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THE AMERICAN COUSINS
Contents;
1. Introduction.
2.
The Beginning of the Story.
3. The Third generation.
4. Our Visits to New England
5. Pete Haskell's
Great Grandparents
1. Introduction
The American branch of our family tree sprouted from Alice Maud Mary's
marriage to William (Will) Lane in 1896.
She was my Grandfather Barcock's sister. Her Granddaughter Fredda Lee
and Grandson Ritchey are my 2nd. cousins.
We have been fortunate to have been able to visit our cousins, Fredda
and Peter Haskell over the years
from 1996 to 2002.
Sadly, Fredda died in January 2005 from cancer after a long struggle
against it. We miss her dearly.
Pete is a great chap and we keep in touch by email. The children,
Brittany and Dane are grown up and at
University. They are fine, talented young people.
More about them all later, first there are
the family members to record. and how the
American branch developed.
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2. The Beginning of
the
Story.
Alice Maud Mary Barcock married
William Lane at the Parish Church of St. Paul in Northampton
England on September 6th. 1896. He was 22
years old, she was 24. I believe he had already emigrated to America
with his parents and came back to England and married Alice. He
either met Alice on his return, or had previously known her and came
back to marry her. The marriage Certificate gives them both the same
address at the time of marriage, 30, Baker Street, Northampton, so
he must have been staying with her there.
Will was a blacksmith by profession. There was much of his decorative
work at the house at Cape Cod, Massachusetts, where their daughter Bea
lived with her husband and family and
where we visited to see Ritchey who still lives there.
Will had the credit for the invention of a rather gruesome device, a
body drag, used by the coastguard to recover bodies lost overboard or
in disasters at sea.
This probably made him a good amount of money with his other work and
they were clearly well-off . Will worked at the
lifesaving station at Manomet, near Plymouth Mass. where they had their
first
house.
Alice
took a lot of family memorabilia with her, old family photos that
showed my father when he was young and the rest of the family which I
had never seen. She sailed to Boston on the SS Canada. I have been
able to determine from the manifest, or list of passengers, of the SS
Canada
that she sailed on that ship to Boston, arriving on the 12/13th. May
1897,
eight months after their marriage.
Here are some pictures I found of the SS Canada:
I have not been able to find out exactly when Will returned after their
marriage but he must have gone back soon after to prepare their home in
Manomet, Mass. which is named as her destination on the manifest. I
have added a copy this manifest to the Family
Documents Page. and the relevant extract here.
The entry is marked * and
copied underneath.
They lived in more than one house in Manomet, the first one I guess he
may have rented while their later large house was being built.
He was a very resourceful man having built the house himself, with help
no doubt.
It must have been an exciting time for them setting up their new home
in New England and very courageous of her to sail out alone to be with
him. Here are pictures of the two houses;
First Manomet House
Second Manomet House
Will was in the Life Saving Service, LSS, based at the Manomet
LSS station. My cousin Pete Haskell found these photos of the station
and the lifeboat crew;
Manomet Life Saving Service Station 1909
Manomet LSS
crew 1909.
In the picture of the crew, Will is on the far right. He is referred to
as "Billy" in a description on the photo back. A transcript of this is
in
the Documents Page.
Alice and Will eventually were able to make a trip back to England to
stay with my grandparents in 1921.
This time they made the crossing on the Aquitania, sailing from New
York to Southampton.
The Aquitania was the pride of the Cunard fleet and was one of
the first luxury liners crossing the Atlantic. It must have been quite
an experience for them.
Here is a postcard of the Aquitania they
had which cousin Ritchie found.
I have copies of photos that were taken of their visit at that time
including these taken in the garden at my grandparent's house, 46
Clarence Avenue, Northampton.
Back row L to R, Uncle Joe Lane, ?, Grandpa William, ?, Will Lane
In front of Grandpa William is Grandma Fanny,
and in front of Will Lane is Alice Maud Mary.
I'm not sure of the others except Kate on Fanny's right and Florence
and husband George Burgess sitting in front of Fanny.
L to R; Grandpa, Alice, Grandma, Will
Grandpa William wrote a letter to Will and Alice's daughters, who
stayed in America and it is included in the Family Documents page.
The American branch of the Family Tree is shown in part below. More
detail can be found on the Family Tree
page.
WILLIAM LANE m. ALICE MAUD MARY BARCOCK
v---------------v------------------------v----------------------------------v
BERNARD BEATRICE
LEE (Bea) m.GEORGE GUILD MURIEL
m.LOUIS OLIVER FULLER-CONNER LOUISE
m.HOWARD JUDD
v------v
RITCHEY FREDDA LEE m. PETER HASKELL
v---------------v
BRITTANY LEE
DANE
Alice's daughter Bea, wrote
to my parents frequently sending photos
of their house at 25 Hastings St., Framingham, near Boston.
Here is one I found, taken in the winter;
After my parent's died Bea continued to write at Christmas to my sister
Muriel and me.
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3. The Third generation.
Her daughter. Fredda Lee married Peter Haskell who she met
before he joined the Navy Coastguard, and married when he returned.
Here she is outside their second house at
Cape Cod, Boston in her bride's dress.
Bea's daughter, Fredda Lee, married Peter Haskell.
Below, on the left is their Wedding photo with Fredda's parents, George
and Bea, on the left, and Pete's parents, Mildred and Donald on the
right.
On the right is a photo at the wedding of Ritchey, Fredda's brother
with Muriel, Bea's sister.
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4. Our Visits to New
England
Fredda and Pete set up their home at Spar Cove, Freeport, Maine.
When Bea became too old to write, we started to write to Fredda and
when we planned a trip to New England she invited us to visit and stay
at Spa Cove.
We jumped at the chance and Fredda and Pete made us very welcome at
their house and we made many happy visits in the years from 1996
to 2001.
Here are a young Brittany
& Dane at Spar Cove, making a video for a school project.
We had health problems and could not manage the flight to the USA after
2001 but keep in touch by email.
Fredda sadly died in 2005 from her cancer condition.
Brittany and Dane are doing very well now at University. Brittany has
graduated with a double degree majoring in music and plays the organ
superbly.
She is now studying for a Masters degree in sacred music.
Dane is studying meteorology at Lyndon, Vermont, and
also doing very well. he will graduate in 2007.
Pete looks after them very well and is always doing something with
either one of them, or both, and often with Ritchey.
He is busy assembling a pipe organ in the Spar Cove house.
Brittany will no doubt be the organist at the inaugural concert.
2010 update:
Brittany now has a post as organist and musical director at the Church
of
the Messiah, Woods Hole, on the Cape. She now lives back at the old
house
with Ritchey and is renovating it with the help of her friend Marshal.
Dane graduated with his degree and is back living with Pete at Spar
cove
and working at a local Superstore.. Pete is retired now and
concentrating
on the pipe organ restoration.
5. Pete Haskell's Great
Grandparents
Pete Haskell sent me some very interesting pictures of his Great
Grandparents on his mother's side. Here is his description of the
pictures below;
"I thought
you might like those pictures! Their names were Joseph and Bertha
Dixon, and he was my mother’s grandfather.
He served in the American Civil War, in a regiment from Maine. My
mother knew him well, since she and her father lived with them for
several years.
She would have been about 11 when he died, and she always figured that
it was pretty unique to have someone still living who remembered a
Civil War veteran!
She remembered taking the trolley from in front of the house, although
she would have been pretty young when they were discontinued.
That line was a branch of the same company that operated where the
trolley museum is now located! At some point, her father worked for
them, but I don’t know if he ever operated on that particular line."
The picture of Joseph and Bertha outside the old family homestead was
taken around 1910.
The second picture is of them together and a bit older I think! The
third picture of the homestead was taken in 1993 and it is still there
now on the New Hampshire border.
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