Page Two of The Women in My Family
All the children attended school in a one room school house until the seventh and eighth grade level at which time they could take New York State Regents examinations 'to determine their eligibility for high school. Girls went to school more often than boys, again due to farm work, unless the family had money, then the boys would go to high school and college.
Education was highly valued and of the seven sisters, two became nurses, two were teachers and two went to business school. Marguerite (the fourth child and my mother), the first to go to college, was awarded a full tuition scholarship to study mathematics at St. Lawrence University. She finished only one year of study, due to the death of her father and elected to go to a six-month business school training in order to find a job to help support the family of younger sisters. The older children helped finance the education of the younger ones. Abby worked in the telephone office. Marguerite was bookkeeper for an uncle and Myrtle clerked in a bank. The oldest girl, Mary, first to graduate from high school, taught school. The youngest girl, Eleanor, was first to graduate from college.
The family was very close-knit — they "took care of their own." When Katie Sullivan's mother became blind, she along with Katie's sister Abby, came to live with the family. By this time, Dennis had died; John the only son was ill; and they were unable to maintain the farm. The family moved for the first and only time, six miles into town and bought a house in Canton, New York. Katie lived, widowed for thirty-eight years, not an unusual occurrence for women to outlive men by 3O to 40 years. Older relatives and single women lived with the family. They were treated with great respect and love, becoming very dear to family members.
When Myrtle and Marguerite went to business school, they lived with Abby and her husband. Myrtle, Marguerite, and Marguerite's husband (my mother and father), went into business together during the depression. They owned and operated the Ford Motor Company's local franchise. Even as mature, adult women, these sisters continued to care for one another: Marguerite caring for the newborn, infant son of Eleanor when Eleanor was critically ill, Marguerite and Evelyn caring for Mary in her aging years.
As the family grew and left home, there was room.in the large house to take in boarders. Part of the house was easily made into an apartment for college girls and so add to the family income. Raccoon coats, short skirts, bobbed hair and rumble seats were a part of the scene in this college town for the younger sisters in the 20's. Prohibition, speakeasy's and traveling the back roads into Canada for beer are all a part of their memories.
Eleanor the youngest sister was (and continues to be at age 75) a great dancer, winning cups and gold pieces during the dance craze throughout the north country. Her earliest memories are of "Papa, Mama and older sisters and brother dancing in the kitchen on the farm”. Abby remembers having her hair bobbed around 1927. Her hair was long enough to sit on; the significant event was a gift from her younger sister, Evelyn, then single and working as a nurse.
The sisters who pursued education beyond high school, married between the ages of twenty-seven and thirty-six. One sister, Abby, married at age eighteen; two sisters remained single; Mary a school teacher for forty years and Myrtle a business woman. A total of twenty-three children were born to the five married sisters.
The family was beginning to spread out, further away from the family home, now in Canton. The older sisters settled nearest the family home, within a twenty-mile radius. The younger sisters ventured further away but all within a day's drive. Sundays, summer vacation days and holidays brought the families all back under one roof. Often four generations were together for 'Christmas at Grandma's. ’
World War II brought new opportunities for work for some of the women. Eleanor remembers getting a job in New York City as a metal engraver of airplane parts, receiving nearly twice the wages she had been earning as a teacher in a small town. Abby's oldest child, Helen, recalls having to work overtime as a dietician in the State Hospital. She remembers it as a time when women really took over, working in factories, stores and paper mills. It was also a time for postponing things, such as marriage and having babies.
As the Sullivan family grew up on the farm, the Bernier family was also growing but in a very different setting. My father, Alvin Joseph Bernier, could trace his roots to France, Scotland, and Ireland All of his grandparents were born in America but great-grandparents came from Scotland, Ireland and Quebec, Canada (descended from the French). One great- grandmother, Susan Celina Jones, lived in Pulaski, New York, kept a general store with her husband and had one child, an adopted daughter, Frances Elizabeth. She was known as a kind and saintly woman. Her daughter, Frances, married James Thomas Outterson, a paper-maker, descendent of a long line of experts in the art of paper-making. Frances and James had five children all born before and after the Civil War. During the war, he recruited a company of men that went out in 1864 as a part of the One Hundred and Eighty-fourth Regiment New York Infantry, under his command as captain. Through his connection with the Grand Army of the Republic, Captain Outterson became known by the title of Colonel. Frances was a resourceful woman, capable and energetic. She was a music teacher and church organist, originally a Methodist but joined the Episcopalians when lacking a Methodist minister. Her youngest child, christened Carrie Irene (later known as Catherine), was born in 1867. Frances Jones 0utterson died very young in 1878 at the age of thirty-five when Catherine was only eleven years old.
