long lost cousins

I have been corresponding with a newly found third cousin, Merryfield Laimbeer Petersen from Pennsylvania. We both descend from the Abbot side of the family, and branch off at our great-grandparent's line. Here are the genealogical details (non-family can skip this bit and go straight to the photos, below). Forgive me in advance if I get any of it wrong.

We are both descended from:

Abiel Abbot m. Phebe Ballard (G-g-g-g-g grandparents)

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Benjamin Abbot m. Joanna Holmes (G-g-g-g grandparents)
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Francis Holmes Abbot m. Mary Wade (G-g-g grandparents)
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Thomas Wade Abbot m. Helen Tracey Adams (G-g grandparents)

Thomas and Helen had two sons -- my great grandfather Edgar Wade Abbot (who married my great-grandmother, Isabel Esther McCormick) , and Merry's great-grandfather Frank Prentice Abbot. Both brothers were involved with the GDA (Gerard, Dufraisseix & Abbot) Haviland Limoges porcelain company.

OK -- now our lines branch off, and here is Merry's branch:

Frank Prentice Abbot m Mary Augusta Laimbeer (Her great grandparents)
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Kate (Kitty) Laimbeer Abbot m Francis Effingham Laimbeer (Just to make things really confusing, her grandparents were 1st cousins once removed. Her grandfather's grandfather was her grandmother's great-grandfather. Ouch. My head hurts.) They had a daughter named Dorothea, also known as "Daphrie" and a son:
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William Laimbeer m Helen Hope Nixon (Her parents)
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Merryfield Laimbeer m James Lawrence Petersen (Herself)
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David, Susan, Pamela, Elizabeth (Her kids)
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10 grandchildren

Merry remembers visiting Grandama and Grandpa Loomis with her Aunt Daphrie in Ruxton, and has notes from them in her family papers. How neat. Oh, and Merry has a cousin, Frank Laimbeer. And now we're all facebook friends. How funny is that?

I discovered that in Great Grandma Isabel's guestbook from her house in Washington, Connecticut, there are dozens of signatures, notes, and photos of the Abbot/Laimbeer family, dating from 1911 to the mid-1920s. Here are some images and words from the past.

Click on the images to see them larger.

My Abbot side:
Helen Abbot Lapham (great aunt) - Isabel Esther McCormick Abbot (great grandma)
Dorothy Abbot Loomis (grandma) and Edgar Wade Abbot (great grandpa)

Cousin Theodora (before she married Mr. DuBois),
Elizabeth Ruth Abbot (Grandma Loo had a doll named Elizabeth Ruth, remember?)
and Kate Abbot Laimbeer

The photo above is from Isabel's guestbook, and the same photo, below, is from Merry's collection.

A poem by Cousin Theodora -- apparently the furnace went out in October. Cold!
Cousin Theodora went on to write a number of historical novels and children's books.
Click here to read about her life.

In addition to the signature of Kate Abbot Laimbeer,
at the top of the page there is a note that D.A. (Dorothy Abbot) went to Texas.
I wonder if she went with C.D.L. to visit Loomis Ranch?

There is a note, written by Helene, tucked in the guestbook noting that the Lapham children
referred to the Laimbeers as the Lame-Deers. Sorry, cousins!

The Laimbeers Garden City, New York, 1919 (and how they're related to Merry)

Frank (Uncle) - Jack (Uncle)
Francis & Kate (grandparents) - Bill (Father)
Dick (Uncle) - Daphrie (Aunt)

Frank (uncle) - Kate (grandmother)
Jack (uncle) - Bill (father)
Aunt Bessie (?) - Esther (?)
(Merry isn't sure who the elderly woman and baby are --
Aunt Bessie is Elizabeth Ruth Abbot, who never married.
According to Helene, she lived with IEA and EWA -- and never left her room.
She must be Frank and Edgar's sister.
I think the baby looks like Aunt Esther, don't you?
I wonder if Grandma Loo was visiting and took this photo?)
Dick (Uncle) - Daphrie (Aunt) - Francis (grandfather)
Garden City, NY circa 1920s

So -- hello to our newly discovered cousins! And welcome to the family!

chauncey loomis article

Author and cousin Chauncey Chester Loomis died back in March 2009, and here is a nice article on him from the September issue of Arctic, a publication of the Arctic Institute of North America. I never met Chauncey, but got a nice note from him when I compiled SDL's memoirs and letters.

Chauncey, along with his brothers John and Stanley (also an author), were the children of Chauncey Loomis. Chauncey and his sister Sally Loomis Wilson (mother of Peggy and Alison), were the children of John Loomis and Abby Dana. John's brother Chester and Abby's sister Sara were our great-grandparents -- two brothers married two sisters. Complicated, no?

I've had a copy of his book on my bookshelf for too many years to count. I think it's time to read it in his honor.

gunn memorial library

I've been corresponding with a man in Washington, CT who owns a house next door to Grandma Abbot's old house on Old North Road. (To see his comments on an earlier post, click here.) He has been researching the history of his house, and in doing so found that the Gunn Memorial Library and Museum in Washington has a framed calling card belonging to Grandma Ab and Grandma Loomis. He sent me the image you see at the right.

Also,about 10 years ago I donated some of Grandpa Loo's watercolors of Washington to the Gunn Library, along with photos of Connecticut doorways taken by Grandma Loo. I can't remember if I made copies of the watercolors for everyone? If not, you can see the images here.

vermont then and now

So, I had a wonderful trip to Vermont. Part of the allure of this trip for me was that all my life I've been surrounded by grandpa and great-grandpa's paintings of the Greensboro area, as well as Uncle Jack and grandpa's photos of their summers there. In Sara Dana's memoir, her descriptions of growing up in St. Johnsbury and the surrounding towns were so vivid! It was a magnetic kind of place that drew them back year after year. They were also friends with Greensboro's notable Bliss Perry, a professor at Williams College and Princeton who enticed many creative types and intellectuals to the join him in the hills of Vermont. The Perry family, along with numerous other Greensboro residents, appear throughout Uncle Jack's photo album.

You'd think I'd want to get away from libraries during my vacation, but in the 3 days of my trip I visited 3 libraries -- The St. Johnsbury Athenaeum, The Abbott Memorial Library in Pomfret, and the Greensboro Free Library, where I discovered new information about our family and these towns where they lived. Coincidentally, while I was at the library in Pomfret I met a library patron who summered in Greensboro, and recognized many of the faces in Uncle Jack's photos. She helped fill in many details for me.

Also coincidentally, the lady who runs the Estabrook House Bed & Breakfast where I stayed is named Maureen Chace Hennings. She lived next door to Halcyon Farm in Lakeville in the late 60s and early 70s, and is a 4th cousin to Aunt Cyndie! She had both Waddah and Uncle John as teachers at Apponequet. How funny is that?

So I poked around St. Johnsbury, where Sara Dana's family moved in 1857 , down from the "howling winds and snowdrifts on the bleak heights" of Danville. St. Johnsbury of today is an interesting mix of grand architecture and culture left over from the Victorian era with sort of weary rural/urban dilapidation at the edges. The St. Johnsbury Athenaeum was a treasure trove of information, in addition to being one of the loveliest libraries I've seen. They have a world class art gallery including the huge and impressive painting, Albert Bierstadt's "The Domes of Yosemite."

While there I visited the Mt. Pleasant Cemetery to see the Dana lot, where the following ancestors are buried or have markers:

• Charles Smith Dana and Arvilla Sinclair Dana [Sara Dana's parents]
• Abby Dana Loomis [Sara's sister]
• Sally Loomis Wilson [Abby's daughter]
• Israel Putnam Dana [Sara's brother]
• Chester & Sara Dana Loomis
  

I visited Pomfret on Thursday, where Isaac Dana and his son John Wincester Dana were two of its earliest proprietors. There is still a Dana Road in North Pomfret. John's Wincester's son Israel Putnam Dana, and his son, Charles Smith Dana, lived in Danville with their families. Arvilla Sinclair's ancestors lived in Greensboro, Hardwick, and Danville, where I visted on my last day.
For more photos in addition to those below, see my Flickr photostream.

Dana House, Main Street, St. Johnsbury-- now known as the Pearl House and broken up into residential apartments

Hills of Vermont -- unfinished oil painting by Chester Loomis

Hills of Danville

Greensboro watercolor by Charles Dana Loomis 1934

Uncle Jack (center) and friends swimming in Caspian Lake, Greensboro circa 1905

Uncle Jack looking dapper -- he subtitled this photo "Dutchman's breeches"

Off on a jaunt, Greensboro

Sketch of Uncle Jack at Greensboro by Grandpa Loomis

Skinny dipping at Bathtub Rocks, Greensboro

Grandpa Loomis with dog and friends, Greensboro circa 1910

Grandpa and Sara Dana return to Caspian Lake circa 1926/7

Grandpa with Esther and Dana, Caspian Lake, circa 1926/7

Hills of Greensboro

Chester Loomis chatting with Justice Wendell Stafford. St. Johnsbury, circa 1906

Dana Marker, Mt. Pleasant Cemetery, St. Johnsbury

More photos on my Flickr photostream page.

vermont bound

I'm heading to Vermont in a few weeks to visit the stomping grounds of our ancestors. Our great-grandmother Sara Dana and her family, as far back as the late 1600s, lived in various towns and villages in northern Vermont. Her great grandfather John Winchester Dana was one of the early proprietors of Pomfret, Vermont. The Danas and the Sinclairs were early residents of Greensboro, Danville, and St. Johnsbury. I have many photos of this area from Uncle Jack's photo albums -- he and Grandpa Loomis, along with Chester and Sara summered in Greensboro in the early 1900s, when it was something of a resort town. Many of us have artwork by Chester and Grandpa Loomis that depict scenes in and around Greensboro. So I'll be spending 3 or 4 days poking around, taking photos, doing research, and getting some rest and relaxation in the place that Grandpa Loomis referred to as his "beloved Vermont." I'll post photos of my trip in a few weeks.

happy birthday

In a previous post I mentioned cousin Jon Loomis' new novel, and his brother Dana's move to Nevada. Well, here is a photo of us Loomis cousins, being "arranged" by our fathers for a nice photo in Grandma's Ruxton garden -- dated June 1961. Uncle Dana is clearly trying to force Jon and Sara to hold hands against their will. Young Dana is politely standing by, holding his little car. Dorothy has her squinty mad face on. And Dad is trying to keep me from escaping with a death-grip to my head. I guess the photographer gave up trying to wait for a better shot. "I'm taking the damned picture now!"

Dad's birthday is coming up on November 2nd. He would have been 78. The year before he died, he told me that he didn't care if Brud and I got married (we'd been living together for 6 years at that point) -- he just wanted more grandchildren. So for my birthday he gave me glow-in-the-dark sheets (I guess to get that baby-making action going), and a copy of Dr. Spock's Guide to Baby Care. Thanks to those sheets, Nick was born the year after Dad died, and I kept the Dr. Spock guide on my bedside table for instant consultation every time that poor child made so much as a peep. So, happy birthday, Dad, and thanks for your help in getting my family started.

Here's that favorite picture of Dad, Uncle Dana, and Aunt Esther -- brothers and sister / 3 monkeys -- circa 1989.

another long lost cousin

Cousin Jon in his comment on an earlier posting admitted to acts of SG -- Self-Googling. I practice another private vice -- GOP -- or, Googling Other People. Hadn't heard from Dana for several Christmases, so I did a little fiddling around on the Internet and found he's moved from North Carolina to parts West. He's relocated to Nevada, where he's Director of the School of Public Health at the University of Nevada at Reno. Read all about him in the University's NevadaNews. If anyone has contact information for him or updated news, I'd love to get him back on my Christmas card list.

visit from helene

Cousin Helene Van Oosten visited today. She divides her time between Fisher's Island, NY and Santa Barbara, CA, and points in between. For those of you who may have forgotten, she is our second cousin -- Edna Lapham Van Oosten was her mother and Aunt Helen and Uncle Roger Lapham were her grandparents. She brought along an album that Grandma Loomis kept -- a guest book for the house in Washington, Connecticut -- full of autographs and photographs and letters and clippings. I'll scan some of those items and share them with you. She also brought an album of Grandma's photographs of her sister Helen and the Lapham family. Grandma was an aspiring photographer and studied at the Art Student's League of New York and with noted photographer Clarence White. Helene told me that Grandma was much chagrined that her parents wouldn't allow her to pose nude for him -- when she later saw an international exhibit of his, which included a number of nudes, she realized that she could have been famous!

Here are a few of the photographs that Helene brought along. I believe that Grandma Loomis took all but the one of herself.

Dorothy Abbot Loomis

Helen Lapham, Carol Lapham, and Isabel Abbot

Lewis and Carol Lapham and Edgar Abbot

Isabel Abbot

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  Lewis A. Lapham (pictured above) is the father of Lewis H. Lapham, editor of Harper's Magazine.
• Uncle Roger Lapham, of course, was Mayor of San Francisco in the 1940s.
• Carol Lapham Valentine, pictured above, is sister to Edna, and Helene's aunt.
• Buy a copy of Aunt Helen's book about life with Unlce Roger.
• Waveny was the Lapham family house in New Canaan, Connecticut. Grandma Loomis took many photos of her sister's family there.

art imitates life

This illustration is from the Little Bright Eyes Storybook, pictured below. Published in 1901, it contained art by numerous artists of the day, including great-grandfather Chester Loomis.


I think you can see from this photo that Chester's mother-in-law Arvilla Dana (Sara Dana's mother) is the inspiration for the grandmother in the illustration.

The book is for sale on ebay at the moment -- click here to see the listing. Many thanks to Steve, the ebay seller, for sending a scan of the illustration.