♀Edith Blanchard

Edith Blanchard was a woman of Lewiston, Maine, who married John G. Coburn and raised two sons in the city where she grew up; a compiled Find a Grave record gives her dates as 2 November 1876 – 24 March 1945. She was the grand-aunt of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), the sister of her grandfather George Wesley Blanchard (1868–1939).

Family and marriage

She was the third of the four children of Wesley Blanchard (1844–1908) and Eldora M. Webster (1846–1913), who lived at Lewiston, Androscoggin County. A memorial of the Webster family published in 1904 calls her Edith Florence, and gives her birth as 2 November 1876, the same day as the Find a Grave index. An 1880 census index places her in Lewiston with her parents but gives her birth year as 1877. A compiled Find a Grave record puts her elder sister Addie’s death two years before Edith’s birth. On 11 February 1896 she married John G. Coburn (1874–1970); a Maine vital records index gives that date, and the 1904 memorial agrees.

Life at Lewiston

The couple stayed in Lewiston. Their son John Wesley was born there on 19 April 1897, and Leavitt Oliver followed on 5 July 1903. The census of 1900 lists her in the first ward with her husband and their elder son, and those of 1910 and 1920 find the family still in the same city. In 1910 John and Edith, married fourteen years, lived next door to her mother, Eldora, by then a widow; of the three surviving children, Edith was the one who stayed in Lewiston, while George practised medicine in New York State and Channing had gone west. When her aunt Ida Alice Blanchard died in 1900, the will left Edith $300 and her piano.

A Find a Grave index gives her death on 24 March 1945 and her burial at Lewiston.

Notes

Name and dates

The marriage index carries two entries for the wedding, 4 February and 11 February 1896; the 1904 memorial has 11 February. The 1910 census writes her name as Edith B., and the marriage index as Edith F. Blanchard; the will names her “Mrs. Edith Coburn”.