On Monday, May 30, 1921, my future maternal grandmother -- Ruth Eaton Cooke -- was a single woman 101 days shy of her 24th birthday. It would be five years and 111 days before she married Everett S. Carpenter (my future maternal grandfather) on September 18, 1926.
In the photograph above, Ruth Eaton Cooke is in the center of the line of seven young women dubbed "The Kilties." She is fourth from the left and fourth from the right.
This photograph is contained in an old book of photographs that my grandmother assembled after a trip to Peases Point, Mattapoisett in Massachusetts with a group of male and female friends. The friends are referred to as "The Crowd" in a group photograph she labeled in the album. Everett Carpenter is among the members of The Crowd. Unfortunately, almost none of the other members of The Crowd are fully identified in the photo album. Mostly they are identified by their initials and in many cases the silvery ink my grandmother used on the black album paper has faded beyond legibility. Still, the album stands as a moment captured in time showing young adults in the Roaring Twenties on a late spring vacation trip to Mattapoisett.
Mattapoisett is located in Plymouth County, Massachusetts. It was originally settled in 1750 and was formerly a settlement of Wampanoag Indians. Mattapoisett is Wampanoag for "place of resting." For over 125 years Mattapoisett was a center for shipbuilding and whaling and the town supplied many of the whalers used along the East Coast in the early 1800s. After the discovery of oil in Pennsylvania, the whaling industry slowly disappeared and Mattapoisett evolved into a popular summer vacation destination on Buzzard's Bay.
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| Peases Point is almost directly east of Ned Point Light and due south of Holly Woods on Buzzards Bay |
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Photographs from originals in the collection of the author.
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Copyright 2014, John D. Tew
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"Buzzard's Bay" sounds like a good name for a summer vacation destination that you want to keep all to yourself! :) That's a great photo to have of your Grandmother. Don't you love seeing them at a young age having a good time with friends?
ReplyDeleteThank you for commenting Laura!
ReplyDeleteI do love seeing photos of my ancestors at a moment captured in time when they are full of life. Photos such as this one are so poignant because there is such a mix of emotions -- joy and sadness to realize every one of the young women pictured here has lived her life and passed on. I think it is this mix of emotions that make such photographs fascinating treasures that demand to be preserved by those of us who have them.