Friday, November 1, 2013

THE GOULD FAMILY HOME...

My grandfather had a small magnifying glass on his desk in his den; I spent hours looking at these two photographs with it, scanning the house windows for faces of my ancestors. I knew they were there – my great-grandparents, my grandfather himself and his sister and four brothers, his Aunt Ethel and his grandmother, Roxanna Sabin – they all lived here in this wonderful house.
The place is enormous. It had to be, with all those people living there – ten of them; if you add the ever-present domestic help, there were usually twelve residents, and they all appear in various census records.

My great-grandfather, John Allen Gould III, was born in 1852; he married Frances Taylor Sabin on September 10, 1884, and they purchased this house at 1206 Boylston Street, Newton (just outside Boston) shortly thereafter.
My grandfather was born in this house in 1887; he was the first of John and Frances’ six children; he remembered lying in bed on Sunday mornings while Kate, the Gould family cook, poked fresh doughnuts up through the heating grate in the bedroom he shared with one of his brothers (one of the rooms on the second floor of the back of the house).
He also remembered playing hockey in the dining room with his brothers – my great-grandmother would have the boys move the furniture out of the dining room and play hockey in there on rainy days – they used the fireplace for a goal; four of her five sons played hockey for MIT in the early 1900s!

With five sons and a daughter, the Gould household was a busy place. The housework alone was staggering. Just think: laundry for twelve, before washing machines and dryers; cooking for the Goulds and all their friends (not to mention cleaning up afterwards...the dishes, the dishes!); cleaning, shopping, sewing, mending, etc.

My father remembered being in this house when he was a boy; he dreaded the climb up the long stairs to bestow the obligatory kiss on his great-grandmother’s cheek (Roxanna Sabin was “older than Methuselah,” he told me; “and kissing her was like kissing an old deflated football”) but loved sitting on the front porch, or playing out back in the coolness of the shade trees that surrounded the circular drive or in the carriage house (just visible on the right in the bottom photo).

The house is still there, still standing, although it’s now chopped up into apartments and surrounded by cheap houses built in the 1950s. Boylston Street is now US Route 9; the road has expanded dramatically; the stairway you see in the photo is gone – the road runs right up against the side of the house.


I can’t drive by without weeping. 

35 comments:

  1. I'm weeping too thinking of all that grandeur wasted on highways and cheap houses. It must have been some dining room to allow a game of hockey. I wouldn't have a window left if anyone played hockey in my dining room. (And love the imagery of kissing a deflated football!)

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    1. My father told me that the dining room was pretty big...and that it had dents in the baseboards (from all those hockey pucks). And yes, Wendy...that loss of grandeur is exactly what makes me weep, too!

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  2. I was hoping that after you scanned the image, you enlarged it on your computer monitor and saw people in the windows! But I guess not. It's a beautiful home. So sorry about the nearby highway. I think it's grand that your great-grandmother was fine with her children playing hockey in the house. She must have been an adventurous woman!

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    1. GGrandmother Frances was, in fact, pretty amazing (you'd have to be, with all those hockey-playing boys). In the windows, I can see a lamp and, in the far-right second floor window, what might be a person...I'd like to think so...

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  3. A really lovely story. Sounds like a family where the children were appreciated.

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    1. To see a formal photo of all those children, visit:
      http://debgould.blogspot.com/2012/09/sepia-saturday_8.html
      They were a pretty tight family; I remember four of them...

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  4. I like the deflated football too. Ha ha! You must have had rich ancestors to have had hired help! So sad about it being all chopped up. I'm sorry about that. Great wee story!

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    1. Thanks! They were "well off," but by no means rich -- if you look at census records from late 1800s/early 1900s, you'll find that lots of people had domestic help! I was astounded!

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  5. What a wonderful house! It's fate is sad but at least it is still standing, unlike many of my ancestor's homes. A great description by a young boy of his grandmother :)

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    1. He told me that she was very sweet; called him "Billy" and always had a piece of candy for him; always send him birthday cards. I still laugh when I think of kissing a deflated football!

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  6. It is sad when we push out the old and bring in the new, and replace with so much less than what we removed. It's also such a loss when we leave things to sour, from what once they were. But I would love to one day pick up something and bring it back to what it once was. What a dream yet to come true. I liked hearing about your days in your grandparent's house too, it seems I still recall often the special times and moments I shared in their houses as well. Excellent post.

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    1. It is bittersweet, isn't it, Karen? I have diaries of one of the women who lived here (Roxanna Sabin); it's wonderful to read the diaries and look at photos of the house -- you can almost see her moving around in there. Thanks for your comment!

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  7. It's nice that the big old house is still standing even though it has changed. I wonder whether there Is a view on Google.

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    1. Google's picture is "approximately" at that address (and isn't). I haven't fooled around enough to see if I can find it...but you're right: at least it's still standing!

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  8. Oh, your last comment was so touching. What fun to have donuts come out of the heating grate. It sounds like a household full of fun. Hockey in the living room? It's a kid's dream come true. The diary must be really interesting.

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    1. It is, Helen....I'll do a post with diary excerpts sometime (even if it doesn't fit with the Sepia theme....)!

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  9. Love the way you Americans include the all three names like 'Frances Taylor Sabin' , and her husband gets a 'III' as well. It's a lovely cultural trait.
    What a fantastic house and home.

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    1. One of my cousins named her Golden Retriever "Frances Taylor Sabin!" And my poor brother is John Allen Gould V (the FIFTH, for crying out loud!).

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  10. Some names with 'numbers' have a ring to them, Davis Love III is the one I always think of. Christian name seem to be handed down in the UK but that's about all. Your house was certainly an imposing place especially with his hockey 'rink' - I would have loved to see a game in progress there.

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  11. I'll bet it was pretty wild, Bob! What amazes me is the fact that my great-grandmother had the perspective she did -- I can't imagine letting my kids play hockey inside!!! She was really something!

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  12. A lovely post of family memories - how wonderful to have so many generations living in the same house - but you conveyed so well your sadness at the changes it has undergone.

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    1. I know I'm not alone in this...it seems to be a universal problem, doesn't it? Something about progress, but I've never been quite secure in my definition of that!

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  13. Dang. To paraphrase it, they paved paradise and put up a parking lot. How sad for the house now, but it is wonderful that you know so much about it and those who loved it so long ago.

    Hugs,
    Kathy M.

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    1. You're right, Kathy -- it's a blessing to own those photographs, to see the house my ancestors lived in! I don't think any of us go back, but I've got a friend who lives down that way who might take a few photos...I'll post them if it happens!

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  14. Right, Deb. I prefer to think of this lovely old house filled with people, kids and hockey in the dining room. Thanks for the memories.

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    1. Thanks for commenting, Joan. I'm amazed how some topics touch so many of us -- Sepians or not -- and how we share such amazing experiences regardless of where we live...

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  15. Your ancestors were lucky to be able to afford such a beautiful big house, and hockey in the dining room sounds amazing - hopefully they didn't hit normal balls around the room! Many of mine had large families but had to manage in quite small houses. It's very handy for genealogists when people are given their mother's surname as their middle name. When a woman marries, does her maiden surname commonly become her middle name?

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    1. Exactly, Jo! I was not given a middle name (to guarantee that I'd retain it as my middle name). It was a bit of snobbery I just couldn't tolerate; I kept my surname and added my own choice of middle name --what an uproar THAT caused!

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  16. Goodness! It's a regular Downton Abbey!
    Oh that "old as Methuselah" is a staple phrase in my mother's vocabulary. Wonderful post.

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    1. I'm laughing, Kat, but you're right...it was Downton Abbey-ish! But that way of life is gone, gone, gone, at least from MY generation and the two after me! It's a different world, indeed!

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  17. How lovely to have so many memories of a house. Oh and I know that deflated football feeling - from inside!

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    1. It's one of the blessings of having ancestors who saved absolutely everything...I've got photos and diaries and letters and old Valentines and Xmas cards, etc. that, when pulled together, tell of life at 1206 Boylston!

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  18. A beautiful house. Do you know if the people living there know the history of the house? It might be worth posting it in the lobby for all to read. They might enjoy it.

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    1. About 25 years ago, one of my cousins and I went by the house; we rang doorbells and held up the old photographs when somebody peeked out! One person let us in...it was pretty amazing! Now, though, I don't know if anybody would care...

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  19. Besides being compared to a deflated football, Roxanna had a deformed finger on one hand, the result of holding my mother as an infant and trying to brush away a bee that had entered the house and was circling the vase of roses on the table next to Roxanna. In trying to brush away the bee, she suffered a puncture by one of the rose thorns that became infected and caused the deformation during treatment for the blood infection. My mother always warned me to beware of rose thorns (I had never heard this story until adulthood), but the wariness of thorns of any type still haunt me today.

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