Daguerreotype circa 1850 of John Quincy Adams, artists, Albert S. Southworth, Josiah J. Hawes, and Philip Haas. Metropolitan Museum
Are you expecting a crowd on New Year’s Day? Is your home the epi-center of your family’s festivities on January 1st?
Be happy that the following did not happen to you. It did to John Quincy Adams in 1827. Continue reading
Yes, I realize my story title is a bit dramatic, but honestly isn’t death dramatic, especially when it involves a young person?
Dustin C. Sweatt was was a handsome young man, named after his uncle Dustin. He was one of nine children born to his father (who had two wives).
Dustin was only 17 years old when he died of “congestion of the lungs.” We can’t be sure of the exact cause of his lung problems, but in that era diseases such as tuberculosis and pneumonia were among the top ten causes of death in the general population.
Fifty years later in 1900, it was much the same with lung diseases being the top two killers. In 2000 TB, though still around, has dropped out of the top 10 but pneumonia combined with influenza sits at the number seven killer.
What shall we give the children?
The Shasta Street Gang, including the Webster kids, the Coll boys, cousin Janice Beauregard, and others. Manchester NH circa 1956.
“In the long twilight of the year, the faces of the children grow luminous. Rosy with cold, arabesqued with snowflakes, leaning into the wind, or drowsing before the fire, their eyes large, they look and listen, as if they glimpsed the peripheries of miracle or heard a soundless music in the air. From the innocent kingdom of implicit belief to that uncomfortable arena where the implacable mind battles the intractable heart, the faces of children at Christmas are lighted with visions of things to come.
John Guy Nelson and Jules Etienne Vuilleumier smile smugly from behind the 
wheel of one of their best automobiles on this Christmas card. On 10 November 1923 the two men, from very different backgrounds, had formed a partnership called Nelson-Vuilleumier Inc., selling and repairing Packard and Chrysler Motor Cars.
Five years later, when this card was printed and distributed, they were still in business. They had two locations–the primary one at 61 Elm Street, and a secondary site at 922-28 Beech Street. By 1933 they were located at 1569 Elm (the site of the photograph below, with link to Google map current view of the same building). Jules and John came from completely different backgrounds–Jules Vuilleumier was born in Switzerland, and had first worked as a chauffeur when he immigrated to Massachusetts in 1890. John G. Nelson had been born in Vermont, graduated from college, and had worked as a salesman (aka “floor walker”) in a five and ten cent store. Continue reading
Tin-type photograph of William Angell & Marietta (Cox) Scales of Woodstock Vermont and Lempster, New Hampshire.
As is often the case, this story revolves around a photograph. A tin-type photograph shows an aged man and his wife in a seated, somewhat informal pose. They are both darkly dressed probably in their best Sunday outfits. The photographer added a bit of pink to their cheeks in the finishing process. The photograph was taken before 1886.
William Angell Scales and his wife Marietta Cox may have been taking the photograph so that their six children would have their likeness after they passed. Indeed, this photograph, and the other’s contained on this page, exist because they were given to one of their daughters. At some point, sadly, like many others it ended up on ebay for sale.
William Angell Scales was born in Sunapee, New Hampshire in 1800, and his wife, Marietta Cox, was born in Vermont. They, and their children, moved back and forth between the two states, as you will see from the ensuing genealogy detail. In the 1830s and 1840s William and Marietta lived in Woodstock, Vermont where they had their children. By 1853 they were living in Lempster, Sullivan Co., New Hampshire, and they remained in that town until 1886. Continue reading
