Memorials Written for my Mother and Her Revised Will to Benefit 6 Non-Profit Organizations

A newspaper obituary written about my mother was titled, "The Ultimate Volunteer, " I blogged about that obituary five years ago, see HERE. Now, 26 years after her April 16, 2016 death, I am posting three memorial articles to my mother. From the obituary, "She died of a heart attack, at the age of 70, doing what she loved, leading a group of bicyclists on an annual Patriot's Day bike ride in Lincoln [sic] (should be Lexington)."

Alan Dressler, Marta Gredler and Sharon Cain wrote memorial articles and Jean H. James wrote the Memorial Ride in my mother's name. Part of what they wrote are these statements: "Just a few of her activities: the Presidency of her Skidmore college class; Westford (MA) teacher; AARP; the Concord Piece-makers (her quilting group); Boy Scout recycling drives; Rails to Trails projects; and of course Bicycling with the Nashoba Valley Pedalers." "Long-time volunteer of the New England Quilt Museum." Personally, I know she was a Girl Scout volunteer and for several years the Sunday School volunteer administrator.

Her revised will dated 1 March 1990, just 6 weeks prior to her death and a few months before a scheduled trip to France, replaced her original one prepared in ca. 1955. She thought so much about her love of the Church, Rails to Trails, New England Quilt Museum, Friends of the Acton Council on Aging, Northfield Mt. Hermon School (where she attended a private high school), and Skidmore College that she left each of them 1/6 of 1/4 of her estate.

Marta

Revolutionary War Memorial--22 Names from Andover, Massachusetts

IN MEMORIAM

TOWN OF ANDOVER

CASUALTIES IN THE MILITARY AND NAVAL SERVICE

IN THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR

PHILIP ABBOT

SAMUEL BAILEY, JR.

EZRA CHANDLER

JOSEPH CHANDLER

TITUS CHICKERING

CHARLES DANIELSON

STEPHEN FARRINGTON

BENJAMIN FRYE 

JAMES FRYE

JONATHAN HAGGET

THOMAS HAGGET

WILLIAM HAGGET

JESSE HOLT

ABIJAH INGALLS

JACOB JONES

JOHN LOVEJOY

BENJAMIN PARKER

DAVID PORTER

JONATHAN STEVENS

THOMAS STEVENS

EPHRAIM SWAN

ASA TOWN

"HE FOUGHT THE FIGHT, HE KEPT THE STEP,

LOYAL, AND BRAVE, AND TRUE.

FOR A FREE LAND HE PAID THE PRICE,

COMRADES, THAT DAY FOR YOU."

ANNIE SAWYER DOWNS

ERECTED BY THE TOWN IN THIS BICENTENNIAL YEAR 1976

I Wanted to Know More and I Found a lot from a Great Cemetery Database

The title is a little misleading because the post is mostly about my efforts to find where David Mercer was buried and who he was. He married one of the five daughters of Annie Ward Poole Bartlett of Andover, Massachusetts. I knew where daughter Sarah Poole Bartlett was buried but where was the husband? When I discovered Sarah had married David Mercer, I soon discovered he was the son of Major-General Sir David Mercer (1864–1920), British Royal Marine officer. Now that I knew who he was, I had to find out where he was buried, since it wasn't next to his wife.

First step is always to turn to FindAGrave, and the screen shot shows just a name and dates, and he was buried in Brookdale Cemetery, established in 1880, with almost 3,000 interments in Dedham, Norfolk Co., Massachusetts. Any genealogists knows, that isn't enough information.

A quick google search of the cemetery name shown on FindAGrave brought me to a link done by the town. I was hopeful.

http://gis.dedham-ma.gov/cemeteryviewer_brookdale/

Below are screen shots to show how to use their outstanding site, there isn't a lot of reading to figure it out.

After I clicked ok, and entered the  surname in the upper left box, you'll see a map and the surname you entered.

I then received a listing of all individuals with that surname. Below, you'll see five people with Mercer in their name.

I clicked on my Mercer, David Dixon, and noted he was in Lot 0421S.

Below, is a listing of all the people in that Lot. Complete with death date and age. A map showing where the Lot is can be seen as well. (You can exit out of this listing of names, and will be able to see the entire cemetery.) This Brookdale Cemetery database in Dedham, Massachusetts can provide a huge amount of information. Unfortunately, I didn't see a marker photo for David Mercer, but if I went, it wouldn't be hard to locate the spot. UPDATE: July 12, 2016, see at the end of this post.

In this listing, you have two options. One is to click on the name, that will give you his Grave Record, shown below. If you click on the last option, that of View Lot Diagram, you'll where the individuals are placed and additional bits of information.

Grave Record above, and Lot Diagram below.

I'm showing an incomplete lineage of Annie Ward Poole and her husband Nathaniel Edward Bartlett. The subject of this post is shown by the red arrow. You can see that Sarah Poole Bartlett married twice, and I should have David listed first, then the second, but in my haste.

This post will be added to yesterdays post, You need to Know What You Have So You Can Share With Others Your Cemetery List

UPDATE: July 12, 2016
I received notification from David Mercer's granddaughter that she found a site with the photo of the cemetery stone at the above cemetery. Both David and his second wife are named on this stone. It had been posted on BillionGraves (a site I don't subscribe to, but may in the future). Please see: https://billiongraves.com/grave/Elinor-Baker-Mercer/8378394#

You need to Know What You Have So You Can Share With Others Your Cemetery List

One of the best things you can do if you have a genealogy blog is know what you have. Today, I am talking about cemeteries, but not about the 234 entries I have with the label of cemetery. My problem is, it's impossible to remember where a certain post is, under the cemetery label, because they all are labeled cemetery.

Today, I decided to make a new label and have it be useful to me and for those who are searching helpful information, like maps and names in a cemetery, and you don't want to use FindAGrave.com. Most of these were done by towns, or individuals (such as my husband's cousin and uncle).

I am covering the following towns in Massachusetts: No. Andover, Billerica, Bedford, Watertown, Cambridge, Andover and one in Maine. Shortly, I will add one for Dedham, Massachusetts (the best I've seen yet).

I Wanted to Know More and I Found a lot from a Great Cemetery Database (Dedham, MA) Tombstone Tuesday -- A Makeover for a 1660 No. Andover, Massachusetts Cemetery Three Cemetery Databases for One Cemetery and Not One was Complete. What Would You Do? Billerica Public Library, Billerica, Massachusetts (History and Genealogy Collection) 43 Revolutionary War Soldiers and Widow Balch Buried in Bedford, MA -- Tombstone Tuesday Watertown Book, with Map and List of Burials at the Arlington Street Burying Ground Mount Auburn Cemetery, Cambridge, MA -- How to locate Records from Home or in Person Brunswick and Topsham, Maine Cemeteries (Continued) How to Find a Tombstone in the Old Cemetery in Lexington, MA, My Stearns / Stone for Tombstone Tuesday

Tribute to my Childhood Best Friend, Mary Bea Lingane of Lexington, MA

I recently found out that my former best friend passed away. I contacted her brother and he was kind enough to write and give me the details as well as other bits of information about the family. I am posting this in case anybody in cyberspace happens to google her name. I would like them to find this blog post and read about Mary Bea.

There aren't enough adjectives to describe the wonderful qualities of my former best friend. Smart, very pretty, talented, fun, nice and loyal. She and I were like glue soon after I moved 2 houses away from her in Lexington, Massachusetts in 1954. There were no other children our age, so we shared our early days together on the weekend and after school. We often took the bus to Boston, joined a very active Girl Scout troop (in my blog post about My Life as a Girl Scout, I wrote her name hoping she'd see it one day), and did what we could together because our stay-at-home mothers didn't work nor drive. She went to a private catholic school for several years, but we went to the same high school. There, she took college courses, went to college, became a teacher (at the same school my mother taught), left teaching, took more college courses, had a few different jobs, her last was about 30 years of working in several departments at Northeastern University, one as the Director of Personnel and her last position as Executive Assistant to the Provost.

During our almost 60 years, we often kept in contact the best we could but hadn't spoken to each other in maybe 10 years. Years after college, she bought a house with her boyfriend in Arlington and invited me for a weekend visit. I then moved to Virginia and lived there for 20 years, but saw her a few times on my return...always meeting up in Lexington. During one lunch, she spent a good deal of time talking about her very good friend, Candy, who had just passed away. I am doing the same for her, although more publicly. Mary came to my mother's funeral in 1990. And, I called her after I heard her mother passed. Soon, our Christmas cards stopped being sent, her postcards from afar, birthday as well. Later, I always knew how busy she was at Northeastern, and didn't want to bother her....I wish I had.

On November 22, 2015, I gathered a stack of Boston Globe newspapers to dispose of. I hadn't read any, but on a whim, something told me to flip through the obits (I never do that, as a matter of fact, especially this time as I could hardly see, never mind read anything because I had cataract surgery three weeks prior. Right there, on the very last bottom of one of the 4 or more full pages of obituaries was Mary's name, age, and date of death. I read it clearly. A short gasp and tears formed when I read it over and over. I called the University quite a few times, but nobody knew anything about her death. So, months later, I decided to write to her brother.

April 1967 in front of her apartment in Watertown, later she moved to Woburn. Mary on the right, me on the left.

February 3, 2023, I am sharing the letter her brother wrote to me. I'm hopeful he won't mind.

"Hi Barbara. How nice to hear from you, despite the circumstances. Perhaps you know that Mary Bea was living for many years in Woburn, and had retired about a year earlier from Northeastern University where she was an administrator. Last spring and summer she started developing symptoms of headaches, vision issues and occasional falls, which turns out were the result of a brain tumor called a meningioma. Though not malignant it was in a difficult location, and last August she went in for surgery at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. Despite world-class specialists in this condition there were complications, and she never awakened from the 15 hour procedure, remaining in what was essentially a coma. As time went on our optimism gradually faded, and we finally decided to move her to hospice in early November. She was very clear in her living will under what circumstances she wished to continue her life if disabled, and it was clear that the chance of meeting that standard had been reduced to nil. She died at the Kaplan Family Hospice House in Danvers, which is an excellent and caring facility. Mary Bea had no children or significant other in the last few years, and she was very generous to her nieces and nephews in her will, such that it will have significant positive impact on their lives.

We had originally planned on a Celebration of Life this spring, but various complications with that plan arose and we decided to just have a family gathering and distribution of ashes in the sea at Cathy’s vacation home in Bar Harbor.

So that is the story. Cathy and her husband John live in Topsfield, MA, and my brother Peter (and his wife, daughters and grandkids) and I live in California. I am married, have one adult son who is an engineer (like his father) in upstate New York and one son who is finishing his freshman year at George Washington University in DC. We will probably be retiring once we stop paying for college tuition!

If you have a spare moment I would enjoy hearing your story.

with best regards,

Paul

p.s. make sure all your estate planning documents are up to date - it really makes a difference."

Two quick stories. When we were in the 4th or 5th grades, I remember being on the grass in her yard talking about love, marriage and white picket fences. Then we decided to kiss each other on the lips to see what that felt like.

The other story was much later, perhaps in the 10th or 11th grade. On a whim, we decided to walk 8 miles to Harvard University to see her dad. He was an instructor or professor (I don't know), but anyway we did, and didn't tell our parents what we were going to do. Her dad was shocked, and shortly after we arrived, he drove us home. My parents punished me. Both are wonderful memories.