Martha Lord Smith was born in on November 22, 1888. She died on May 7, 1982. On June 1, 1910, she married Nicholas Rodman Gould, the grandson of Nicholas and Lydia Gould (above). On October 15, 1914, my mother, Helen Elizabeth Gould, was born to them.
When I was young, Grandmother Gould, as we knew her, ran the “Sea Gull” boarding house at 50 Narragansett Avenue in Narragansett, RI. This big house was where we gathered for Sunday dinner, Thanksgiving dinner, and other family occasions.
The newspaper article shown here was in the 100 Years Ago section of the Times Past column of the Narragansett Times on Friday, January 15, 2004
Martha’s diary for 1904 has this entry on January 5th:
“Went out + froze my feet + suffered all night.”
Martha made entries in the diary until the middle of July. She spends a lot of time in bed while her feet are healing, but has a lot of visitors. She is up and around and planting a flower garden in May.
Martha grew up on a farm in Quonochontaug, Rhode Island. She writes about “Papa”, her father, Herbert Levi “Hoke” Smith. Hoke was a member of the US Life Saving Service. She also writes about “Mamma”, her mother Anne, and “Grandma”, her grandmother Sarah Dorcas Oatley Smith.
Sarah Dorcas Oatley was born in South Kingston, RI, on Christmas Day in 1830. She married James Norris Smith in 1854. She died in her seventy-eighth year on February 8, 1908.
Herbert Levi (Hoke) Smith was born on November 13th, 1857, in Waterford, CT. Herbert Levi’s father was James Norris Smith, and his mother was Sarah Dorcas Oatley. His father’s father was Varnum Smith. His maternal grandparents were William Oatley and Harriet S. Tourgee. He had a brother named James Norris and a sister, Ida Belle. He was the second oldest of the three children. He died at the age of 74 on January 24th, 1932, in South Kingston, RI. His father’s family came from the Norwich, CT area. His mother’s family, the Oatleys and the Torugees, are both old South County, Rhode Island families.
Herbert Levi Smith married Anna Bretta Zakinson on May 9th, 1881, in Waterford, CT. According to family legend, Anna was a mail-order bride from Sweden. She was born in Gottenberg, Sweden, on 9 Sept 1853 and died in South Kingstown, RI 18 November 1929.
In 1899, Hoke was assigned as a Surfman to the Quonochontaug RI Life Saving Station. He served until sometime after 1904.
By the time of the 1920 census, Hoke was the Boss Farmer on the Town Farm in South Kingstown (located where the Town Farm Recreational Area is now between South Country Hospital and Route 1.)My mother used to tell of riding in a tip cart with him to collect seaweed to fertilize the fields at the Town Farm when she was a young girl.
The 1930 census has Hoke working as a fireman at the “State College.” In 1932, he was working for the town of South Kingstown. As he was standing with a group of men waiting for the day’s work assignments to be made, he turned to the man next to him and said, “I don’t feel good”. He fell and was dead before he hit the ground.
As you read the diary, you’ll run across references to Martha’s brothers Roy and Herbie and her sister Ethel.
Herbert Alexander went “west” when he was a young man, and the family seems to have lost track of him.
Leroy Douglas – “Uncle Roy” – Lived in Wakefield and Narragansett his whole life. He was a carpenter, specializing in installing and finishing floors.
Ethel Bretta – “Aunty Ethel”-lived in the Wakefield, Matunuck, and Snug Harbor area her entire life. She outlived 4 husbands: Ned Holland (Uncle Ned, Dr. Davis (Uncle Doc), Captain Howard Vars (Uncle Cap), and Alan Holland (Uncle Alan). Ethel had no children.
Another sister, Sarah Dorcas, who they called Sadie, was born in 1897 had died in 1903.
The diary entries contain the names of her friends and neighbors who come to visit while Martha is confined to bed, and afterwards, when she is up and around and back to school. Several of these friends and Martha’s sisters, Ethel and Sarah (Sadie), and her brother Roy are in this photo of the Quonochontaug School children taken before Sadie’s death in 1903:
The Diary
Top Row: Anna Streeter, Ethel Smith, Martha Smith, Thurman Eldridge
Middle Row: Sadie Smith, Edward Hoxsie, Henry Hoxsie
Third Row: Jessie Wilcox, Walter Hosxie, Alfred Pendleton, Roy Smith
Small boy in Front: Asa Hoxsie
- John Gould’s Will
- Grandmother Gould’s Diary
- Nicholas and Lydia Gould
- Herodius Long
- John Gould, Blacksmith of Kingstowne
- Adam Gould
Local News
Frost has been found nearly four feet down in the ground by workmen excavating for a water pipe on Kenyon Avenue the past week. The water in the pipe was frozen.
We have had another week of very wintry weather. With the ground covered with several inches of snow that fell Sunday night, and the temperature in the vicinity of zero most of the time, it has required exercise of the hardest kind for one to get into a state of perspiration. Monday and Tuesday there was a strong wind and those who had to be out all day report them as the most uncomfortable ones of the whole winter. The wind was very cutting.
Three months ago the ground was first frozen and at no time since as the frost been out of the ground or has the top been thawed to a depth of and inch, and a good part of the time there has been sleighing.
Page 4
With a single exception last month was the coldest January in thirty one years. There were five days when the mercury remained below zero. In 1888 there were six zero days in January. December was the record month for thirteen years, and November had fifteen days on which mercury was below freezing. On the whole if this hasn’t been an “old fashioned winter” let’s not ask for one.
Narragansett
. . .
Schooner Eaglette has been frozen in at Bridgeport for three weeks. The vessel is on her way to load coal for the Pier. The Oakwoods which left here last Wednesday is also delayed at the same place on account of the ice in the Sound.