Williams, Mary Isadore
Mary Isadore Williams (b.1864)
Chesterfield, NH
Working as a domestic servant to a retired music teacher and his wife, 16-year old Mary I. Williams resided in the home of her employers George and Persus Fullam in Chesterfield, NH, in 1880. She had moved to New Hampshire sometime in the 1870s from Westminster, Vermont, just across the Connecticut River.
Mary was born in Westminster on December 8, 1864 to James H. Williams and Martha Brooks, the 4th of their five children. Both of her parents were Black residents of Vermont. Her father James had grown up in Rutland and became a farmer as an adult. Mary’s maternal family resided in Cheshire County, NH, at one time, settling in Walpole in the 1840s-1850s before moving on to Westminster, Vermont.
Mary I. Williams entered the workforce in Cheshire County, NH, soon after the death of her mother and shortly before her father’s remarriage to another Black Chesterfield resident, Mary Ann Dolby. Her father’s second marriage was very short lived; he died from a tree felling accident in 1881. Mary’s step-mother, Mary Ann Dolby Williams, relocated to Warner, NH, leaving the rest of the Williams children behind in Vermont.
By February 1884, Mary Williams married New Hampshire native Alva D. Wentworth and settled in Concord, NH. Mary was most likely ‘with child’ at the time; daughter Martha E. Wentworth was born soon afterwards. A second daughter, Florence Wentworth was born in Concord in June 1885. Unfortunately, both girls died of pneumonia a day apart in June of the following year.
The 1891 Concord City Directory indicates that Mary (Williams) Wentworth found work as a janitress at the Concord & Maine Railroad station in Concord, NH. She was most likely supporting herself at this time. She and her husband Alva divorced in May 1892, citing abandonment and refusal to support. Alva Wentworth, a railroad worker, moved to Berwick, Maine, and remarried a few years later.
Mary (Williams) Wentworth’s life following her 1892 divorce is largely unknown.
SOURCE MATERIALS
Concord, New Hampshire, City Directories, 1891- Ancestry.com
New Hampshire Birth Records, Concord, 1885- Ancestry.com
New Hampshire Birth Records, Walpole, 1864- Ancestry.com
New Hampshire Death Records, Concord, 1885- Ancestry.com
New Hampshire Divorce Records, Concord, 1892- Ancestry.com
New Hampshire Marriage Records, Concord, 1884- Ancestry.com
U.S. Federal Census, 1870, 1880- Ancestry.com
Vermont Vital Records, Births, Westminster, 1864- Ancestry.com
GENEALOGICAL SUMMARY
MARY ISADORE WILLIAMS was born in Westminster, Vermont, on December 8, 1864, the daughter of James H. Williams and Martha Brooks. In February 1884, she married ALVA D. WENTWORTH in Concord, New Hampshire. They had: Martha E. Wentworth (1884-1886) and Ellen E. Wentworth (1885-1886).