MAWORCES-L Archives

From: gordon white <>
Subject: [MAWORCES] Re: Whitinsville High School
Date: Sun, 06 Jul 2003 06:22:39 -0400
References: <200307060901.h6691iNJ012400@lists2.rootsweb.com>

Margie was kind enough to give me Lucy Harwood Melcher's graduation from
Whitinsville High School in 1901. From that grew a good bit more
information. I have data on the Harwood Cemetery lot in North Oxford, if
there are Harwoods interested. But here is what Lucy Melcher led me to:

(and pardon the length. This is being sent to my family e-mail list.)

Lucy Melcher

The Melchers, of Maine, are of course an important branch of our
ancestry, where sea captains and merchants abound. The Melcher
reputation best-known in Brunswick Maine in the 19th century was that
of Samuel Melcher III, (1775-1862), a master builder of homes. He
built about three-quarters of the better houses in Brunswick for
seafarers and other solid citizens between about 1795 and 1860, as well
as the first buildings on the Bowdoin College campus. (Apparently after
Samuel III's father, Samuel Jr. died in 1834 he adopted the suffix II)
His daughter, Frances Payne Melcher, was our great-grandmother, born
near Brunswick on June 24, 1830.

The Melchers, Dunnings and Dunlaps, ancestors all, produced several
very successful sea captains in the 18th and 19th centuries in
Brunswick, Bath and Topsham.

Cousin Lucy Harwood Melcher is interesting on two grounds. She is
someone whom some of my generation actually met, and her ancestry might
be a clue as to how great grandfather Jesse Moore came to marry our
great grandmother, even though when they met Jesse had been running the
bourbon whiskey business in Kentucky for 25 years and Frances was
brought up in Maine.

Channing and I and possibly Stuart met Lucy H. Melcher
(1885-1960) 50 years ago. Lucy was a grand niece of Great Grandmother
and was well known to our grandparents, Eliot and Mabel. I have drawn
a brief sketch of what we know about her.

Lucy's parents were Samuel Appleton Melcher and Julia Harwood.
Samuel, born April 1, 1856, was the son of Charles C. Melcher, one of
great-grandmother Frances Payne Melcher's many brothers and sisters,
all of whom, including Samuel, were born in New Meadows Maine,
between Brunswick and Bath. (Eliot used that family in one of his
1930s arguments in favor of birth control. If they had had the pill in
1830 Great Grandmother Frances, the last child, might not have been
born, with consequences for us all.) Julia was from one of the Harwood
families who had lived for at least two generations in Oxford, about a
dozen miles south of Worcester.

Samuel was graduated from Bowdoin College in 1877 while Joshua
Chamberlain, who won the Congressional Medal of Honor at Gettysburg,
was the college's president. Robert Peary, the polar explorer, was a
classmate. Sam taught school in Webster, Massachusetts, about 15 miles
south of Worcester, from 1878 until 1881. That year he moved about four
miles east to Oxford, Massachusetts as school principal. In 1884 he
married Julia and they set up housekeeping in Whitinsville, Worcester
County, Massachusetts. Samuel that same year became a school principal
in nearby Northridge and he moved up to become the Northridge
superintendent of schools in 1888. He and Julia signed Eliot and
Mabel's guest book at 35 Catharine street in Worcester on September 8,
1905. He became president of the Massachusetts Superintendents
Association and retired as the Northbridge superintendent in 1918.

Lucy was born in Worcester County, probably in Whitinsville,
in 1885 and a sister, Elizabeth, was born in 1887. Lucy was graduated
from Northbridge High School in 1901 and apparently from Smith College
in Northampton, Massachusetts about 1905, as she left Smith a bequest
in her will. She, too, became a schoolteacher. By 1910 at 25 she
was teaching in New Britain, Connecticut, boarding at 111 Maple
Street. Her sister Elizabeth died in 1912. Lucy also visited Eliot
and Mabel, signing the guest book at the Rectory in Ossining, New York
on February 10th, 1917. She wrote then "Aunt Lucy hopes to be able to
play letters one day again with Shirley." By 1920 Lucy was teaching at
the Lincoln School in Providence, Rhode Island and boarding at 193
Waterman Street during the school year.

Sam and Julia Melcher went back to Brunswick after he retired,
moving into a home at 270 Maine Street, across the street from Bowdoin
College. Lucy, who apparently never married, lived with her parents
during summer school vacations.

After Sam died, December 9th, 1937, and Julia passed away in 1941,
Lucy inherited the Brunswick house. We (Maurice, Sally, Stuart and I)
visited her in Brunswick on one of our trips to Maine, probably about
1947. She retired from teaching in 1950 and spent the rest of her life
in Brunswick. Channing visited her in 1955 or 1956 when he was studying
at Bowdoin. She died there March 29th, 1960. (In her will she asked to
be buried with her parents in the Harwood cemetery lot in North Oxford
but by the time the will was read she had already been buried in
Brunswick.) Her estate was valued at $4,000 in real estate and $15,000
in personal property.

Lucy's listed next of kin was Katherine Melcher Fish, of
Jonesboro, Maine. One of her bequests went to Frances Melcher Payne,
of Alameda, California. Frances Melcher Payne, born in 1887, had been
a nurse at St. John's Hospital in Lowell. Her parents were English.

Is there some connection between Frances Melcher Payne and great
grandmother Frances Payne Melcher? There are Paynes buried in the
same cemetery in Louisville as Jesse's brother, George J. Moore and
his children. Are these clues or red herrings? Were there Melchers in
the Worcester area who introduced Jesse and Frances? Another of
Frances' brothers, Richard T.D. Melcher, was in Worcester in August,
1864 and he witnessed the signing of the deed by which Jesse and
Frances Moore bought the house at 21 Catharine Street for $8,000. He
was a master carpenter. Was he just inspecting the house or were there
Melchers in the area who could have introduced Jesse and Frances?

My own very brief recollection of Lucy was as a spry spinster
schoolteacher who had a lot of Melcher family tales to tell. The house
was filled with Victorian "stuff" and mementos of whaling captains and
merchant shipmasters. Would that I had been able to record what she
had to say then.

Samuel Appleton Melcher and his brothers were hired in May, 1799, to
erect the first building, Massachusetts Hall, at Bowdoin College. (The
Chairman of the building committee, Captain John Dunlap, was, I
believe, Sam's wife, Lois Dunning's uncle.) Sam and Aaron, "busy and
reputable housewrights" built Maine Hall in 1808 and rebuilt it in 1822
after it was destroyed by fire. On December 1, 1842 Samuel Melcher,
Richard T.D. Melcher and William H. Melcher signed a contract to build
Winthrop Hall at Bowdoin. He and his brothers eventually built at least
six of the college's buildings. He also built, in 1805-1806, the First
Parish Church meetinghouse in Brunswick. President McKeen held the
first service there in the unfinished structure in 1806, in the rain, on
a platform erected for the purpose by Sam's brother Aaron. (The
building was replaced in 1845-46)

The Melchers attended First Parish Church. The clerk there this
spring furnished me with evidence of their marriage in 1803.

Thanks to Channing for furnishing me with corrections and additions
to this piece.

- Gordon White

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