♀Ida Alice Blanchard

Ida Alice Blanchard (about 1868 – 29 October 1900) was a woman of Lewiston, Maine, who died at thirty-one leaving a will and two houses on Pierce Street. She was the great-grand-aunt of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), the sister of Wesley Blanchard (1844–1908), Nancy Jane’s great-grandfather.

Family

Ida was the youngest of the five children of Joseph Knapp Blanchard (1820–1885), a grocer and property owner of Lewiston, and Elizabeth Trueworthy Blanchard (1825–1884). The family lived at Mount Vernon in Kennebec County in 1850, and a FamilySearch index places it at Lewiston in Androscoggin County by 1860. Her birth is given as 8 November 1868 at Lewiston, without a supporting record.

Her mother died in 1884 and her father in September 1885, when Ida was about sixteen. His will, made that month, left her a lot on Pierce Street and the household furniture, and shared the residue between her and her sister Minnie, whom it calls Lizzie Mariah Russell. Minnie had married Dr. Ernest Russell in 1880 and is given as having died in December 1891. Ida’s brothers were Wesley, of Lewiston, and Frank, who had gone to New York City. No marriage or children are recorded for her, and her will names no husband or child.

Her will and estate

Ida died at Lewiston on 29 October 1900, and in December the probate court at Auburn proved her will. Her brother Wesley and William M. Chamberlain were the executors.

The will left Wesley a thousand dollars and her “chair for the sick”, which she had first given to the police matron of Lewiston before striking out the name. Frank, “of New York City”, received a year’s income from the lot at 42 Pierce Street and her painting of Lewiston Falls. Her niece Bessie Russell, daughter of Dr. E. W. Russell of Lewiston, and Wesley’s children Channing, George and Edith Coburn were each to have three hundred dollars. Edith was given Ida’s piano. Smaller gifts went to Alice Cummings of Kingfield and a Mrs. James T. Tarbox of Lewiston, to a Boston hospital and to the Park Street Methodist Church of Lewiston. A painting called “Hollyhock” was left to a Mrs. Herbert Hamilton of New Bedford, whose street Ida could not remember by name.

The appraisers valued the goods at $501.51 and the real estate at $3,500: a lot on the east side of Pierce Street with two houses, numbered 42 and 44. The will directed their sale. The executors let them to tenants meanwhile, advertised an auction in the Lewiston Daily Sun, and sold both houses to Armanda Martel for $3,550 in 1902. The estate paid her illness and funeral, which included a doctor, two nurses and a quartet engaged for the service, and in August 1902 a marker and inscription from the Lewiston Monumental Works. The largest single payment was $312.85 to Dr. Russell for “medical services, loan, interest &c”. The estate fell slightly short of the legacies, so each three-hundred-dollar gift was paid as $292.74.

Notes

Her death date

Earlier cemetery-index records gave 31 October 1900. The probate decree and the Maine death return both give 29 October. The decree recites the date, and the return registered it.

Her birth and burial

The index of her death return gives her age as 31 and a birth year of 1869; a birth on 8 November 1868 would make her 31 in October 1900. Her burial at Riverside Cemetery, Lewiston, is given as November 1900, and neither the date nor the place has a supporting record.

Her niece Bessie

The will calls Bessie Russell “my niece, daughter of Dr. E. W. Russell”. The executor’s petition for distribution, which names the relationship of each legatee, lists her as a niece and lists Channing and George as nephews and Edith as a niece. So she was not one of Wesley’s children. Bessie’s marriage return of 25 December 1905 names her parents as Ernest Wesley Russell and Lizzie Blanchard.

Her name

Her father’s will calls her Alice Blanchard, and the index of her death return gives the same name.