Tombstone Tuesday: Lucy Newton Dadmun

The Capitalist

Miss Lucy N. Dadmun, Evergreen Cemetery, Marlborough, MA.
Photo taken 15 Oct 2013 by Midge Frazel

Miss Lucy, the "Capitalist"

Sometimes, a simple gravestone like this one, yields the most interesting of people buried with it. Since she died unmarried and is buried with her parents, most people would not research her deeply. I have learned, along the way, that the single people in New England families were often the "record keeper" and were better recorded because their names did not change.

Miss Lucy was the great-granddaughter of hubs ancestor Ezra Parmenter who is buried in this same cemetery which once was called Old Farm Cemetery. A city directory for her family states they lived on Farm Road, probably near the cemetery. [Blog post about the cemetery]

Lucy was the daughter of Martin Dadmun, Sr. and his wife Persis Parmenter. Her birth is recorded in the Vital Records of Marlborough (page 60) but doesn't matches the information (it says June but gravestone says July) on the gravestone. But, her parents are listed. From here on she is listed in both federal and Massachusetts state census, right up to 1880 "as keeping house" for her widowed mother. She is 50 years old.

On the same page of that census are many members of the Parmenter family that are buried in this same cemetery. This gives me reason to think that I will have to research all of them.

When her mother dies in 1883, Lucy lives in a house "off Framingham Road" in 1887, 1888 and 1890 according to the Marlborough City Directories. This is the area that my friend and I traveled to last fall and found Amos Parmenter's house.

At age 65 in 1900, she is listed as a"capitalist" living on Farm Road in her brother-in-law's, Henry Nourse's farm household. Her sister, Sarah, who is 62, had four children but only two living. Perhaps she needed her sister's nursing skills or perhaps her parents simply left her money? So many possibilities!

In 1905, she is listed at living on 60+ acres at a location called "Broad Meadow". I looked that up and today it is a condo/apartment complex. but in her last census she is still living with her brother-in-law and sister "on her own income" as a boarder on Meadow Brook Road.  

It makes me wonder if she was just the owner of the Broad Meadow/Meadow Brook land and drew income from it being farmed or sold. Researching Henry Nourse, her brother-in-law, may yield some answers. Some records say Nurse.