Old post card showing “oldest house” in Surry, NH
Surry is a quaint and lovely town in Cheshire County, in the southwestern section of New Hampshire. Two families settled early in the town, intermarried and thrived–the Joslin and Allen families.
I use their photographs to illustrate these genealogies. Continue reading
Photograph from “From Receipts and expenditures of the Town of Portsmouth, 1945-46-47.”
Residents of Portsmouth, New Hampshire are familiar with the Dondero name. A beloved former mayor, Eileen Dondero Foley, just passed away in February of this year (2016). Less known these days, but historically important, was Eileen’s mother, Mary Ellen (Carey) Dondero. She was a daughter, mother, sister, wife, business woman, politician, civic leader and pacesetter. She is the focus of this story.
She was born Mary Ellen Carey on March 16, 1894 in Portsmouth NH, the daughter of Denis and Nora (Leary) Carey, both of whom were Irish immigrants who lived in Portsmouth. Mary grew up in, and attended schools there, graduating from high school. She was just 19 years old when she married in 1913 to Charles A. Dondero, a young man of Italian origin, and also a native of Portsmouth. They had five children, four daughters living into adulthood. She also ran two convalescent nursing homes in Portsmouth and Stratham NH. Continue reading
Benjamin Gove Brooks, born 1819 in Henniker NH.
The faces of Benjamin Gove Brooks, his wife Frances Eliza (Downer) Brooks, and their son B. Ferdinand Brooks, look out at you from pale CDV photographs. Benjamin and his wife Frances were both born and raised in New Hampshire. Benjamin was a machinist, and so he moved to wherever he could best ply his trade. He lived in both Holyoke MA (first marriage), and later in Westford, MA (after second marriage). Benjamin and Frances had three children, one of whom was B. Ferdinand, who only lived to be 22 years old. In 1900, the widowed Frances, her daughter Maria Adelaide, and granddaughter Hazel moved to Enfield, New Hampshire, living with the Shaker community there.
Benjamin Gove Brooks descended from Henry Brooks of Concord and Woburn, Massachusetts. The Brooks genealogy is shown below.
Likeness of Marilla M. Ricker from I Don’t Know, Do You? by Marilla M. Ricker
Back in 2014 I first wrote about Marilla Marks (Young) Ricker, the first woman in New Hampshire to attempt to cast her vote during elections (1870), and the first to run for governor (1910). She failed in both attempts [details can be found here], but she set the stage for future women leaders, both in New Hampshire and elsewhere.
In July 1890 she became the first woman lawyer in New Hampshire (she was admitted to the District of Columbia bar earlier in 1882). She was a daughter, a wife, an attorney, a protestor, an advocate of prisoner’s rights, a suffragist, a philanthropist. FINALLY she is going to be recognized, so read on. Continue reading
A young Anthony Colby from the National Cyclopaedia of American Biography
It is said that the ghost of former New Hampshire governor Anthony Colby haunts Colgate Hall at Colby-Sawyer College. That hall was built many years after his death on the spot where the former brick academy building sat. The original building was dedicated in 1870, three years before Colby died, but was destroyed by fire in 1892.
Colgate Hall was built in 1911 on the same spot, but as a smaller building. It is well known and accepted that the Hon. Anthony Colby died at home, in his bed in New London. The dapper looking male ghost with the top hat is described as being in his 30s or 40s. One has to wonder who is this well-dressed spectre? Continue reading
