Ancestry of Lois Baker - Lydia Agard

I have written about David Baker (b. NY 1775) in a previous post. His wife, Lydia Agard, was born 17 June 1787 and died 18 August 1817. She married David Baker on 12 December 1806. The dates were provided by Clarence Baker and as Lydia Agard was his great-grandmother, it is expected that the information was readily available from family sources. In years of research I have never found a single corroborating reference to Lydia Agard. Over those same years, however, I have developed a hypothesis about her parents and believe them to be James and Lydia (Soule) Agard.
David Baker was living in the Nine Partners section of the Beekman Patent (NY) at the time of his first and second marriages. In this same area lived James and Lydia Agard, who were married on 18 February 1786. There are records of only two children born to them; Mary in 1789 and Lucy in 1797. The 1797 date is considered questionable as the original records are unclear. Might Lydia, born sixteen months after the marriage, be their unrecorded child?
Stephen Agard has undertaken the revision of his father's book "Agards of America" (by Frederick B. Agard) and is interested in solving the mystery of Lydia. Perhaps increased attention and new information will someday provide an an answer. Whether or not my theory is correct, it is a certainty that Lydia was descended from John Agard. John died on the voyage to Massachusetts and his widow, Esther, remarried to Samuel Storrs. If I have the line correctly, it descends through James Agard and his wife Abigail Leach to Amos Agard and his wife Alice Smith to the James Agard who married Lydia Soule.

Ancestry of Lois Baker Smith: Moses Clark and E. Elizabeth Woodbury

In 1935 Lucille Clark Hoskins wrote to her half sister, Madge Clark Baker, recalling her memories of her grandparents; E. Elizabeth Woodbury and Moses Hobart Clark. She wrote"Grandfather and grandmother were childhood sweethearts, he used to bring apples to her when they went to school. Grandmother rode horseback and fell and broke her arm. She was considered quite a woman with the horse, she drove a four horse team down Woodbury Mountain. I remember when a little girl, probably frightened, sitting in the seat beside her. We had got to the R.R. crossing, the train coming very near, the horse rose up on his hind feet, she drew that whip across his back and he dropped down and took us across..."

Writing about E. Elizabeth's four brothers Lucille said; "The boys were very ungodly. When the boys were young the father left home and was to come home a certain day. So the boys thought that they would have a dance, he came unexpected, opened the door and said "Where am I, in HELL!"

E. Elizabeth was born 25 September 1832 in Greensboro, Vermont and died 28 June 1906 in Barnet. Moses Hobart Clark was born 14 october 1831 at Washington, Vermont and died 15 April 1919 in Burlington. On 2 June 1832 they married. They moved to Barnet about 1900 where Moses and his son Charles Edward Clark operated a wagon making business. Four of their five children are discussed in the post immediately previous to this one. The youngest child, Nellie, never married. I have in my possession a newspaper clipping about her death but cannot find it at the moment. The story made us Smith kids laugh when we read the clipping as teenagers and from the distance of a century more or less it has a comical quality. In August of 1937 she was riding in the back seat of a car carrying her niece Lucille Hoskins and driven by Lucille's husband, Frank. They had a small collision at a crossroads but the car was driveable and no-one seemed hurt so they continued their trip. When they arrived at their destination, Nellie was dead in the back seat. The death certificate, which I do have, says "Hemorrhage into tissues of neck and lacerations of soft parts". Nellie was born in 1864 and was 73 years old at the time of her death.

I have seen the Clark and Woodbury gravestones in Wolcott. E. Elizabeth's epitaph is:

She hath done what she could

Beautiful hands, beckoning hands

Calling the dear ones to heavenly lands

Ancestry of Lois Baker Smith: Charles Clark

Charles E. Clark, the son of Moses Hobart Clark and Elnira Elizabeth Woodbury, was born 10 May 1860 in Craftsbury, Vermont. He died 19 April 1903 in Barnet, Vermont and is buried in Wolcott, Vermont. Charles married Anna Solomon in July 1886 and had one child, Lucile, before Anna died in June 1895. He married Flora M. Thompson in November 1897 in Wolcott. Their son George was born in 1901 and Madge, a posthumous child, was born in August of 1903.

Charles was the fourth child of his parents with two older brothers and one older and one younger sister. The first four children died in the order they were born and all before their parents. Helen Langford, a niece of "Charlie" Clark's prepared a typescript on the Clark Family and I will quote from her work several times. Frank died of pneumonia. "He got up too soon to help his father, caught cold, had a relapse, went into a quick consumption and died at the age of 19...for years Lucile A. Clark had a ball in the front room. All one could see were the cloves as this was a apple that he held in his hand but was unable to eat it. His last words were, 'Lord, I'm coming". (HL)

George Clark was reputed to be one of the most brilliant men that ever came out of Morrisville Academy. He taught Latin and planned to go to college. In June 1877 while helping his father in the woods he was killed by a falling tree. "His mother walked from the house to the barn so much that the path could be seen late in the fall. They were afraid for her mind. The Rev. John Langford held morning prayers one day when she finally broke down and cried" (HL)

In August 1891 Lizzie Clark Langford went to visit her parents in Wolcott and while there was taken ill with typhoid fever. She died on 10 September of that year, leaving motherless her two young sons.

The story of Charlie Clark's death is preserved in a letter from Lucille Clark Hoskins to her half sister, Madge. Lucille was 14 when her father died.

I should have written you about your-- our-- father's death, perhaps Mamma told you but if not here it is. If he could have died as God meant to and if death could be called beautiful, he had or would have had a beautiful death. He asked first where George was-- he was at Grandpa's across the road-- he wanted to bid him goodbye. Mamma said something like "you think you are going to die". Yes, he was going to die that day. He bid us all goodbye-- said it was a beautiful day--- but it was a dreary April day. He was happy, said "tell Mother goodbye". She had had a shock the January before. Somehow a nurse arrived and commenced to give "hypos". Mamma said "is it necessary to do this" and she said "we always do". Papa got so he would draw away when she came to give them, he went out of his head and said things he never would have said in his right mind, and finally died the 19th, not the day he bid us goodbye. Mamma said no one would ever do that to any of her loved ones again, but of course that's what doctors and nurses do. I have myself*. They looked at as long as there is life there is hope".

*Lucille trained and worked as a nurse.

Here is the link to the web album for Charles Clark and Flora Thompson:

http://picasaweb.google.com/smith.dereka/CharlesEClarkAndFloraThompson

Ancestry of Lois Baker Smith: Her mother Madge Clark

Madge Clark was born in Barnet, Vermont 27 August 1903, four months after her father, Charles E. Clark, died of penumonia on 19 April. Her mother, Flora Thompson Clark, was left a pregnant widow with a young son as well as a stepdaughter, Lucille, the child of her husband's previous marriage. Flora moved from Barnet to Brandon where she worked as a school teacher. Madge attended Brandon Schools and followed with a year at Baypath Secretarial School in Springfield, Massachusetts. As described in an earlier post, she married Clarence Baker on 5 July 1924 in Brandon. After her marriage she continued to work part-time as a secretary. When widowed she worked as a telephone operator, a career she followed until her retirement. By the time my memories of "Grandma" begin, she was working at the switchboard in Brandon. She impressed me with talk of "the girls" and of swing shifts and split shifts. She told me that operators really did "listen in" no matter how strictly it was forbidden. She was very afraid of progress in the world of AT & T and worried greatly about what would happen to her when phones went dial. In the end she was moved down to Rutland where she became a long distance operator. I don't think this was nearly as much fun as working the lines in a small town where she knew everyone and everything. In fact, in my old age, I have a lot of sympathy for what she went through having to leave her home and friends of a lifetime and move 17 miles south, to adjust to very different working conditions.

Madge, according to my mother, was a woman always teetering on the edge of a breakdown. Madge often told us that her "nerves" were bad, meaning that she felt depressed and Lois told me that there were whole days that Madge spent lying on the couch, not even able to get dressed. Alternatively, she would become very high energy and whiz about full of plans and schemes. One story handed down over the years involved a trip she decided to take to visit her brother in Rutland. Despite the fact that it was snowing heavily and the roads were bad, she would not be deterred. Reaching the area where the present day union high school is located, she went into a skid, flew off into the field and bounced around stones and trees, totalling the car but not at all hurt herself. She was brought home by a bystander, told Clarence of the event and proceeded to put on her hat and coat for departure. He asked where she was going and indignantly she replied "well, to take the bus to Rutland, of course!". Writing this I can still hear her voice and remember the many anecdotes she told about Eva and Clarence and "Mother Baker"; almost all stories about how she was overlooked or mistreated.

Madge was the kind of driver who honked the horn loudly whenever she came to a bend in the road and it became a standing joke that when she drove away from our house in West Whately, she went in the wrong direction. We would stand there watching and in a few minutes back she would come, honking and waving. She often told the story of getting turned around when she got gas for the car, driving several miles in the wrong direction before realizing her mistake but placing the blame firmly on the gas station attendant.

Although Madge was only 44 when I was born she was widowed at the age of 47 and seemed to me quite ancient. She wore dresses in what were called "half sizes" and often talked about her need to "reduce". She wore old lady tie shoes with sensible heels and extremely complicated corsets which had laces and hooks and ties and I was fascinated to watch her get out of the paraphenalia. Finally, she had a complete set of false teeth that were kept in a glass by the bed. She hinted darkly that her boarder, "Thad" had designs on her that she never encouraged. She did have a real boyfriend for some time and Oscar talked of marrying her but I overheard her tell my mother that she was through with sex so had no interest in getting married. To me she described her marriage to Clarence as idyllic and I have many loving cards and letters that he gave her over the years. My mother, however, believed that it was a loveless marriage and that Clarence submitted to Madge's emotional blackmail through the years just as he had allowed himself to be maneuvered into marriage in the first place. Never having heard a word from Clarence about this and knowing how ambivalent Lois was about Madge, I myself am open to the idea that their lasting marriage was much like others-- sometimes good, sometimes not so good.

My mother, Lois Baker Smith, was diagnosed with cancer in December of 1970, and died on 21 March 1971. This was a terrible blow to Madge, as one can imagine. Four years later on the 25th anniversary of her husband's death, Madge committed suicide, taking large numbers of pills.

Lois Baker Smith Letter November 1947

Chas Baker, my uncle, died on 20 February 2007. After his death Susan found a letter written by my mother, his sister, that amazingly he had saved all those years. Remember while reading that this was written to an 18 year old boy!

Bright Meadows

Nov. 19, 1947

Dear Chas,

Mother has told you, but we are so happy and so thrilled that I wanted to write anyway and repeat it.

Mother just looked and looked at Dereka and I was pleased that she took time and did not rush over her. All wonderful things-- beautiful things-- need time and silence to appreciate. She is actually very beautiful. I suppose it is no surprising for Marshall is a handsome man, especially without his glasses. He has very beautiful features.

We had a good birth. You knew, tho perhaps only vaguely, that we had many "ideas" about families and babies and pregnancy and childbearing. It seems often to be a very trying time-- we felt this to be mostly because of attitudes. So it was our family that was pregnant, not just the female element all by herself to "bear it". What a difference. It became a thrilling thing. If you watch you can see a baby kicking and moving, even thru clothes. It became exciting for both of us-- not something for me to "stand". Etc. etc. Marshall saw to it that I "hit the sack" right after lunch each day. He made it pleasant by his attitude and easy to relax by his back rubs which became practically daily osteopathic treatments. This element was one of the most essential as you know from Grantly Dick Read's theories in "Childbirth Without Fear". In the second stage of labor at the difficult time I heard them say "Isn't she wonderful. This is the time when they usually fight us; they don't like us very much right now. But isn't she wonderful. See how she relaxes". I was amazed that I actually could. Because I had the feeling that certainly I hadn't planned to have the baby that night, that really I just couldn't be actually having it, yet here I was in the throes of some terrific contractions the like of which I had never experienced-- and I was able to relax. There was no tear in spite of the fact that tearing has become so common that is is routine now in the hospitals to cut the perineal tissue before the birth because a cut is cleaner than a tear. There was no anesthetic of any kind and scarcely any bleeding. We are quite blown up over the whole thing!!

Having Marshall's arms to hang onto was wonderful. It seems as tho I would have died if he couln't have been with me, yet most husbands are not, of course. It seemed incredible to both of us that we could actually be having a baby-- yet suddenly, wham! there she was and the shock was so great that Marshall was quite stunned and began weeping. I felt immediately perfectly alright (no stomach any more!) but could do nothing but hang on to Marshall just crying his name over and over. It was too wonderful to believe. Life is a great miracle. Why must anyone worry about wine changed into water when there are real miracles like birth and growing things. Marshall is now chief engineer. He is an excellent cook. I am getting new ideas from him and he is the first man I have seen who is not frightened by a tiny baby. He throws her around in the most amazing way and shouts in her ear and she loves it. When the district nurse comes she treats her like any baby and bundles her all up 'till she looks lie a mummy and Dereka has the expression of "I am just any baby in a nursery..." But Marshall treats her like a person and she becomes one. "Hey kid, that was a (?) kid. Now you know that's possible because gasses are soluble in water and Co2...etc. etc." "Hey what's your beef, kid? Well cherubini did you just want to get out of the sack for a little. A kid can't spend all her time in the sack, she has to have a little fun." "Boy you sure did mictulate([sic] cherubini, you sure did mictulate. How about a smizzy?" (Marshall's word for kiss) She absolutely adores him and so do I.

Love, Lois

It is pretty lucky to find a letter describing one's own birth, and especially to find it 59 years later. I know that life did not remain quite so idyllic for my parents but they went on to have four more children and I know that they still loved each other passionately when she died of cancer in 1971.

Ancestry of Lois Baker Smith: Part VI Her Baker Aunt and Uncles

Eva Baker was born 8 July 1881 in Belcher, New York. She graduated from high school in Brandon, Vermont in 1900. Like her younger brother Clarence, she had a beautiful (contralto) voice and was much in demand as a church soloist. She taught music in local schools and later in life was a librarian in Brandon. She married Joseph Shepard in a double wedding with her brother Arthur (who married Anna Offensend); the wedding taking place on 8 July 1910, her 29th birthday.

The story as I had it from my grandmother is that Joseph Shepard had syphilis. Their son Dennison Shepard was born 5 May 1911 and died on 17 July, his death attributed to his father's illness. Their second son Edward, was born was healthy on 11 March 1916. Joseph Shepard died 27 January 1920. On 20 June 1930 when Edward was fourteen he died very tragically in a boating accident. The scene was a church picnic on Lake Dunmore. Edward and his mother along with two other children were in a boat which tipped, according to my grandfather, because of a sudden squall. Edward, who was an excellent swimmer, carried his mother to shore and went back out to help the two others, both girls, I believe. In a horrible chain of events, which I remember being cautioned about many times in my early swimming career, the panicked girls dragged Edward under and they all three died. Eva, who had already lost her husband and her first child, never recovered from this blow. I remember visiting Eva several times and I inherited all of her photo albums.

Arthur Baker was born 8 April 1884 in South Hartford, New York. As mentioned above he married in a double wedding with his sister Eva. He lived in Fair Haven and had two sons, George born in 1911 and John born in 1914. John died in 1925 at the age of eleven. I never heard anything about him. George, my mother's cousin, was often mentioned by my mother. I remember two stories. My mother went to Brandon for her brother's high school graduation in June of 1947. She was pregnant with me but not married. She worried about whether people would notice. Her friend advised her to wear a big hat to draw attention away from her shape. Her cousin George took her aside and asked whether she was pregnant. She asked him why he thought so and he replied, "because you are wearing a big hat". George also went down in history because at the collation after his mother's funeral he said "This is a day I have been looking forward to for years". When people laughed he became flustered and explained that he was happy to see friends and relatives that he seldom saw.

George had two sons, another George and Sheldon. These men were my second cousins. When I lived in West Hartford in the 1980's I learned that Sheldon was the well known "Phantom Diner", a Connecticut restaurant critic. I went to a book signing and told him who I was. He seemed completely uninterested and that was the only contact I had with him.

Horatio Baker was born 2 July 1893 and died 14 October 1966. He and Clarence remained close throughout their lives. Horatio graduated from Brandon High School in 1911. He then went to the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis. In 1916 he entered RPI in Troy and earned a degree in electrical engineering. In 1918 when she was still 17 years old, he married Madeline Bennett the daughter of his landlady. Her birthday was 27 August, the same day as his brother's wife Madge. They had no children. Lois lived with them in Troy for a year after she graduated from high school. She wished to become a nurse but was considered too young because she was barely sixteen when she graduated. In Troy she worked as a nurse's aide at Samaritan Hospital; an experience that cured her completely of her dream of nursing. She was fond of her aunt and uncle but was indignant at the fact that they made daily inquiries about her bowel movements. She felt that at sixteen she had outgrown the need for such attention. Moving one's bowels daily was considered a benchmark for good health and medicinal doses were administered if they did not operate on schedule.

My parents often went from Jamaica to Troy for Thanksgiving dinner and I remember both Horatio and Madeline well. When I lived in Troy in the late 1970's I sometimes drove by the large house on Pawling Avenue where they had lived in an apartment for many years.

Ancestry of Lois Baker Smith: Part V Clarence Melville Baker

Clarence Baker, my grandfather, was the youngest child of Orville and Frances (Buck) Baker. His parents were first cousins, as I have mentioned earlier. It was his mother's intention that Clarence would remain unmarried and care for his parents in their old age. This is a notion most Americans find unthinkable today but was not uncommon a few generations ago. To the extent that Clarence stayed in Brandon and lived in the duplex with his mother until her death, he fulfilled her plan.

Clarence graduated from high school in 1916 and became an employee in a Brandon bank. He served in the Navy during World War I as a musician first class, his instrument being the cornet. Once as an audacious teenager I said to my grandmother, "Grandma you weren't really a virgin when you got married were you?" In a very angry voice she replied "No, I wasn't! But I had to do it or Clarence would have never left his mother!". My astonishment was extreme and I have never forgotten the exchange. Although Orville had died in 1922, Frances certainly did not approve of Clarence's romantic relationship with my grandmother, Madge Lois Clark. Madge's father died before Madge was even born and her mother was left pregnant with a small boy and her stepdaughter, Lucille. Madge grew up in poverty in Brandon although her mother was a respectable and hard working school teacher. They married with the little finagling done by Madge on 5 July 1924. My mother, Lois Marie Baker, was born 19 May 1925 in Florida and her brother, Charles Baker, was born 12 June 1929 by which time they were back in Brandon.

Clarence had a fine singing voice and was often a soloist in at the church in Brandon. On 12 November 1924, he wrote to his mother from Florida where he was attending an optometry course:

"If nothing happens to prevent, I will have reached a milestone in my life tomorrow night. My voice will be thrown hundreds if not thousands of miles and my wife at least will be one who will hear it. ...The sound will go out onto a big steel tower and then be caught from the air on an ordinary receiving set"

Clarence was the first known genealogist of the family and started a search into his Baker roots. He did not live to finish the project but his brother Horatio picked it up and prepared a typescript which was completed in 1961. Clarence died shortly before his 54th birthday of hypertension and heart disease. I imagine that his sedentary life style and high fat diet in the days before people made the connection between exercise and heart health, were the largest contributor to this early death. For all of her own life my grandmother believed that exertion was very bad-- caused wear and tear on the system that could not be undone. I was not yet three years old when Clarence died and I do not remember him.

Here is the link to the web album: http://picasaweb.google.com/smith.dereka/OrvilleBakerAndFrancesBuck

The House on Franklin Street, Brandon

These are then and now pictures of the duplex house #'s 13 and 15 Franklin Street, Brandon, Vermont. The house was purchased by Orville Clark Baker as a residence located directly across the street from his original residence and doctor's office at 16 Franklin Street. The house at 16 was considerably grander but by the time I came along Orville was long gone and I was never inside. In fact, I never heard my mother speak of 16 Franklin; when she was born her parents lived at 13 Franklin and her grandparents lived at 15. My grandfather, Clarence Baker, had his optometrist office at 1 1/2 Center Street. When I was born and visited in Brandon my grandmother lived at 15 where pictures show that we had several of our Thanksgiving and Christmas meals.

The most intriguing thing about the house to my childhood mind was a bedroom on the second floor that had access from both sides of the house. When Clarence and Madge decided to move from one side of the house to the other, this bedroom belonged to my uncle Chas. He simply locked the door from 13 and opened the door from 15 and never had to move at all.

My grandmother had a phonograph player and the classic recording of Peter and the Wolf. I loved this recording. She also had two books that are now with me, both of which I adored. One of them was about the "Teenie Weenies", a whole community of very small persons for whom a single strawberry could make a feast. I read it every time I visited and took it for my own when my grandmother died. Likewise another book-- one about the Dionne Quintuplets. I will write more about the lives of my grandparents in another post.

Ancestry of Lois Baker Smith: Part IV Henry Baker and Orville Baker

Henry Baker, the son of David Baker and Lydia Agard was born 13 October 1808 in Peru, NY and died 15 May 1858. He farmed on land adjacent to that of his father. His first two marriages were to sisters Eunice and Clarissa wright and he is supposed to have had seven children between the two. Eunice died in 1842 when she was only 25 years old. Clarissa died in 1848 when she was 23 years old. It is presumed that both of them died in childbirth. Did women take the very real danger of childbirth in stride. From where I stand it is easy to imagine that when pregnant Clarissa was troubled by the fate of her older sister. Perhaps like those who live in an earthquake zone, however, she were inured to the possibilities and sailed through her days with a sense of personal optimism!

Henry's third wife was Mariah Buck and it is Mariah who is the mother of our ancestor, Orville Clark Baker. Orville was seven years old when his father died. His grandson Horation Baker wrote: "He was very early sent out to do farm work, especially in summer months. He once showed me where he was working doing some early fpring work in an apple orchard when a passerby stopped and told him that Abraham lincoln had been shot and he cried for some time".

Orville apprenticed as a "joiner" but had always wanted to be a physician and eventually was able to become a medical student, first in Vermont and later in New York. He received his diploma in February 1879. Horatio wrote "The writer never fully understood how he (Orville) did manage to finance this medical eduation. He several times said he was terribly in debt when he started the practice of medicine in Belcher, a hamlet in the town of Hebron, Washington County, New York. In the meantime, in September of 1878, he married his sown cousin, Frances Maria Buck.

In 1890 Orville and Frances moved to Brandon, Vermont where he spent the rest of his life. He purchased a house at 16 Franklin Street and established his medical office in that house. In 1908 he purchased a duplex across the street and moved there in 1909. After his death in 1822 his widow remained at 15 Franklin Street which became the home of their son, Clarence Baker and later of my mother, Lois Marie Baker. I will write about the two houses in my next post.

Ancestry of Lois Baker Smith: Part III David Baker

David Baker was born on 15 May 1775 in the Beekman Patent. Gideon Baker, his father, is discussed in Part II of the Baker Ancestry. We know little about David but can readily guess that his childhood was not placid and stable. To begin with he was born less than a month after Paul Revere's ride (18 April 1775). He had four older brothers, the eldest of whom was only eight years old when David was born. When David was five years old his father spent some weeks in "gaol" on charges of spying for the British. Solomon Baker, his father's cousin was hanged, and there must have been great family anxiety regarding Gideon and others. Then, sometime before 1783, David's mother died. By 1783 his father had remarried (unknown date) and had a child with his second wife, so it is certain that David was motherless at around the same time that his father was in jail.

It is worth noting that although Gideon Baker moved some part of his family to Vermont about 1782, his son David must have returned to New York as a young man where he settled and lived in Peru, Clinton County. In 1797 when David was 22, he married Mary White. Mary had four children and died at the age of 29, twelve days aftet the birth of the fourth. Two years later, when he was 31, David married again, this time to Lydia Agard. Lydia was 19 years old when she married and 30 years old when she died two weeks after the birth of her fifth child. David married a third time to Hannah Brownell and had two more children for a total of eleven children by three wives. David died himself in 1847. His last son, William Baker was killed in the Civil War. The son through whom our line descends will be treated in the next post.