My grandmother Edith Gray married her first husband Walter Cutter
in 1903 in Boston, Massachusetts. He was a trolley driver
like her father. He drove in Westford, Massachusetts .


Her older sister Florence married Albert Strout in 1903. He was a postman.
My great-grandmother Anna Gray died in 1902 and did not live to see her
two oldest daughters being married.


The picture above was taken Christmas 1910. By this time Edith had two
young sons,Norman and Paul. Her sons Newell and Robert were born in 1911
and 1915. She had lost a daughter named Florence Ann shortly after
her birth in 1914. The Cutter family first lived in Milford, NH
and then settled in Westford, Massachusetts.

When Edith was a young girl, she liked to dress in fancy clothes.
She loved ribbons and hats for her long chestnut brown curly hair.
Here is picture of the three sisters with their family pug Pedro.

My grandmother Edith told me and my mother that the Gray children had
a very happy childhood. Their mother Anna and their
father William clothed them well and gave them several toys to play with and books to read.

My grandmother also made sure that my mother had several toys
and books in her childhood and my mother did the same for me.
She had taken good care of her many dolls and books and passed them
down to me to play with.

My mom as a child used to carry a stuffed elephant named
Alphie every where she went. Alphie was her favorite toy.
Her favorite childhood doll was Tickle Toes, which she gave to me.

Edith met Percy Dame after her divorce from Walter Cutter.
Percy Dame owned a small business in Lowell. He was a
photographer, letterer and phonograph repair man and was my
mother's father. My mother was born in Lowell, MA in 1919.
Edith married her third husband, Arthur LaChance, when she moved to
Reading, MA as his housekeeper. My mother lived in Reading, MA
since the age of three years. Mom's half-brother Norman moved in with
Edith after he graduated from Westford Academy. He was class Salutorian.


My mother rebelled at age nine. My grandmother Edith always put
my mom's long hair up in rag curls every evening and my mom hated
these curls.

Bobbed hair had just comeinto style before 1927. For my mom's
ninth birthday, John Casey, a friend of my grandmother Edith
took my mom to the barbershop to have her hair cut.

He also took her into Grants Department Store and bought her a
store-bought dress. John knew that my mom was embarassed by her hair
and homemade dresses and that the kids teased her about her appearance.

Mom saved all of her rag curls to give to my grandmother for a keepsake.
Needless to say, my grandmother cried. She had been dressing my mom
in ribbons and bows, which my mom hated.

Viola After

Viola Before

I have done my family genealogy
on both of my parents' maternal and paternal lines.
Genealogy is easy to traceif you live in New England and
if the family lines had stayed in New England.

I have traced one line back to the pilgrim William Brewster.
The other lines are of puritan descent except for one line.
The Gray family was from Bangor, Ireland and the emigrant ancestor
James Gray had settled in New York City and was a tobaccoist.
His son Charles moved to Boston, Massachusetts.
Charles Gray is my great-great-grandfather.

From my childhood I have enjoyed reading the books of the great
women victorian authors. My favorites are...

Beatrice Potter, Jane Austen,
and Louisa May Alcott. I also like
to read biographies of these authors.
I have read many biographies
about Queen Victoria.

Like my great-grandmother Anna,
grandmother Edith and my mother Viola,
I enjoy gardening victorian style.
I like to use the same perrenials
and herbs that my grandmother Edith
used in her flower gardens. She loved violets,
hollyhocks, pansies, roses, gladiolas, dusty miller, petunias, begonias,
delphinium, columbine, bachelor buttons, sweet william, lilacs
and lillies of all kinds.

I enjoy birding. I have several feeders
located in the rear of my home to feed the neighborhood birds.
The squirrels are kept away from these feeders by generous handfuls
of unshelled peanuts which they like to eat and gather.
The bluejays are also attracted to the peanuts.
They like to dive bomb and scoop them up in their beaks.
I watch all of this action from my sunporch
at the rear of my home.

I enjoyed my two cats M&M and Lloyd. They passed away
in 2000 and 2001. I have adopted three more cats named
McGee, Shirley and Sophie.

My grandmother Edith had several cats
at one time and had them all named...
Midget, Pansy, Goldie, Tom , Tiger and Buffy.

I have visited Cape May in New Jersey and I have seen a lot
of beautiful homes there. In the summer of 1998, I visited Bar Harbor
with my mother, two sisters Rita and Brenda, Brenda's husband Jack
and my very best childhood friend Martha. We stayed in a great
victorian inn - Bass Cottage in the Field. We enjoyed sitting
on white wicker chairs and settees in the inn's grand, luxurious
wrap around sunporch drinking our morning coffee and tea.

I have several English cottage pictures.

Thomas Kincade has painted several
English-style cottages as has his apprentice
James Behlan Jr.

I live in Haverhill, Massachusetts in a neighborhood of several
beautiful victorian homes. I sometimes wonder how these homes are
decorated.
I subscribe to Victoria Magazine
and Victorian Decorating and Lifestyles
to look at all of the beautiful homesfeatured in their pages.

Memories of my Grandmother Sunshine are so wonderful that I will
always have her with me. She is sorely missed. She has passed
down to her future generations her love for people, animals and nature.
I think of her often as I daydream while I write in my journal
about Victorian times of long ago, the time of my Grandmother Sunshine
and the Gray family of Roxbury, Massachusetts.