ETHEL MINNIE (RAMSEY) BENTLEY (1918-1993) paternal grandmother
Ancestral Women 31-Day Challenge - Day 29
Getting a rewrite 10 April 2025
With the exception of my maternal grandmother, I come from a long line of housewives, some of whom had to work outside the home for a time. When my turn came, I chose to leave the corporate world and pursue the life of a housewife.
At the time, my co-workers asked, “What are you going to do with your time?” Years later, someone else asked me if I watched soap operas, insinuating that I spent my days on the sofa eating bonbons and watching TV.
Nope, I’ve never had time for soap operas. I’m busy with my community, home, family, and church.
And my paternal grandmother, ETHEL MINNIE (RAMSEY) BENTLEY (1918-1993), didn’t have time for soap operas either.
Unlike my maternal grandmother, Ethel attended school through 11th grade. If she worked outside the home, it would have been for a short time as she was eighteen when she married in 1936. But this was also during the Depression, and she probably stayed in school because there were no jobs for her.
She married in Nassau, Rensselaer, New York, instead of Springfield, Massachusetts, probably because they were able to get the license and marry the same day. The day before, my grandfather had said, “For two cents, I’d marry you.” She pulled out two cents. My grandfather went home and told his sister he needed the twenty cents she owed him. “What for?” “I’m getting married.”
Their first child was born in 1937, and I’m sure people were counting on their fingers, but his birth was more than nine months after the wedding. George Bentley provided for his family during the Depression by driving his truck. He’d charge to act as a taxi, and he would do local hauling.
That was how they had met. Ethel was with a Sunday School group that was going on a picnic. They hired George to let them pile in his truck and got a deal by promising to feed him. Ethel was one of the girls in the cab. They liked each other and started dating.
The Depression ended with the beginning of World War II. In 1940, when he registered for the draft, George was still driving his truck. When he was called up for service in 1945, he was working as a stock clerk. Ethel was left at home with three children when George reported for training. About two months later, the war ended. It must have been a great relief to have him safely back home. The same was not true for his brother William, who died while serving in Japan.
About 1943, Ethel and George were the first ones in the neighborhood to get a TV. Every Saturday morning, the children would come to their home to watch cartoons.
My grandmother was also very busy with her community, home, family, and church. She took a night class for painting. She liked the teacher so much, she took the class for five years. She was a Deaconess for the First Congregational Church in East Hartford, Connecticut, and served for a time as the chairlady. The Deconesses would visit shut-ins every week and help other members in “countless ways.”
I wonder what she would think about her service being replaced by an AI robot. https://abc7.com/seniors-ai-robot-companionship/14154002/
So many of the skills my foremothers took for granted are lost. Ethel could knit and crochet. I can’t. My mother was a fabulous seamstress and made beautiful clothing, including my wedding dress. I’d be embarrassed to be seen in the pajama bottoms I made. Some didn’t have grocery stores and could grow food, can, bake, cook, and probably make sausages, cure hams and bacon, milk cows, and butcher chickens. Some could probably hitch a horse to a wagon and drive it. Some could start a fire in a fireplace, make candles, and use a coal stove and oven.
And then they most likely did what housewives still do today: nursing, accounting, teaching, counseling, endless cleaning, cooking nutritious meals, making clothes last…
ROSALIA (MURPHY) RAMSEY (1896-1968) great-grandmother
Rosalia (also known as Rose) was nineteen years old when she was married by a Justice of the Peace to Allen Lewis Ramsey in Concord, Merrimack, New Hampshire. They most likely weren’t married in a church because the bride was Catholic and the twenty-year-old groom was protestant. When they married, he was a “wiper” probably at the mill, wiping down the machinery. A few years later, he was working as a boiler maker helper at the Boston & Maine Rail Road in West Lebanon, Grafton, New Hampshire.
Between 1920 and 1930, his job with the railroad took the family to Springfield, Hampden, Massachusetts, where he worked as a machinist. Around 1940, Allen lost his sight. Rose, who would have been in her mid-40s, entered the workplace for the first time in her life. She used her homemaking skills to get a job running a sewing machine for an underwear manufacturing company, and she worked in the Gemini textile mill. Later, she worked at a store in the baby clothing department.
Living with a blind man had its challenges. Everything had its place and had to stay in its place. This way, Allen never tripped over anything and always knew where to find what he needed. Allen also worked at the Workshop for the Blind for eight years before retiring.
Rose died in 1968. She had joined the First Church Congregational of Springfield, and the funeral service was officiated by Rev. Dwight Lehmann. She was survived by her husband and two daughters. Her son had passed away the previous year.
Back-Rose and Allen Ramsey Front-their children Helen, Ethel, and Lester
MARGARET M. (MONETTE) MURPHY (1874-1949) 2nd great-grandmother
Margaret (also known as Maggie) was not living at home when her mother married Alexander F. Jemery about seven months after the death of Maggie’s father. She was fourteen years old when she married Charles Vincent Murphy (also known as Vincenzo Maffeo). It was not common for girls to get married that young. The girls in Candida, Italy, where Charles was from, tended to get married between the ages of twenty and twenty-four. Was Maggie pregnant? There were 269 days between the marriage on 13 May 1889 and the birth of their first child on 6 February 1890. There probably would have been a lot of gossiping going on in Montpelier, Washington, Vermont, but the newlyweds moved to Boscawen, Merrimack, New Hampshire.
Twenty-two-year-old Charles had been working for the railroad while living in Montpelier. They could have met in the community or perhaps at church since they were both Catholic. After the marriage, he left his job with the railroad and was working in a mill in Boscawen.
The family did not stay in one town very long. From Boscawen, they went to Laconia, Belknap, New Hampshire, then to Haverhill, Grafton, New Hampshire, over to Rupert, Bennington, Vermont, then Rutland, Rutland, Vermont, and finally around 1906, they went to Concord, Merrimack, New Hampshire, where the family finally settled. Charles had worked his way up from laborer to foreman, and in Concord, he was a section hand for the railroad. (He worked with a crew laying and maintaining track.)
Maggie gave birth to fifteen known children. Her oldest child, Minnie, got married in 1907, at age eighteen, while her sister Jennie was just five months old. Six of Minnie’s siblings were born after she’d left the house. When Charles died of pneumonia in 1926, he was sixty-five years old and still working as a section hand. He left Maggie with two minor children, and like most widows, she found a widower and remarried.
Maggie out-lived both her husbands and died in 1949 of pneumonia. She was also suffering from dementia and had been living in the New Hampshire State Hospital for the previous six years. She’d lost five children as infants and had outlived two of her adult daughters.
Maggie (Monette) Murphy with her youngest child Vincent Alphonse Murphy about 1918.
LYDIA A. (MARTIN) RAMSEY (1853-1918) 2nd great-grandmother
Lydia’s family had lived in Grafton, Grafton, New Hampshire, for generations, but her father, Levi Martin, left Grafton and drifted from town to town (Enfield, Canaan, and Hanover), working a farm until he finally gave up in 1880 and became a laborer in Orange, Grafton, New Hampshire. But in 1881, he was back in his hometown of Grafton and back to farming.
George Byron Cross was also from a Grafton County farming family, but Hanover must have been good for farming. The family farm was worth $1,500 in 1860. Levi Martin’s farm in Canaan was only worth $500.
Lydia and George had met in Hanover and married on 24 August 1872. The newlyweds settled into the traditional roles they had grown up with. George worked on a farm, and Lydia was a farmer’s wife. Their first known child was born in 1876 but did not live long. Perhaps the lack of children strained their relationship. George Byron remarried in 1887. Lydia worked for a short time as a domestic servant before marrying Hiram Ramsay on 14 November 1888 in Meredith, Belknap, New Hampshire. This was also the second marriage for Hiram. His wife had passed away in 1883, leaving him with a two-year-old daughter.
Lydia and Hiram had two known children: Allan Lewis and Iva Gladys. Iva lived just over a month, but Allan lived to adulthood. He probably loved his half-sister Ethel Edna, as he named his youngest daughter Ethel. Between her two marriages, Lydia claimed to have given birth to seven children, two of whom were living, but it looks like she counted Ethel as her own.
The family lived in Wentworth Grafton, New Hampshire, and Meredith, Belknap, New Hampshire. While they were small towns, modern amenities came their way. The first electric lights were installed in 1892 in Meredith. While they didn’t get many subscribers at first, the telephone came to Wentworth in 1881, and by 1904, they were very popular.
Lydia spent the last two years, three months of her life in the New Hampshire State Hospital, where she died of congestive heart failure complicated by asthma.
MARGARET DENNIS (1853-1889) 3rd great-grandmother
Margaret’s father, Charles Denis dit Laporte, was a farmer in Quebec, Canada. When Margaret was about fourteen years old, the family moved south to Vermont. She probably met Joseph Monette in Montpelier, Washington, Vermont, where they were both living. Joseph had also been born in Quebec and both Margaret and Joseph probably spoke French as their primary language. Neither Margaret nor Joseph knew how to read or write.
They were married for fifteen years and then Joseph died leaving Margaret with two known children, a 15-year-old daughter and a 4-year-old daughter. Margaret had three siblings in New Hampshire and it appears she went to join them after being widowed.
As was typical of the time, Maggie found herself another husband to help her raise her children. Their 1890 wedding was the second marriage for both Alexander F. Jemery and Maggie. Alexander died four years later of a kidney abscess.
But Maggie must have been a handsome woman because she married again the following year on 13 July 1895 to William Osier. William was twenty-one and this was his first marriage. This was thirty-year-old (she lied, she was about forty-two) Maggie’s third. Maggie wasn’t having luck with husbands. William died two years later of septicemia, which he most likely contracted through one of the many cuts and scratches brought about while working his farm.
A month and a half later, on 2 September 1895, Maggie married husband number four – Peter Auger. This time Maggie claimed to be forty-one years old, but again she lied and said this was her second marriage. It was also forty-one-year old, Peter Auger’s second marriage. He and his first wife had divorced. Maggie also divorced him in 1905 accusing him of cruelty.
Husband number five was thirty-six-year-old Edgar Hannaford who married Maggie on 4 July 1907. Maggie shaved about four years off her birth and claimed to be fifty. Again it was the first marriage for the groom and the “2nd” marriage for the “widowed” bride. This was Maggie’s last marriage. Edward outlived her by about ten years but never married again.
After five marriages, Maggie had given birth to five children, but only three were still living in 1910. She never learned to read or write.
Left to Right: Philomena Dube (Maggie’s mother), Margaret M. Monnette (Maggie’s daughter), Helen Lydia Ramsey (Maggie’s great-granddaughter), Rosalia Murphy (Maggie’s granddaughter), and Margaret (aka Maggie) Dennis
EUFRAFIA CLEMENTINA ROMANO (about 1835-unknown) 3rd great-grandmother
Eufrafia was the daughter of a Candida, Avellino, Italy, shoemaker. She married Carmine Feliciano Maffeo, a farmhand who was also living in Candida. At this time, Italy was not unified. The population were residents of their towns, not the country, so there was little moving around.
Carmine would not have owned the land he farmed. Unlike the farmers in the United States, most of the farmers in Candida were peasants, growing just enough to feed their families and pay the landlord. Also unlike the farmer’s wives in the United States, Eufrafia would not have felt isolated. Candida was a small town and pretty much everyone would have been related by blood or marriage. Eufrafia probably knew all the residents.
The families would have lived in the town and the men and boys would have gone out to the fields to work for the day while the women tended to their homes and possibly been involved in cottage industries such as spinning or weaving.
And everyone in the town was probably Catholic, attending the same church and living by the same standards. The children probably couldn’t get away with any mischief, since no adult would hesitate to step in and set them straight. And there was plenty of time for mischief as education was for the rich and when the children were not working at home or in the fields, they were probably roaming the streets with their friends looking for fun.
But when the chance came to go to America, almost all of Eufrafia’s children left. The Southern Italian soil was poor with little nutrition, and the Candida residents were susceptible to disease. The child mortality rate was around forty percent. While many Italians would send money home and eventually return to Italy, the Maffeo children made Massachusetts and New Hampshire their homes. Eufrafia probably never saw her children again.
View of Candida looking out from the town. Google Maps
CHESTINE (WEBSTER) MARTIN (1828-1877) 3rd great-grandmother
Chestine lost her father a few weeks before she turned four years old. Besides losing her father, she also lost her home as her mother uprooted the family and moved to Enfield, Grafton, New Hampshire where they had family. Chestine probably didn’t mind the move too much. At four years old, she wasn’t leaving behind life-long friends and she was probably fussed over by her paternal grandparents and possibly her maternal grandparents. She also gained a second mother as her aunt, Mary, moved in with the family and was there the whole time Chestine was growing up.
Chestine married Levi Martin about 1846 most likely in Enfield where they lived on their farm for several years. New Hampshire soil is rocky with a thin coating of topsoil. The growing season is short and while blueberries and apples thrive in the climate (and it is a major source of maple syrup), farmers struggled to grow the food they’d need for the winter months. The Martin family probably relocated to Canaan, Grafton, New Hampshire hoping the farming would be better there.
The family continued to move around Grafton, New Hampshire, and seemed to be as successful as most of the other farmers in the area.
Chestine died of “brain disease,” probably mental illness, in 1877 at age 51. She had seven known children, four of whom predeceased her. Most likely she had lived the typical life of a farmer’s wife – cooking, preserving, cleaning, caring for the family, and taking care of the kitchen garden, chickens, milk cow, and pigs until her illness.
Gathering and Processing Maple Syrup, ca. 1900, photograph; digital image Library of Congress (https://www.loc.gov/item/2012647942/ : accessed 21 March 2025).
MARY JANE (DAVIS) Ramsey (1812-1888) 3rd great grandmother
John Davis was born in Orford, Grafton, New Hampshire and so was his daughter Mary Jane. He was a well-to-do farmer and was able to support his daughter and grandsons.
Mary Jane’s mother, Elsie Ramsey, had died just after Mary Jane’s second birthday. Her father may have remarried soon after, but no record has been found. Perhaps one of his sisters helped him raise Mary Jane until he remarried in 1826 when Mary Jane was about sixteen years old.
At some point before 1826, the Davis family had relocated to Bridgewater, Grafton, New Hampshire which is where John met and married his second known wife, Sarah Ramsey. They must have returned to Orford where their first child was born and then by 1829 they had moved to Wentworth, Grafton, New Hampshire where their second child, Elsie Ramsey Davis (obviously named after John’s first wife) was born.
Nehemiah Spencer Ramsey was Mary Jane’s 2nd cousin which could have been how they met. Nehemiah had a farm in Orford and that is where the newlyweds probably lived as their children were born there – first Lyman in 1843 when Mary Jane was about thirty-one years old, putting the marriage around 1842, and then Hiram in 1848.
By 1850, Mary Jane and the children were living with her father.
But things may not have been as they seemed.
Nehemiah left Mary Jane and the children and moved to Lowell, and while there he enlisted to fight in the Civil War. He died of disease on 16 August 1862 in New Orleans, Louisana. In November of that year, Charles C. Ramsey of Boston claimed that there was no widow and he was “the only next of kin.” On 1 June 1863, Mary Jane appeared before J. Everett Sargent, Judge of the Judicial Court of New Hampshire and swore that she was the wife of Nehemiah S. Ramsey who had died on 16 August 1862, in New Orleans, Louisiana and she had married him on 3 May 1847.
That would have been about four years after Lyman was born, but Lyman believed Nehemiah was his father. While no record of the marriage was found, with affidavits from the Minister and eyewitnesses, and “common repute,” the marriage was accepted. But did the witnesses perjure themselves? Charles H. Davis of Haverhill, Essex, Massachusetts (Mary Jane’s half-brother), swore he had witnessed the marriage and “know that they have lived together as Husband & Wife since…” Her sister Elvira swore she witnessed the marriage, but her sister Susan went on to say that not only did she witness the marriage but she knew “that they have lived together as husband and wife since…” Her father and stepmother testified they had attended the wedding, they did not mention anything about the couple living together. While the town clerk testified he could find no record of the marriage, Thomas K. Boynton came forward to say he had witnessed the marriage which took place at the residence of her father, John Davis.
There was other information Mary Jane needed to get in regard to her husband’s death and health. She found someone who knew him in Lowell and served with him in the regiment to testify about Nehemiah’s health. In a letter that was witnessed by the Justice of the Peace on 15 May 1865, Mary Jane wrote, “..testify and say that we had no famly physician while my husband resided in Wentworth which has been for eight years past and there is no physician who knows about my husband’s health except his brother Dr. Hamilton Ramsey of Cambridge Mass…”
While some of the military leaders she contacted for information about her husband’s service and death were unable to help her, she kept at it until she got the affidavits she needed. She was finally granted the pension retroactive to the date of Nehemiah’s death.
Lying to help out the Civil War widows was not uncommon, but perhaps Nehemiah and Mary Jane got back together sometime between 1860 and 1861. Were they really married? And who was Charles H. Ramsey? He is not a known brother of Nehemiah and there were four other living siblings so he could not be the only heir. Was he an early scammer?
LYDIA B. (EMERSON) WEBSTER (1805-1881) - 4th great-grandmother & her sister MARY - 3rd great-grandaunt
Lydia’s family was living in Enfield, Grafton, New Hampshire by 1815. Enfield was an interesting place. The Shakers had built a village within the community in 1793, where they practiced a religion that sang and danced and practiced celibacy. While they were strange neighbors, they were also productive neighbors packaging seeds, making brooms, spinning wheels, and furniture. Their goods were in demand across the country and in 1849, they built a bridge across Mascoma Lake to get their goods quickly to the Northern Railroad Depot.
Many early travelers were afraid of crossing the Shaker Bridge because of its roller-coaster effect combined with its zigzag motion. Further adding to the drama of a trip over the Shaker Bridge was the thunder-like rumbling that emanated from the bridge’s planked surface. (Galen Beale, “The Shaker Bridge,” The Friend’s Quarterly: A Newsletter from the Enfield Shaker Museum, vol. XIV/no. 3, Summer 2002.
Perhaps Enfield’s where Lydia met Rufus Webster. He was living in Enfield in 1827 when they married. Lydia was living twenty miles away in Plainfield, Sullivan, New Hampshire. The newlyweds moved to Ipswich, Essex, Massachusetts. A year later, their first child, Chestine, was born, followed by Mary Ann in 1829, Miriam in 1831, and Rufus in 1832. But Rufus Sr. never met his son and namesake having died about seven months earlier.
Lydia was left pregnant with three daughters all under the age of four. It appears Lydia went back to Enfield where her sister and her in-laws lived. It is likely her sister Mary was living with her and helping with the home and children. Mary never married and continued to live with Lydia until Lydia’s death in 1881 from an embolism. Mary was probably living with her niece, Mary Ann’s, family when she died in 1887 from stomach cancer.
Lydia does not appear to have worked outside the home, and was probably supported by family members. While she and her sister lived with Mary Ann and her family, they worked as a housekeeper and domestic servant probably helping Mary Ann with her chores and responsibilities on the farm.
Buying from the Shakers in 1840. AI-generated image from Canva.