Grandma's final days in the almshouse

It's amazing what genealogical research can do to you. Individuals you never met, whose lives ended long before yours began, yet sometimes there can be an emotional connection or reaction to a nugget of information uncovered.

This was the case as I began looking into one of my great-great-great-grandparents recently. The end of her life was a sad time, residing in an almshouse, possibly suffering from significantly impaired cognitive abilities, and dying in a state hospital.

When it comes to the Ellis line of my maternal family tree, I've struggled to get too much definitive information beyond my 3rd great-grandfather George Ellis, and I've never delved into his wife, my 3rd great-grandmother, Caroline. All I ever knew about her was that George had married a woman named Caroline, and together they had several kids.

Turns out that she's really a Susan — Susan Caroline Marvin. Caroline, as she used her middle name throughout her life, was born on August, 19, 1830, to Seth and Susan Marvin in Alstead, New Hampshire, a very small town near the Vermont border. At this point, I know nothing of her parents, nor any siblings she may have had. Much of her youth remains an enigma for me, with no real records uncovered until 1855, when she was 25-years-old.

Caroline and George had already married, presumably before she turned 20-years-old, when she gave birth to their first child, Julia A. Ellis, in October 1850. The family would grow to eight known children born over a 15-year-period, 1850 to 1865. At least three of those eight would die young — George Henry Ellis of typhoid fever at age 21 in 1875, Willie M. Ellis of tuberculosis at age 19 in 1885, and Charles Albert Ellis at age 33 in 1884.

The Ellis family shows up as residents of Worcester, Massachusetts, in both the State and Federal Census. Caroline typically does not have an occupation listed on the Census forms, though she does appear as a dressmaker in the Massachusetts Census of 1865.

The big question marks begin as middle-age hits in the final quarter of the nineteenth century. In the 1870 Census, the entire Ellis family (other than eldest child Julia, then 20-years-old) is residing in Worcester. However, by June 1880 it appears by Census data that George and Caroline have called it quits. George, who is identified as a married man, is residing on Pink Street in Worcester with the family of his son Frank. Caroline is identified as "widowed/divorced" and residing with the family of daughter Julia on Cambridge Street in Worcester.

It appears that Caroline likely remarried as death records for her son Charles shows his parents as Caroline and "George Smith." It is possible, however, that Smith was erroneously written in place of Ellis.

George Ellis would pass away in Worcester on January 1, 1892, at the age of 66. His cause of death is "Bronchitis La Grippe," indicating he suffered from both bronchitis and the flu.

In the 1910 Census, Caroline Ellis appears as a 79-year-old widow listed as an "inmate" at an almhouse known as the Worcester Home Farm. An almhouse is a poorhouse, typically a home for a city's poor to stay. In the case of the Worcester Home Farm, as noted in a 2014 Worcester Telegram & Gazette feature, "life was difficult." The article notes the almhouse's residents, or inmates, "were not permitted to be idle; or talk without permission; nor leave. It was considered shameful to be considered a pauper, and the location of the Poor Farm enabled the city to provide for their needs while ostricizing them from the community." Similarly, Michael D. Kane wrote about the property for MassLive in 2016, explaining it had been "Worcester's first foray into curing social ills ... It had been the place where Worcester housed its extremely poor, mentally ill and those suffering from communicable diseases."

A portion of the Worcester Home Farm properties.

The Worcester Home Farm is reported to have been a 599-acre farm, that featured a hospital, farming, animals raised for slaughter, and even for a hog-fueled garbage disposal system. From 1872 to 1932, which includes Caroline's time at the Worcester Home Farm, the city of Worcester employed a "piggery" to tackle local trash. Pigs would devour the trash while, the Telegram & Gazette reports, "helping to line the city's coffers." The smell from the piggery is said to have traveled for miles and was most certainly a problem for Shrewsbury residents next door.

Caroline spent the final years of her life at the Worcester Home Farm, passing away at the State Hospital on March 22, 1912, at the age of 81. The cause of death was cellulitis of the leg, a bacterial skin infection that is quite painful. Left untreated it can become lethal when it spreads to lymph nodes and the bloodstream. Caroline's death certificate notes she had been treated medically for the condition for just more than six weeks before her death.

In addition to the cellulitis, Dr. George A. McIver reports on Caroline's death certificate that she had been suffering from a "Senile paranoid condition" for 10 years.

How long Caroline had resided in Worcester's Home Farm is not yet clear, nor whether she was there as a destitute woman estranged from or widowed by her late husband, abandoned by her children, or housed on some sort of mental diagnosis. What is known, or at least pretty safely assumed, is that she had a pretty rough second half of her life — burying at least three of her children by the time she was 61-years-old, 10 years with a "Senile paranoid condition," and presumably a decade or more within the cold, restrictive, and uncaring walls of the Worcester Home Farm.

The Bloody Lane, Eye Patch, and a Medal of Honor

In my old history classroom, there once hung a meme that declared: “You may be cool, but you’ll never be Teddy Roosevelt riding a moose across a river cool.”

As it turns out, Samuel C. Wright might actually be that cool.

In recent weeks I was the beneficiary of a great deal of research and work done by a somewhat distant relative of my wife. This woman self-published a long family history of the Wright family, the maiden name of my wife's maternal grandmother. I've been working to independently confirm and verify the information provided in the couple hundred pages of names and dates, and it is certainly a long process.

Among those dryly entered into those pages, with little more than his vital information of birth, marriage, and death, was Samuel Cole Wright. He and my wife share a common ancestor, Adam Wright, who had been born in Plympton, Massachusetts, circa 1645. Adam is my wife’s 8^th great-grandfather, following along through Adam’s son Moses, all the way down to her maternal grandmother. Samuel was Adam’s 4^th great-grandson, through a line headed by Adam’s son John. In all, this makes Samuel her 5^th cousin 4x removed.

While the family history lists him the same as any other Tom, Dick, or Harry, Samuel was much more than that, as made evident by his valiant service to the Union during the American Civil War. While fighting with the 29^th Massachusetts Regiment, he was in more than two dozen battles, wounded numerous times, lost an eye and kept the bullet that claimed it as charm, was reported dead multiple times, and received the Medal of Honor.

Before we get to his Civil War service, however, we ought to start at the beginning. Samuel was born September 29, 1842 in Plympton, Massachusetts — a town that appears frequently in the first 200 or so years of Wrights after coming to Plymouth. Samuel was the eighth of ten born to Winslow Wright and Mary Cole, with Winslow being the great-grandson of Ezekiel Loring, a lieutenant during the American Revolution.

Samuel was raised in Plympton, working along with older brother William Henry Harrison Wright as a shoemaker, according to the 1860 U.S. Census. A couple months after the Census taker visited the Wright family, Abraham Lincoln was elected President of the United States, setting off a series of events that culminated in the Civil War beginning in April 1861. On May 18, 1861, 18-year-old Samuel decided to do his part to preserve the Union, formally enlisting as a private with the 29^th Regiment Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry. Little did Samuel know that he would spend the next four years in bitter battles waged in 15 states while traveling more than 4,200 miles, as reported by William Osborne’s 1877 The History of the Twenty-ninth Regiment of Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, in the Late War of the Rebellion. He is said to have participated in 30 battles, wounded five times, and twice reported dead, according to U.S., Civil War Soldier Records and Profiles, 1861-1865. He would twice be promoted for gallantry in action.

About one year into his service came a head wound as he was struck by a fragment of shell during the Battle of White Oak Swamp in Virginia on June 30, 1862.

About 16 months after enlisting, one of Samuel’s most harrowing experiences came about near Sharpsburg, Maryland, along Antietam Creek. The Battle of Antietam, fought on September 17, 1862, nearly proved to be the end of Samuel’s story — and as the fog of war raged on that day, some reported it had been his end. As Union General George B. McClellan sat poised for battle on September 16, only to, as he’s become infamous for, hedge his bets and delay to the next day. The day before the actual battle itself began, rounds of artillery between the two sides provided an ominous beginning, according to Samuel’s own recollections. “The shot from the first piece of artillery fired took off the leg of the color-bearer of my regiment,” he reported in U.S., Civil War Soldier Records and Profiles, 1861-1865. The ensuing volley of artillery fire “was at times very lively,” he added.

As dawn broke on September 17, so too did the camps as “troops were sent out to engage the enemy in our front. The roar of cannon and small arms was deafening.” While Samuel could certainly hear the enemy, he was unable to see them as the battle began. “From where we lay we could only hear the cannonading, we could not see the enemy, as a growth of woods impaired our view. It was, perhaps, as well, that we could not see the carnage wrought.”

When Samuel and his compatriots, including the famed Irish Brigade, were dispatched to support other Union troops in the thick of battle, they “hurriedly” made their way to Antietam Creek and forded across it. “The stream was so deep, that in crossing, we only had to remove the stoppers of our canteens and they would fill themselves,” he recalled. “We held rifles and ammunition above our heads.”

Once they successfully crossed the creek — and “removed our shoes, wrung out our stockings” — the regiment was ordered forward, directly toward the Sunken Road. Prior to the war, the Sunken Road was a dirt farm lane used as a shortcut by locals and farmers. After the Battle of Antietam it had infamously earned the macabre nickname of the Bloody Lane.

“Going up the hill we could see the cause of our sudden call,” Samuel recalled. “The hill was strewn with dead and dying; yes, and with those unhurt, for to stand was to be instantly killed by the sharpshooters who filled the ‘Sunken Road.’”

As the bodies continued to pile up, historians estimate 5,600 from both sides, Union troops planned to tackle a fence along the Sunken Road. The initial attempts were disastrous, and now Samuel likely faced a similar fate.

An Alex Gardner photo taken of part of the Sunken Road, or the Bloody Lane, in the aftermath of the Battle of Antietam.

“Some 200 yards in advance of our position, which we were holding at a terrible cost, was a fence built high and strong. The troops in advance had tried to scale the fence and reform under that hell of fire. They were actually torn to shreds and wedged into the fence,” Samuel vividly recalled.

Brigadier General Thomas Francis Meagher, an Irish immigrant whose own personal history is quite fascinating, called for this fence to be removed. Samuel was among those who volunteered to risk it all to do so.

“The cry came to us for volunteers to pull down the fence. Instantly there sprang from the long line, fast being shortened as the ranks closed up over the dead, seventy-six volunteers. We ran straight for the fence amid a hail of iron and lead, the dead falling all about us, but to reach the fence was our only thought. A part of the force reached it, and, as one would grasp a rail it would be sent flying out of his hands by rifle-shots. The fence leveled, we made the attempt to return, and it was as hot for us on the retreat, as it had been on the advance. Few escaped death or wounds. I had almost regained my regiment, when I was hit.”

Samuel was hit in the left knee but refused to heed the calls of officers to retreat to the rear, instead receiving treatment by the regimental surgeon where he had been wounded.

Ultimately, his actions at Antietam would result in being awarded the Medal of Honor — the highest and most prestigious recognition a member of the military can receive in the United States.

The following year was a difficult one for Samuel. In June 1863, Samuel contracted typhus, a disease that was among the more lethal ailments Civil War soldiers faced. He would be hospitalized and treated for typhus in Tennessee, laid up for three-to-four months. An Army wagon being pulled by a team of six mules would run over Samuel in October 1863, crushing his foot and causing unspecified internal injuries, according to Congressional records.

The summer of 1864 saw even more damage done in battle, including the loss of his eye. On June 2, 1864, during the Battle of Cold Harbor near Mechanicsville, Virginia, Samuel was wounded by a gunshot to his left arm. He was fortunate in this instance as no amputation was necessary, and he not only survived but was able to return to the battlefield after some recuperation before what would prove to be his final battlefield action the ensuing month.

It was on July 30, 1864, at the Battle of the Crater, part of the Union Army’s siege on Petersburg, Virginia, when it appeared Samuel was surely dead. During the battle, a bullet took out his right eye upon striking his head. In U.S., Civil War Soldier Records and Profiles, 1861-1865, it is asserted that Samuel “was shot directly in the right eye,” while Congressional records explain he had been hit by a “rifle ball, which destroyed his right eye, the ball passing to the back of his head, was left for dead, and was so reported.” His July 7, 1906 obituary in the pages of The Boston Evening Transcript reads “his head was penetrated by a bullet which entered at the back and put out one of his eyes; contrary to all expectations he recovered from the wounds, the bullet in his head was extracted, and he had carried it as a watch-charm ever since.” His retention of the unusual battle memento is reaffirmed in U.S., Civil War Soldier Records and Profiles, 1861-1865, which notes Samuel “still keeps the bullet as an awful souvenir of his closeness to death.”

After the Battle of the Crater, Samuel was sent home and spent 18 months recovering from what had been assumed to be a mortal wound. He was mustered out of the Army as a sergeant on February 3, 1865, just a couple months before Robert E. Lee surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House. He would live on another 42 years after his final fight for the Union.

In his post-war life, Samuel remained primarily in Plympton, working as a farmer and then a trader or running a storefront, while also joining the Masons. He would later land a job in Boston at the Customs House, a position he would hold until the day he died. According to the Boston Evening Transcript, Samuel was “popular” among his co-workers and “his service was highly appreciated by the Government.”

On January 3, 1870, 27-year-old Samuel married Mary E. Nickerson, the 27-year-old daughter of William and Betsey Nickerson of Plymouth. Samuel and Mary had just one child, a daughter named Mary Dresser Wright, born on May 21, 1875 in Boston. Young Mary would go on to marry Augustus C. Sproul, a native of Bristol, Maine.

Samuel and Mary would split their time seasonally between Boston in the winter and Plympton in the summer. Records indicate his time as a resident of Boston was largely, if not entirely, in South Boston, first on K Street and, later on, Sixth Street.

As for his death, it was the old ticker that did him in unexpectedly. He had been recovering for several weeks from a bout of pneumonia, but had returned to work at the Customs House. In fact, Samuel was at work and “seemed in good health” when he left for home the evening of his death. According to The Boston Evening Transcript, upon arriving home, Samuel “ate a hearty dinner,” and then “started out from the house with a pail of ashes to dump behind the barn and his failure to return within a reasonable time caused the family members some apprehension.” Various relatives in the immediate area began searching for Samuel, ultimately finding his body just beyond the barn around 8 p.m. He was 63-years-old.

Newlywed taken by appendicitis

One branch of the family tree rarely tended to in my research is that of the Beaudry family, Canadian immigrants who settled in the Massachusetts communities in and around Sutton and Uxbridge.

The patriarch of this particular group was Gilbert Beaudry, who had been born in Canada in July 1836. Gilbert made his way south to the United States as a 20-year-old single man in 1856, and by 1865 was residing on Lynde Street (today Converse Street) in Worcester, Massachusetts. That year's city directory shows Gilbert employed as a "wire roller," while that year's State Census records him working as a "wire drawer." By the summer of 1868, 32-year-old Gilbert was living in Douglas, Massachusetts, working as a carpenter. That August he married Selina Bibeau, a 25-year-old Canadian who was then residing in Sutton. Gilbert and Selina had at least 10 children together, though by 1900 half of their children had died. Louis Beaudry was one of those who had passed.

Louis Beaudry, my 3rd great-uncle, had been born circa 1875 in Uxbridge's north end, a village known as North Uxbridge. Soon after his birth came that of Louise Sanders in Worcester, the daughter of Clarence and Ella (Davis) Sanders. Louis and Louise would marry in Worcester on Monday, December 23, 1895.

Little did the couple know that Christmas, just two days later, would be their one and only Christmas together as husband and wife. The 1895 city directory shows Louis residing in Worcester at 62 Foster Street, a property since absorbed by the Worcester Regional Transit Authority. The city directory shows he worked as a box maker, while the marriage records assert he was a woodworker.

While the Worcester-based newlyweds surely had talked about plans for their future together, perhaps how many children they might raise, where they might ultimately settle, their time together would be a paltry 231 days, fewer than eight months in total. On Monday, August 10, 1896, the 21-year-old box maker's life was cut short by appendicitis. There is no information as to how long Louis had suffered, but surely it was a painful ending. He was buried in the nearby community of Millbury, as were several other family members over the years.

Widowed at age 19, Louise initially remained in Worcester. A few years later, she would remarry and have three children. It was on Tuesday, June 6, 1899 — nearly 33 months after Louis had passed away — that Louise wed a British-born wireworker named Thomas Birkitt Hudson. They moved around a little bit, living on Upsala Street in Worcester as of 1900, then on Oxford Street in nearby Auburn in 1910, before returning to Worcester, living on Allen Street in 1920. By 1930, the couple had settled in Providence, Rhode Island. Together, they had three known children: Edith (circa 1901), Ella (circa 1903), and later a son, Robert (March 31, 1920).

No exact date of death has been uncovered for Louise, or her second husband, Thomas. She is last seen in Providence's 1931 city directory, while Thomas is found in East Providence in 1944. Regardless of when either passed, it is interesting to not that their son Bob was raised not by the couple, but rather by sister Ella, and her husband, Kenneth Warren, in Fitchburg, Massachusetts.