going outside, Dad feigned he was out of cigarettes and asked John if he had any. Sure, Jim, John replied, I have a carton inside—I’ll get you a pack. They all waited in anticipated glee for the cry of alarm when John came upon the snake. Nothing happened. John returned quietly and flipped a pack at Dad, saying, Here you are, Jim. No snake was in the suitcase, and none was discovered thereafter. Dad and his fellow pranksters had a fitful sleep that night wondering where the hell the snake was. The joke was on them!

Those were the wild days of Prohibition, that naïve and crime-spawning experiment in regulation of human conduct which began in 1920, when the 18th Amendment declared prohibited the presence of intoxicating liquors in the country, and ended in 1933 with repeal of the 18th Amendment by the 21st Amendment. In promoting enactment of Prohibition, the Anti-Saloon League received crucial support from the moralistic and crusading ladies who for many years advocated for women’s suffrage, which was also imbedded in the Constitution in 1920. Help came too from darker forces—southern racists who demonized imbibing negroes and northern nativists who exaggerated the drinking habits of immigrants like the Catholic Irish.

The ban against booze never stopped Dad (or many others) from drinking. Dad often said it was more fun drinking when it was illegal, and he had lots of fun. One day Dad and his friends received a bonanza. A rumrunner was forced to jettison his cargo the night before while he was being overtaken by a revenuer in a faster boat. In the morning, having heard what had happened, Dad’s group went to the beach to collect cases of liquor as they floated in on the waves. That was Prohibition Heaven!

Dad was a real sport. A rabid boxing fan, he and some friends went to New York City to see the reigning heavy weight champ, Jack Dempsey, the Manassa Mauler, fight Luis Firpo, the Wild Bull of the Pampas. The fight took place at the Polo Grounds, where both the Giants and the Yankees then played baseball. Dad paid $100 for his ticket. Firpo knocked Dempsey out of the ring. Dempsey knocked Firpo down several times and, finally, out. It was all over in less than four minutes. Mom called Dad a damn fool for paying $100 for less than four minutes of boxing. Dad replied: Helene, it was the best four minutes of boxing I’ve ever seen and the best $100 I ever spent. He was right.

On another occasion, Dad went to the Polo Grounds (Yankee Stadium, the House that Ruth Built, wasn’t built until 1923) to watch the Yankees play the Detroit Tigers. The star for the Tigers was Ty Cobb, a great hitter and base stealer who was then nearing the end of his long and illustrious career The Polo Grounds had a unique configuration. It had a shallow left field and right field, and a very deep center field, which extended out more than 500 feet to steps leading up to the clubhouse. The week before, Cobb had spiked the Yankee shortstop while sliding into second base in a game in Detroit (Cobb was a mean SOB). As a result, the Yankee fans were up in arms against Cobb. They booed him before the game, both during infield practice and as he took the long walk in from the clubhouse behind center field. They booed him when he first came to the plate. He got a hit. They booed him on his second at-bat. He got another hit. The same thing happened on his third and fourth plate appearances. When he came to the plate for the fifth time, everyone in the park stood up and gave him an ovation, and he got his fifth hit. Dad summed it up this way: Never in my life have I ever seen a player so dominate a ball game, from before it began to the very end.

Mom and Dad were married on May 1, 1927 at Sacred Heart Church on Cummings Highway in the Roslindale section of Boston. (Holy Name Church had not yet been built.) They spent their wedding night at Boston’s new Statler Hotel on Park Square. Dad left his pajamas there and Mom, ever the practical one, had her sister Mae retrieve them. My sister Mary-Lou, born several months prematurely, arrived on November 16th, weighing in at three pounds, two ounces. Little though she was, Mary-Lou had a lot of hair. Aunt Nancy claimed her hair took up three pounds of that total weight.

The Donovan Clan and a Future Cardinal

Enter the large Donovan clan. Mom’s parents, James and Mary (née Regan) Donovan, were childhood sweethearts in Cork City, Ireland. Grampa Donovan came to this country first, arriving in Philadelphia where he had relatives. Mary followed shortly thereafter. Work on the Boston streetcars (there was not yet a subway) brought Grampa to Boston, and they were married in June of 1892.

Multitudes of children followed: Joseph—1893; Mary (Mae)—1894; Margaret (Peg)—1899; Helene Ann (Mom)—1901; John (Jack)—1903; Catherine (T)—1904; twins Robert and Nancy (whose birth name was Julia)—1907. In the middle of all this, two children died of diphtheria in childhood, one of whom was a daughter also named Helene.

Acquiring children the natural way was not enough for the Donovans. At one Sunday’s Mass attended by my Aunt Mae it was announced from the altar that the church was putting several children up for adoption, and that the children would be at the back of the church after Mass. By the time Mae got to the back of the church only one child was left—an unattractive little boy with a pock-marked face. Mae took him home to Gramma Donovan. He became my Uncle Paul.

The Donovan family lived for many years in the Roxbury section of Boston, initially at 293 ½ Highland Street in the same two family house lived in by Gramma Donovan’s sister and brother-in-law, Nell and Robert Sharpe. That was in All Saints Parish, whose records show they lived on Highland Street when all the children were born. Thereafter, not leaving All Saints Parish, they lived at the top of the hill on Linwood Street in Roxbury, off Centre Street, in a large single family home that had a fireplace in both the living room and the master bedroom. It is this home, which still stands, that my mother remembered from her youth. How Grampa Donovan could afford such a house on a streetcar conductor’s salary is a mystery to me, but apparently the cost of housing was much less then than it is today (those were the days).

Appearing on the scene in 1916 was a priest who was to leave an imprint on the Catholic Church locally and nationally. As his first priestly assignment, after attending Fordham University and completing theological studies at the American University in Rome, Francis Spellman, age 27, was appointed an assistant priest (curate) at All Saints Church. Father Spellman became a good friend of the Donovan family.

Father Spellman wasn’t at All Saints long. He rose fast in the Catholic Church: first as assistant chancellor of Boston, in 1925 as editor of the diocesan newspaper, the Pilot, next as an official of the Vatican Secretariat of State and in 1932 as Auxiliary Bishop of Boston. His appointment as Auxiliary Bishop of Boston was reportedly made without consultation with William Cardinal O’Connell of Boston, who greeted him, the story goes, with this peevish welcome home from Rome: You have a confirmation ceremony on Monday. Father Spellman’s rise continued: He became Auxiliary Bishop of New York in 1939, Military Vicar to Catholics in the armed services during World War II, and member of the College of Cardinals in 1946. Aunt T and Uncle John Adams joined his staff while he was a bishop in Boston and left with him for New York in 1939.

In 1926 the Donovan family moved from Linwood Street in Roxbury to a single-family house at 76 Aldrich Street in Roslindale. This is the house which is the center of many of my childhood memories.

The Woods—Back to the Mayflower

The Wood genealogy puts that of the Queenans and Donovans to shame. Helen has two ancestors who were passengers on the Mayflower—Peter Browne and Francis Cooke. Both survived the perilous voyage and were among the few who were not struck down by illness of various kinds during the first few years in Plymouth.

Another of Helen’s ancestors, Ephraim Morton, was the adopted son of William Bradford, the governor of Plymouth Colony, who was married to Ephraim’s aunt. The link of Messer’s Browne, Cooke and Morton to Helen’s family occurred by marriage of their descendants a few generations later. As we shall see in more detail, a Morton married a Wood, and a son from that marriage married a lady who was a descendant of both Peter Browne and Francis Cooke.

We begin with Ephraim’s father, George Morton. A prosperous merchant doing business in London and Leyden, Holland, the Mayflower’s port of embarkation, George Morton was one of the merchants who financed the Pilgrim venture to this country in 1620. He was on board the ship Speedwell when it met the Mayflower in Southampton. The two ships then set sail for this country, but the Speedwell soon sprang many serious leaks and had to turn back.

George Morton finally came to Plymouth in 1623 on the ship Anne. He arrived with his wife, Julianna Morton (née Carpenter), and their five children, the youngest of whom was Helen’s ancestor Ephraim Morton, born in June of 1623 during the voyage. (The eldest was Nathanial Morton, aid to Governor Bradford and author of New England Memorial). George’s wife Julianna was the sister of Alice Carpenter, a widow with two children who married Governor William Bradford in 1623.

George Morton died within a year of his arrival, the victim of one of the many diseases that so plagued the small colony. His widow Julianna and their five children moved in with her sister and brother-in-law, Alice and William Bradford. The Bradford’s soon adopted the Morton children. The household was a large one that included, in addition to the Morton children, Julianna’s two children from her previous marriage and three more born to the Bradfords. A later addition to the household was William Bradford’s son from his first marriage, eleven-year-old John Bradford, who came over from Europe in 1628 to join this menagerie. (Bradford’s first wife, Dorothy May, drowned after falling from the Mayflower when it was moored in Provincetown on the way to Plymouth.)

Ephraim Morton lived in the Bradford household until he was an adult. In 1644 he married his first cousin, Ann Cooper, the daughter of another of his mother’s sisters, Priscilla Carpenter. Ephraim prospered, becoming a member of the Plymouth General Court for 28 years and a deacon in the local church. Ephraim and Ann had nine children, their second being Rebecca Morton.

Now we get to the Woods. Rebecca Morton married Samuel Wood, product of the 1644 marriage of Henry Wood (who came over on the James in 1641) and Abigail Jenny. Samuel and Rebecca Morton Wood settled in Middleborough, Massachusetts. They had eight children, one of whom was another Henry Wood, born in 1676.

In 1717 Henry Wood married Mary Tinkham. It was this marriage that linked the Wood line to the Mayflower passengers Peter Browne and Francis Cooke. Mary Tinkham’s great-grandfather was Peter Browne. Her grandmother was the daughter of Francis Cooke.

Peter Browne had been married twice and had two children from each marriage. He died in 1633, leaving three female descendants. Francis Cooke had a number of children from his one marriage, three of whom were born after the Mayflower arrived in Plymouth in 1620. He died in 1663, leaving many descendants.

Henry Wood and Mary Tinkham Wood lived in Middleborough, Massachusetts. They had six children, including Helen’s ancestor, Henry Wood, Jr., born in 1726. After marrying Lydia Benson in 1754, Henry Wood Jr. and his family moved in 1791 to Winthrop, Maine. Their eighth child, another of Helen’s ancestors, was Major Elijah Wood, an officer in the Maine militia. Elijah Wood married Sarah Clifford in 1797, a union which produced nine children, including one in Helen’s line, Truxton Wood, born in 1799.

In 1823 Truxton Wood, a farmer, married Submit Blasdell. This union produced six children, including Helen’s ancestor Charles Webster Wood, born in 1834. He married Jane Boyle in 1859 and they settled in Boston, where they built a house (no longer in existence) on Bainbridge Park in Roxbury. Charles Webster Wood was described as a literary man who spent many hours in his library. He and Jane Boyle Wood had six children, including Helen’s grandfather, Arthur Charles Wood, born in 1871.

Two other children of Charles and Jane, Caroline Eliza Wood (born in 1863) and Jane Josephine Wood (born in 1869), never married and in later years lived together in Roxbury. Caroline, a beauty with intelligence and charm, was for a number of years secretary to Lady Hazen, of Ottawa, Canada, who on a trip to England presented Caroline to the Court of St. James during the reign of Queen Victoria. Jane Josephine Wood was a teacher to the deaf at the Horace Mann School. After her sister Caroline’s death in 1926 she lived at the Women’s City Club on Beacon Hill, where she often entertained her niece Helen Chartrand (nee Wood). She died in 1939.

My Helen’s paternal grandfather, Arthur Charles Wood, the brother of Caroline and Jane, worked at Lord and Webster Company, which sold hay and grain. He was a Freemason, owned fine horses and enjoyed boating. On April l, 1901 he married Elizabeth Adelaide Breivogel, my Helen’s paternal grandmother.

The Many Breivogels and Young Arthur A. Wood

Elizabeth Adelaide Breivogel (known as Lil) was born on November 8, 1870 in Jamaica Plain. Prior to her marriage she taught music in the Boston schools and lived in Jamaica Plain, a section of Boston. Her father, Daniel Joseph Breivogel, was the son of Adam Breivogel and Anna Maria Reginer. Daniel Joseph and his brother John were sent as boys to this country from Prussia because their mother Anna Maria, a devout Catholic, didn’t want them to serve in the Prussian army in wars against the Catholic states that were remnants of the Holy Roman Empire. Daniel Joseph, who had married Mary Magdalen Stressenger, owned and operated a bakery. He also had an ownership interest in a construction company.

Prior to her marriage Elizabeth Adelaide Breivogel lived with her family in a large Victorian home. The home was large for good reason. She was the second oldest of twelve children of Daniel Joseph Breivogel and Mary Breivogel (nèe Stressenger), all of whom were living there. I describe those I knew later. Here is a list of Elizabeth’s eleven siblings:

Daniel Joseph Jr. (1869-1939), who married Susan Isabel Willard and had two children. One was Louise Isabel, who married Scott F. Kelsey and had two children: Jean Willard Kelsey (who now lives in Weymouth, is married Kenneth H. Lothrop and has two children, Scott H. and Bruce K.) and Richard Scott Kelsey (who now lives in Mansfield, is married to Andrea Marie Smith and has two children, Amanda M. and Daniel J.). The other child of Daniel Joseph and Susan Isabel was Herbert Daniel, who married Marion Osgood and had no children;

Sarah (Sadie) (1873-1923), who married Henry Blasser and had four children: Henry, who married Mary Gavin; Gertrude, who married Kenneth Hallet and after his death John Cashman (I knew Gertrude—she thought of herself as a femme fatale); Robert, who married Grace Estic; and Richard, who married Hazel Giles;

Mary Florence (1875-1955) (Aunt Mae), who did not marry;

Caroline (Baby Carrie) (1878-1880), who was born sickly, frail;

Emma Tecla (1880-1954), who lived in Dedham, married Albert Heimann and had no children;

Albert J. (1883-1942), who married Wilhelmina (Min) and had one daughter, Helene Dallow Breivogel. (Helene became the athletic director at Newton High School. My sister Mary-Lou had Helene as a gym teacher at Newton High and liked her despite Mary-Lou’s lack of enthusiasm for athletics.)

Laura Catherine (Aunt Laura) (1886-1973). She married John Emmons who died a young man from a fall off a tower he was painting;

Charles Adam (1888-1938), who married Ethel Cheverie;

Clara (Aunt Claire) (1891-1993), who married John Vincent Peard late in life and had no children;

J. Richard (1893-1958), who lived in Falmouth, built breakwaters, married Harriet (Heine) Grew and had three children: Richard (who married Barbara Brooks), Robert (who married Mary Mann), and Claire (who married Herman Wessner);

Henry A. (1896-1970s), who lived in Middleboro, married M. Jeannette Cote and had three children: Eileen (who married Donald Curran), Eleanor (who married Alfred Rose), and Doris (who married Gerald Martin).

The marriage of Arthur Charles Wood and Elizabeth Adelaide