Gramdmother Gertie

Today, my grandmother, Gertrude Marion Manning, would have been 117 years old.  She was born in August 23,1898.

Yesterday, I attended a family reunion which our family still has each year, at or around the  time of my Grandmother's birthday. She is still honored and remembered.  And now, we can say that we have honored her for generations, as her great, and great-great grandchildren emerge.

Yesterday, I had brought with me several folders that belonged to my late father, which was a collection of family genealogy, news-clippings, certificates and information.  As we all poured through the folders, I discovered a hand-written account which unmistakably bore my grandmother's writing.  It was an account of Grammy and Grampa's honeymoon, which began on May 1, 1919.  Following is Gertie's account as it appears in cursive.  I have not changed the punctuation or spelling to preserve it's authenticity. See notes, below for some extra information.

Thursday May 1st, 1919
Married at 1:30 P.M. by Rev. Geo. W. Peck Jr.  Horace Hinckley and Marjorie LaFond attended us.  Reception with 60 friends and relatives present.  Ice cream and cake were served.  We left amid a storm of confetti and rice.  Old shoes, tin pans and signs decorated the car driven by Earl Pearsons.  Arrived at Pearson's cottage at Chittenden at 3:45 P.M.  Menu.  French fried potatoes, fried eggs, cocoa, cake, bread, butter and pickles.  Lunch at 9 P.M. cocoa, cake and grape-nut.  Bed at 9:30 P.M.

Friday May 2nd. 1919
Arose at 8:30.  Breakfast at 9:30 a.m. Menu.  Grape-nut, pancakes, maple syrup, coffee.  Sat in Davises boat greater share of morning.  Percy went to Slab City at 12 N.  Came back at 2:30 P.M.  Got lost went 1 miles out of way.  Dinner Menu.  Mashed potatoes, fried toast, olives, pickles, tea and cake.  Went after water.  Lunched in P.M. on C.C.C.  Chocolates and oranges.  Supper at 7 P.M.  Menu. Tomato Soup, ala Bolonia, bread, butter, cocoa, lemon jello c̅ whipped cream, almonds and English walnuts.  Married life in Camp certainly agrees with Percy's appetite.  Lunch .  Bread and Butter, Lemon jello and oranges. Bed at 8:30 P.M. Slept fine with the exception of hearing what we thought was rats running around but proved to be rain on the roof.

Saturday.  May 3rd, 1919
Arose at 9:30 a.m.  Breakfast at 10:30 a.m.  Menu.  Grape nu, oranges, coffee, egg on toast.  Percy ate 3.  Walked out a-round woods.  Dinner at 3:30 P.M.  Walked down to Aaron Congdons and telephoned home.  Menu for dinner.  Steel Head trout, cheese sandwiches, fried potatoes, lemon jello, tea, bread and butter.  Supper at 7 P.M.  Menu.  Tomato Soup, Pears, Bread and butter, cake and cocoa.  Bed at 8:30 P.M.

Sunday May 4th 1919.
Arose at 9 a.m.  Breakfast at 10 a.m.  Menu.  Grape-nut, pan cake and syrup and coffee.  Rowed in Davises boat walked around woods.  Had dinner early as we expected Pearsons after us.  Got home at 4:30 P.M.  Stayed home all night.  Monday P.M. began keeping house at 234 South Main St. Rutland, VT.  Same day that the flying Circus visited Rutland.

Percy and Gertie

Notes:

I can only assume that Percy and Gertie were married at the Baptist Parsonage (or the Baptist Church) in Rutland, as I have located many references to Rev. Geo. W. Peck Jr., officiating in the same capacity for others in that same year.  It's location, today, (I believe) is that of the First Baptist Church on Center Street in Rutland.

I love my Grandmother's comments about new married life and her husband's appetite.

The letter c with a line over it means, "with"; It means "with". It's from the latin, "cum" (pronounced coom).

How my Grandparents met from my father's account. 

My grandmother was riding either a trolley or a train in Rutland with her parents and her sisters.  Apparently, Percy spotted my grandmother and followed them.  The story goes, he followed them home, and my grandmother's parents were cordial.  He courted Gertie for a short time, before they were married.  I guess you could say that Percy had been struck by the proverbial thunderbolt!

My grandmother's mother was Maude Marion Eddy, born December 13, 1881, and died in 1973.

Maude Manning

Her father was Fredson Ellsworth Manning, who was born on December 16, 1877.

Maude Marion was the daughter of Daniel Webster Eddy (of the famous Eddy Brothers of Chittenden, VT) and Josephine Rivers. Here is their wedding certificate:

My grandmother married Percy Herman Hinckley in 1919.  Percy was born on June 13, 1896.

Percy's mother was Jennie E. Bailey (born in Rutland, no other record mentioned), and his father was Jessie H. Hinckley born in Clarendon, in 1873.

Maude Manning - My Great Grandmother (RE: Eddy Brothers, Chittenden, VT)

Today, I was searching my files for some notes that I had written down for this blog.  I never found the file, because I came across a file was marked *Eddy Family.  It was one of my father's files that I obtained when he passed away in late December of 2011.
 
* More on my family tree and interesting ancestors can be found at http://www.heatherbdesign.com/blog/2013/11/25/the-eddys-my-spooky-famous-ancestors
(Posted by my bright and beautiful cousin, Heather B)

The file contains photocopies of several magazine articles such as a January, 1987 Yankee Magazine article entitled "When the Spirit World Touched Chittenden", by Jay Stevens; a "Vermont Life" story entitled "Beyond Belief" by Joseph Citro, Autumn, 1999; a typed copy Genealogy of Manning and Eddy (the Hinckley-Manning connection to the Eddy's); a couple of Eddy obituaries and a transcribed interview of  Maude Eddy that was the subject of the Chittenden Historical Society Meeting on June 8, 1989.  

The transcribed interview was originally conducted by my father, Gerald Hinckley, with his grandmother, (my great-grandmother) Maude Eddy.  The topic was "The Eddy Brothers of Chittenden". 

Genealogy:

Maude May Eddy was born on December 15, 1881 at Holden, Vermont.  She was the first born from her father's second wife.

Father:  Daniel Webster Eddy (born September 17, 1853 at Chittenden, Vermont, died September 5, 1925).  Daniel was a brother of William and Horatio Eddy. 

Married Eva J. Hausted at Ridge Mills, New York (she was the daughter of R. Rennsalaer and Sara Mills, born circa 1851).  They had one child, Warren Eddy, born April 13, 1876 at Chittenden, Vermont.  I do not have a record of Eva's death, even after searching "Find A Grave", it is still unknown.  This is quite sad.

Daniel Webster Eddy's second wife was Mary Josephine Rivers, born June 24, 1862 at Brandon, Vermont.  She died at "age 62 years, 5 months, 29 days.  She was the daughter of Julius and Mary (Baker) Rivers.

Daniel and Mary Josephine had 9 children together:

Maude May (my great-grandmother), Grace, Daniel, James Henry, George Willis, Warren F., Mabel Lizzie, Jessie, Stella, and adopted one boy, Homer Allen Statson Eddy.

Daniel Webster Eddy's Mother was the "Spirit Medium" *Jula Ann McCombs.  His father was Zephaniah Eddy.  They had 11 children: *William H. Eddy, John Westley Eddy, Francis Lightfoot Eddy, Maranda D, Eddy, *Sophia Jane Eddy, *Horatio G. Eddy, Mary C. Eddy, James H Eddy, Delia M Eddy, Daniel Webster Eddy, Alice Julia Eddy.

* Spirit Mediums

Horatio and William Eddy

---

          AMERICAN FARMER mediums of Chittenden, a small hamlet near Rutland, Vermont. In 1874 the New York Daily Graphic assigned Col. Henry Olcott to investigate the rumours of strange happenings in their house. After ten weeks in the Vermont home Col. Olcott, who had had no psychic experience before, came away with a dislike of his gruff hosts and a remarkable story which he told in 15 articles. These articles were later published in book form under the title People from the Other World. To it and to Mrs. M. D. Shindler's book, A Southerner Among the Spirits, Memphis, 1877, we owe most of our knowledge of the Eddy Brothers.

William and Horatio Eddy

The family tree, according to Col. Olcott, showed psychic powers for generations back. In 1692, in Salem, their grandmother four times removed was sentenced to the pyre as a witch. In Horatio and William the psychic "taint" made its appearance in infancy. A fanatic father tried to suppress it with the utmost cruelty. He employed means of torture to break their trance, poured boiling water over them or placed red hot coal on their heads. When the children grew older the father realised the money-making possibilities in their strange gift and hired them out as mediums.

As an eloquent evidence of the treatment they received at the hands of ignorant investigators Col. Olcott saw grooves of ligatures, scars of hot scaling wax and marks of handcuffs on their limbs. They exhibited every phenomenon of physical mediumship from raps to perfect materialisation. Col. Olcott saw in ten weeks' time about four hundred apparitions of all sizes, sexes and races issue from their cabinet. The chief apparition was a giant Indian named Santum and an Indian woman by the name of Honto.

Col. Olcott

Olcott had every facility for investigation, measured the height and weight of the apparitions, roamed freely about and became quite satisfied that the explanation of impersonation was insufficient. He found that the production of materialised forms was William Eddy's strong feature. Horatio Eddy usually sat before a cloth screen, not a cabinet, and, contrary to his brother, was always in sight. Musical instruments were played behind the screen and phantom hands showed themselves over the edge. If the same séance was held in darkness the phenomena became very powerful. Mad Indian dances shook the floor and the room resounded with yells and whoops. "As an exhibition of pure brute force," he wrote, "this Indian dance is probably unsurpassed in the annals of such manifestation." Nevertheless, Col. Olcott was very careful and hesitative in drawing his final conclusions.

Frank Podmore in Modern Spiritualism characterises Col. Olcott's account as an imaginative history and quotes in confirmation C. C. Massey's account of a fortnight stay with the Eddy Brothers which thus describes the nightly apparition of a deceased relative of someone present:

"A dusky young man would look out and we had to say in turn, all round the circle 'Is it for me?' When the right person was reached three taps would be given and the fortunate possessor of the ghost would gaze doubtfully, upon which the ghost would look grieved, and that generally softened the heart of the observer, and brought about a recognition in the remark 'Lor, so you be.' And that sort of thing went on night after night at the Eddy's."

By Col. Olcott's later adventures in theosophy some colour is lent to the charge of gullibility. Nevertheless, it is impossible to read his evidently sincere account without gaining the conviction that the Eddy Brothers possessed the gift of true and powerful mediumship. Source: http://survivalafterdeath.info/mediums/eddy.htm 

Following is the interview that my Dad did with his grandmother, regarding the "Eddy Brothers" in 1969.  I never knew that William Eddy lived in my grandmothers house, until I read this!  

 The pictures are jpgs - I hope to upload an Adobe file, in the near future.   Please forgive the mess!

UPDATE.... The forces are still with us....

5 Generation picture:  L-R:  Top Gertrude (Manning) Hinckley, Gertrude's son (my uncle) Burt Hinckley
L-R:  Janet (Hinckley) Tonneson (my Uncle Burt's daughter);  Maude May (Eddy) Manning (My great-grandmother)
Baby:  Heather Tonneson

Strangely, I went into my Facebook account to obtain the above picture for this blog, and my cousin Heather had been doing her own research - on the Eddy's.  Here is her post:

• Conversation started today
• 

  2:21pm
  

  Heather Boissonneau
  

  
  

  Hello Hinckley Clan,

  I've been spending entirely too much time on Ancestry.com and I've discovered a couple of interesting things that I thought I'd share (that you might already know).

  1. We are descended from Governor Thomas Hinckley who was the Governor of the Plymouth Colony.

  2. Our ten or eleven greats grandmother was Anne Hutchinson, who was banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony for holding seances. She went to Rhode Island and then to New York where she was killed by Indians. You can google her. Her maiden name was Marbury.

  3. You probably know this, but Grandma Manning's father, Daniel Webster Eddy, was the brother of William and Horatio Eddy, the world famous spiritists located in Chittenden, Vermont. The book "People from the Other World" by Henry Steel Olcott is available on google books for free. http://books.google.com/books/about/People_from_the_Other_World.html?id=ruzy2w1ba0kC

  4. William, Horatio, and Daniel Webster Eddy's father, Zephaniah Eddy's parents, James Eddy and Mary Salisbury are cousins, they share a great, great, great grandmother, Susannah Cotton. So that's one place where our family tree meets.

  5. Zephaniah Eddy and Mary Salisbury are the branch of the family that has Anne Hutchinson.

  If I find out other interesting things, I'll let you know.

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