♀Maude Dennett Merryman

Maude Dennett Merryman (16 June 1874 – 2 September 1961) was a Haverhill, Massachusetts, woman who married a shoe manufacturer there in 1894, raised two children there, and lived on as a widow until about 1951, when she moved to Springfield. She was the grand-aunt of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through her sister Anna Walker Merryman (1869–1942), Nancy’s grandmother.

Early life

Maude was born at Haverhill, the younger daughter of William Simpson Merryman (1840–1909), a stone mason who later served as the city’s street commissioner, and Francis E. Dennett (1846–1925), who had grown up in Topsham, Maine. By 1880 the family lived at 24 North Street, with Maude and her sister Anna in the household.

Her middle name came from her mother’s family. Her grandmother Eliza S. Dennett of Topsham made her will on 2 July 1880, when Maude was six, and left Anna Walker Merryman and Maude Dennett Merryman $2,500 each “in consideration of the fact that I named them”.

Marriage and family

On 6 June 1894 Maude married Walter H. Page at Haverhill. A family genealogy published in 1905 calls him a shoe manufacturer of the city. They had a daughter, Frances Dennett Page, and a son, William Merryman Page, and in 1900 the family was living in Haverhill’s Ward 6. Walter died in 1922, leaving Maude a widow for the last thirty-nine years of her life.

Later years and death

She stayed in Haverhill until about 1951, when she moved to Springfield, Massachusetts. She died at her home at 51 Perkins Street there on the night of Saturday, 2 September 1961, aged eighty-seven, and a Find a Grave memorial places her burial in Linwood Cemetery, Haverhill, on 5 September.

Notes

Birth year

The 1900 census gives her birth as June 1873 and the place as Massachusetts; a Find a Grave memorial carries 1873 as well. The family record keeps 16 June 1874, the date printed in the 1905 genealogy, with Haverhill as the birthplace.

Her children’s birth years

The 1905 genealogy gives Frances’s birth as 19 November 1895 and William’s as 15 November 1897, a year earlier in each case than the years the family record carries (1896 and 1898).