Digging Down East: McCain Bessie

Showing posts with label McCain Bessie. Show all posts

Sunday, August 17, 2014

52 Ancestors: #33 Bessie Judson McCain (1877-1958)

Bessie Judson McCain, my great grand aunt, was born on this date in 1877, in Florenceville, New Brunswick, the oldest of four children born to John McCain and Harriet Atwood Harnett, and their first daughter.

She lost her father at age 19 to a accidental death from drinking contaminated water, and soon after moved with her mother, two sisters and brother to Portland, Maine.

The 1900 US Census found her and her sister Augusta (Gussie) working as nurses-in-training at the Maine Eye and Ear Infirmary in Portland, which had just opened its doors 9 years earlier in 1891.

Maine Eye & Ear Infirmary
Portland, Maine
Photo Credit: John Phelan/Creative Commons

Two years later Bessie married the widower Edward Elden Cheney, eighteen years her senior, on February 19, 1902. For most of their married life, they lived on the Eastern Promenade in Portland. She lost her husband, however, in 1919. Edward Cheney died at 59 years of age of Lou Gehrig's Disease.

In her widowhood, Aunt Bess, as she was known, lived at various addresses around Portland, including Spring St., Brown St., and Cumberland Ave. She was always included in family gatherings, like this one from the mid-1950's:

Aunt Bess on the far right, with me on my dad's knee.

Bessie passed away at age 80, on August 15, 1958, and is buried with her husband in Evergreen Cemetery in Portland.

Photo credit:

Maine Eye and Ear Infirmary Portland ME
By John Phelan [CC-BY-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/by/3.0)], Wikimedia Commons

Sources:

1920 US Census; Census Place: Portland Ward 6, Cumberland, Maine; Roll: T625_640; Page: 24A; Enumeration District: 44; Image: 103, Bessie J. Cheney.

Ancestry.com, 1900 United States Federal Census (Provo, UT, USA, The Generations Network, Inc., 2004), www.ancestry.com, Database online. Portland, Cumberland, Maine, ED , roll , page .. Record for Bessie J McCain.

Ancestry.com, 1910 United States Federal Census (Provo, UT, USA, The Generations Network, Inc., 2006), www.ancestry.com, Database online. Portland Ward 1, Cumberland, Maine, ED , roll T624_539, part , page .. Record for Edward E Cheney.

Bessie J. Cheney tombstone, Evergreen Cemetery, Portland (Cumberland County), Maine; photographed by Pamela Schaffner on 8 August 2009.

Maine. Certificate of Death (15 Aug 1958), Bessie Judson Cheney; Maine Vital Records, Augusta; photocopied from microfilm, received in the mail Jan 25, 2013.

"Maine, Marriages, 1771-1907," index, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.1.1/F4DP-2YX : accessed 17 Aug 2014), Edward E. Cheney and Bessie Judson Mccain, 19 Feb 1902; citing Portland, Cumberland, Maine, reference 122; FHL microfilm 12027.

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This is the 33rd in a series, “52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks,” coordinated by Amy Johnson Crow at No Story Too Small.

Tuesday, March 19, 2013

Fearless Females Blog Post: March 19 ~ Hidden In Her Daughter's Obituary

Harriet Atwood Harnett (1838-1905), is my 2nd great grandmother. She married John McCain in Florenceville, New Brunswick, in 1875. But it wasn't until I found her daughter's, my great grandmother's, obituary in the Portland Press Herald, last summer, that I realized she had an earlier married life.

As I dissected Bertie's obituary, I noticed a few names that made no sense to me. Evelyn and Harriet were familiar to me as Bertie's daughters. Bessie J. McCain was her sister, and J. Frazier McCain was her brother.. But who was this other sister Annie Burtt? And a brother, E.W. Boyer, where did he come from?

One of my favorite genealogical sources is Daniel F. Johnson's New Brunswick Newspaper Vital Statistics, 1784-1890, accessible through the Public Archives of New Brunswick. It was there that I found a piece from the Saint John Christian Visitor, announcing the 1870 passing, at age 33, of Edward Wheeler Boyer of Florenceville. He left a wife and two children.

The widow ended up being Harriet and her two children, Edward W. and Anna Belle. My 2nd great grandmother had been married twice!

(Annie went on to marry Winslow Jordan Burtt, and they had a very famous son. But that's fodder for a future blog post.)

Lisa Alzo of The Accidental Genealogist blog is presenting her Fearless Females: 31 Blogging Prompts to Celebrate Women’s History Month series in honor of National Women’s History Month.

Monday, August 13, 2012

Matrilineal Monday - Bertie McCain Smith

My maternal great-grandmother, Bertha A. McCain

Bertha A. "Bertie" McCain was born on January 10, 1882, in Florenceville, New Brunswick, Canada, the fifth of five children of John McCain (1835-1896) and Harriet A. Harnett (1839-1905).

Bertie, her mother Harriet, and her sister Bess

The 21 year old Bertie, on January 24, 1903, married Wylie Herbert Smith (1874-1952), a 28 year old young man from Elgin, New Brunswick, a 1901 graduate of Acadia Divinity College, and soon to be Baptist preacher. Their first child, a daughter, Evelyn Augusta (1904-1978) was born a year later.

In 1905, she and her young family moved to Maine, settling first in Portland, where their second child was born a year later, a daughter Harriet Cheney (1906-1985), later to Norridgewock, in Somerset County, and then back to Portland.

Bertie died at her home on February 24, 1930. One daughter was married and the other, my grandmother, delayed her planned wedding until later that year, allowing for a proper mourning period.

She is buried in Evergreen Cemetery, in Portland, Maine, alongside her husband.