Archive Record
Metadata
Object # |
2005.007.004 |
Object Name |
Tape, Audio |
Description |
Interview with Betty Wish Interview dated April 27, 1996 with Betty Wish, 261 Pleasant Street, Marion MA Interviewer: Sally Madison of Marion Sally: Betty, before we started you mentioned that you hadn’t lived in Marion all your life, but actually you’ve spent a lot of time here. Could you explain that? Betty: I’ve never lived in Marion until 10 years ago, but I spent every summer of my life here except one, or at least part of every summer except for one. It’s my roots. Very definitely. Sally: So it was natural then when you needed to come back here, that this is where you would come. Betty: This house itself was in the family. Originally it was not. It’s on that old map of Marion as the Barry place. But somewhere along the line, the Blankinship family got hold of it, and I don’t know how or who did it. My great-grandparents lived in this house. And then my grandparents and great aunt and my great uncle, John Blankinship owned it at that time. He lived up the street in that big house at the corner of Converse and Pleasant Street with all the land. Then my father bought it from him in order to make a home for my grandmother. Then my father and mother also lived here for a while. So I inherited the house. My brother and I own this together. We inherited the house and the property. After my brother had a stroke in 1984, he had lived here since 1980, and I moved here in June of 1986. My brother’s name is Charles Packard. Sally: You mentioned that your family roots are tied to the Blankinship family. Could you tell us something about that? Betty: That’s difficult except that they were original as I mentioned once before Blankinship Cove is named for my family and that little cemetery over where the water tower is in east Marion, is a Blankinship cemetery. I don’t think there’s anybody in there that isn’t named Blankinship. It’s very old. So they must have lived over there at one time, but then they obviously migrated to the village. Although we’re only 1/2 a mile out of the village, but at that time it must have seemed like 10 miles today. This was all farmland. My grandmother was born in a house near Converse and Pleasant street, just up the street a little way. As you leave Pleasant Street and go onto Converse, on the left is a long, long house that kind of goes around a curve. That was my grandmother’s birthplace. Why they ever let that go out of the family, I have no idea. It’s a gorgeous house, Then she married a Packard from Brockton. And how that ever happened, we’ve never been able to discover. She wouldn’t talk about it. How she knew Brockton people, I have no idea. But she married a blacksmith. And I guess lived there for a while because my father was born in Brockton. Then my grandfather Packard’s health failed and they moved back here to Marion, when he could no longer work. My grandmother was a seamstress here in town. She did sewing for everybody. She was a marvelous sew-er. The old treadle sewing machine. She taught me how to sew in the summertime. Everything I know about sewing came from her. She just loved it. She wanted me to know how to sew. So that’s how I learned. Sally: What is your relationship to the Blankinships? How does that figure in? Betty: Well, my grandmother was a Blankinship. Sally: Were the Blankinships farmers or seafarers? Betty: No, they weren’t seafarers at all. They were mostly land people. Her brother (and I can’t think of his first name, but it’s all in the town records) was a police officer here in town and had a store down in the village. There was never any money in the family at all. They were ... I don’t know that they were poor exactly, but very close to it. There was never any money at all. This place here used to be farm. Somewhere and I don’t where they are now, there used to be pictures of this house with chicken coops out in the back. There were many out-buildings around here. An old carriage shed, there was a big barn up on the side of the house with a wood shed attached to the house, which is now gone. My father used to tell about driving cows down towards what is now Silver Shell Beach. He used to take cows down tIere. There were fields down there. Sally: Do you know why Blankinship Cove was named for the family? Betty: No, except that ...I really don’t, but my guess would be was that it was a small town and there were Blankinships here, they were active people ... it was to honor the family name, I would imagine. Sally: Did they tend to be active in town government? Betty: Yes, very much so. But that’s true of almost everybody in a small town. Everybody was involved in town government. Sally: Do you recall when the first Blankinships came to Marion? How far back it was? Betty: No, I think that it would have to be determined by that cemetery. And I haven’t been over there for years. So I don’t really remember the dates over there. Sally: That may be another project for the Historical Society. For someone to go over there and get the earliest dates. Betty: I suspect that my brother knows the earliest date. I don’t know whether he does or not. I’m not good at that sort of thing. Sally: Are there any other family members here besides you and your brother? Betty: No, everybody’s gone, everybody’s gone, we’re the only ones left of that part of living. We both of us have children. My uncle who was a Packard, lived here in town all his life. He built the house directly across the street. Betty Kirby lives there now. He raised his family here. He ran the Red & White store which was on the property next to what is now Bicentennial Park. Sally: I’ve never heard of any reference to that store. Betty: It was a small chain around here. He was manager of that. He was also a painter, he painted houses, did construction work. Later he was the manager of the A&P which is now the Masonic Hall down on Spring Street. There was a hardware store run by Scott Cowell until 2-3 years ago. That used to be the A&P store. He (uncle) managed it for many years. After he left the A&P he took over the building that was originally the waiting station for the trolley cars which went down Spring Street to New Bedford. Then it was made into a Red & White store and he owned that. After the Red & White store closed he made a home out of it. A very nice little cottage, and I don’t think he ever lived there. They lived here across the Street. But that building is still here in Marion and it is either on Allen or Crapo St. It was moved many years ago. Where the Bicentennial park was vacant for a long time. I think it’s delightful they have made it into a park. So the building that was moved off that site had been a Red & White store, a waiting station for the trolley and a private home for a while. It had a lot of history. Sally: What was your uncle’s name? Betty: David Packard. His wife, Sarah, was the Marion news reporter for the Standard Times for years and years. But my father, back again they were all Packards, they were tied in with the Blankinships. My father went here to school and graduated from Tabor Academy in 1903. That was when Tabor was what is now the Town Hall. Sally: That was just for boys at that time. Betty: No, I don’t think so. For a long time, I guess it was just boys, but the town boys were supposed to get their education without tuition. That was Elizabeth Taber’s either desire or in her will. To have that instead of having to go to Wareham, because there was no high school in Marion at all. There were several sites of elementary schools around here. So anyway, he graduated from Tabor Academy and he was always very proud of it. But he didn’t go to sea after graduating. My father went to Tufts College and became an electrical engineer. He was hired by Westinghouse and we moved to Pittsburgh. That’s how we ended up out in Pittsburgh. And we came back here in the summers. My grandmother lived in this house and my great aunt she stayed in this house she never married. She was a Blankinship. She was the one who owned the Scrimshaw Box which is at the Historical Society. She willed it to my brother. And he gave it to the Society. Her name was Charlotte. There is a picture of her with that box. A sketch of her. Sally: How old was she? Betty: That’s an interesting point. She was the youngest of all the Blankinships and there were quite a few of them in that generation and she never married. Because of the custom that the youngest daughter stayed to take care of the parents at home if they needed it. And her parents did need her. Her mother, Abby Blankinship was completely blind. So she never married. She was beautiful, a gorgeous young woman. After they died and my grandfather died, the two sisters just stayed right on here and lived together. Sally: This was sort of the summer headquarters, then. Betty: No this was their home. This was a Blankinship home. Blankinship and Packard. For me it was just summers, for my cousins across the street, of course, Marion was home all the time. They are all gone too. My cousins, that whole family are all gone. My great uncle lived here on Converse and Pleasant had one son, Stanford Blankinship he has one son who was also Stanford Jerome and they called him Jerry. They left town years ago. Jerry grew up he was President of the Chamber. He lived in my father’s second house. He went up into Vermont somewhere and eventually my great uncle Stanford went up and lived there. Jerry was a minister up there, I don’t know what denomination, but they never came back here to town at all. We lost track of them completely, except we knew where they were. A couple of years ago, I was going through things here in the house and found a few things of Jerry’s, mother, father, pictures and so forth that I thought he ought to have. So I went to try to find out where he was and the only way I knew how to find him was through Tabor Academy. I called over there and they had his address. The woman looked him up for me and came back on the phone and said he died a little over a year ago. All the Blankinships are gone. There is nobody carrying the name at all as far as I know. Whether Jerry had children or not I have no idea. If they did, then they would carry the name. The one point I should make here, Sally, is the spelling of Blankinship, it’s with an "in." I’m not sure if this is gospel truth, but there is a whole branch of Blankinships down south. When I lived in Virginia there were Blankinships down there, that spelled it with "en." I understand it was the more southern branch of the family that did that. But it makes my brother very upset when he sees it spelled with an "en." Betty Hooper thinks my middle name is Blankinship. Sally: Now you have children, Betty? Betty: Yes, I have three sons. Sally: Are they here in Marion? Betty: No, they are no where near. I have two outside of Portland, Maine and one in NJ. Sally: Do they come here for summers? Betty: They don’t come for summers, they all have their own things to do these days. They do visit, but they don’t do as we used to come here all the time. My middle and youngest sons love this place. The oldest son likes it, but he doesn’t have a deep feeling that the others do. My brother’s boy just loves this place. He (my brother) has one son in NJ and one daughter in Maryland. Sally: Betty, tell me what you know about John Blankinship. Betty: Well, he was quite an interesting person. He was a dear, dear man, just a wonderful guy. He was my grandmother’s brother, John. And lived up the street here in that great big house. It used to be a Catholic Rectory. Uncle John and I don’t know his wife’s name. They had one daughter and one son, Aithea and Stanford. But John was born with two club feet. He could walk,but it was very difficult. He used two canes. He could ride a bicycle like you never saw anybody ride a bicycle. That’s how he got around town, on his bicycle. Up at this big house, I remember he loved his garden and the whole end of that property which is now lawn, was his vegetable garden. I guess there were some flowers too, but mostly he grew vegetables. Any time of the day or night you could go up there and he’d be out there, on his hands and knees because he couldn’t stand to do anything and he grew a lot for years and years. He did all the work by hand. Originally, I presume, they had horses, but later he did all the work by hand. He’d be out there digging and digging, weeding by hand, on his hands and knees the whole time. He just loved it. My grandmother reaped the benefit of it, he was always bringing vegetables to my grandmother and great aunt Charlotte. The other thing that he loved that I remember particularly, was that he was a baseball fanatic. He loved baseball. He had a radio in the house and he would listen to every baseball game he could possibly get. Aunt Jenny, or Jen used to tell how he wore out all the rugs in front of his chair, because he would run all the bases with these crippled feet, sitting there getting so excited, yell and have a wonderful time. Eventually, they became caretakers of an estate near Kittansett. As you go down and make that left-hand turn before you go to Kittansett, you go down Point Road, it’s not the Stone Estate. It’s changed hands now. They were there whenever it was that they had that hurricane when the Bird Island light went out. I guess it was in ‘38. They were caretakers of this estate. They had a little caretakers cottage on the estate. They were there during the hurricane and very terrified. They were on the second floor of the big house and saw Bird Island light go out. The water came up to just the bottom of the second floor windows. So they were safe. The little caretaker's cottage was moved on the estate. I think it’s still there. I don’t know whether it’s privately owned or not. They were there until they retired and came back up here to this house to live again. Mostly he took care of the garden and sold produce. The caretaker job came later in life. They were an interesting family. He was so sweet. Everybody knew John. I remember my grandmother sitting in the living room which is now my dining room. She’s sit in the window and you’d hear [her say], "Lottie, (who was my aunt) there goes John down again, on his bicycle, downtown." That’s the only way he could get around. He couldn’t walk any distance. Sally: Did he ever drive a car? Betty: No, he couldn’t drive a car. I don’t know that they ever had cars. I think my father was the first one to drive a car. We had one in Pittsburgh. My grandmother Packard was one of the biggest reactionaries you ever knew. This house didn’t have central heating or electicity in my growing up years. Until the 40’s I remember my great aunt Charlotte carrying a kerosene heater with kerosene dripping from it. My father nearly came apart and it was right after that they put in electricity in, over grandmother’s objections. She never would allow central heating. It only had central heating put in after my brother moved up here in 1980’s. Sally: Betty, at the end of the previous side of the tape, we were talking about how long this house at 26 Pleasant Street stayed kind of old timey and old fashioned. Betty: Grandmother wouldn’t allow anything [modem]. She didn’t want any part of this. One of the fun stories about her and it isn’t very nice of me to tell it, but it was funny. In later years, she lived to be 96. Before she had to go into a nursing home, my mother used to come once in a while and stay a few weeks and take care of her. At that time, she did not believe in refrigeration. We always claimed they weren’t killed because they got their penicillin in raw form. There was an old ice chest here and the only time it had ice in it was when we were here and mother insisted. It was a real chest, the top lifted up like an old chest and it had zinc shelves and a drip pan underneath for melting ice. They didn’t use it during the winter, they couldn’t be bothered with ice. One time mother was here taking care of the two of them. The Ashleys were getting rid of their ice box. Ed Ashley’s back yard and this yard join together, Ed’s mother, Lou was particularly close to my grandmother. They were very good friends. The Ashleys were getting an electric refrigerator. What they had was an old upright ice box and so mother decided that this would be a lot easier to handle than the old ice chest, so she bought it from them and knew that grandmother would have a fit. She didn’t know what kind of a fit. So one night after grandmother had gone to bed, the Ashleys brought the old ice chest in here and took out the old wooden one out. When grandmother came out of her bedroom which was in the front of the house, she got as far as the kitchen door and refused to put a step into the room, saying to my mother, "I will not go into that room where that great white ghost is standing." And she wouldn’t. Mother had to feed her in the other room for a couple of days. Finally she was convinced that it wouldn’t bite her and she gave in. But she didn’t like it at all. She didn’t like anything that was new. Those two old ladies lived here for many, many years all alone. The two of them managed. My great aunt Charlotte did house cleaning to help out with work and my grandmother was a seamstress and took in sewing. They made a little money and what else they needed, my father helped support them. Those two old ladies had their routines. This room had a big table at one end of it and the table was always set for my grandmother on one side and my great aunt beside her. It was kind of an oval table, I still have the table, but it was always set. After each meal, they would go to the sink and wash the dishes, put them back on the table and cover with another tablecloth to protect the dishes from dust. That was the way they kept it all the time. Even when we came to visit, then the table was set for all of us, but the dishes were never put away in this gorgeous pantry we have here. They would use the same dishes for every meal and the tablecloth thrown over all the dishes so that they were always clean. One of the particular stories [I remember] they played rummy every single night. They would have one game of rummy. They kept score every night. New Years’ Eve, they added up the score to see who had won for the year. There was no prize or anything, it was just the satisfaction of knowing which one of them had beaten the other. Sally: They lived here until about what year? Betty: Grandmother died after being in the nursing home about 5 years. My son remembers her and he was born in ‘45. I think he remembers her mostly in the nursing home. I don’t think he remembers much about her being here. Although I have a picture of her here holding him in the yard. She probably went over there about ‘48. My great aunt went over to the nursing home about the same time. My great aunt was younger, but they weren’t capable of staying here alone. They went over to the Mattapoisett Nursing Home on North Street. It has been added on to since then. It was just a house at that time. They never drove cars. My great aunt Charlotte did a lot of walking. She would go down evenings to the post office to get mail. The post office was open in the evening at that time. I don’t know what the closing hours were, I have no idea. One of my joys as a child was to go with her. She would get mail for everybody up and down the street. Mail wasn’t delivered at that time. Our joy was coming home with it and we’d stop in at all of Pleasant Street and visit with people she had got mail for. She walked everywhere. They were members of the Universalist Church which is now the art center. They were very staunch members. They were working members. My great aunt was very social, grandmother wasn’t very social. She did go to church. She walked to church. She was a very heavy woman and it was hard for her to get around. My great aunt was very small, very slender. She went everywhere walking. People always knew when she was coming, because she walked on her heels. You could hear her half a mile away. Heels clicking all over the place. They had their own routine here living together. There was a bathroom inside. There was running water, but only at the kitchen sink. Just one cold water faucet. I remember when there was a pump on the kitchen sink. But they did have running water put in. There was a little room off this room that held an indoor commode, so they didn’t go to the outhouse at night. There was a bathtub. It had no running water. It had no real drain. It was just a tub. When you finished your bath and wanted to get rid of the water, it went down into the foundation of the house. It just drained out a hole down there. When my father did some remodeling of this house, when they put central heating put in, he had that room dismantled and they went to take out the bathtub, we got the biggest kick out of it. It was all pine paneled around it, they took the pine paneling out and here it was nothing but an old, old large packing case. It had been lined with some metal, I presume tin and that’s all it was. I remember there was another story connected to this. We were having sewage lines put in at the same time the house was being remodeled and they took this old tub and put it out on the front lawn until they could take it to the dump and also there were ditches being dug for the pipes to come in from the street. I overheard a young boy walking by say "Oh, look, somebody died." I stopped and listened and one of the other kids said how do you know? He said, "Well look there’s the box they’re going put him in and there’s the hole they are going to put the box in." It was at that time we put in running water and flush toilets, I think it was in the late 30’s early 40’s. Sally: Would that have been fairly typical here in Marion? Betty: I would imagine so. I never considered them atypical people. There weren’t very many of course who lived to be that old. Grandmother was 96 and the oldest resident of Marion when she died. All the newspapers had her picture. Sally: I guess what I meant was from what you observed when you were here in the summers were people modernizing their houses about the same period? Betty: Oh, yes, and I think this was one of the few places that wasn’t with running water and that sort of thing. Diagonally across the street where the Cushings lived, they had modernized for those times, relatively modern, now it has just been redone in the past couple of years. They were more or less ... Bart was a lawyer in Wareham and did very well financially and took care of his mother in that house. My family wasn’t very well off as I said before. There wasn’t any money to spare for anything. Sally: When you lived with your family in Pittsburgh, you probably had modern improvements in your house? Betty: Oh, yes, we had a brand new house. When we came here in the summer, it was very exciting. We loved it because it was so different. And we were always so welcome. My grandmother loved us dearly. But she didn’t take care of us, it was my great aunt who took care of us when we came. My great aunt just loved children. One of my memories of her was coming here and being allowed to sleep in her bed with her overnight. Each of us was allowed to do that one night while we were here and this was a privilege. She would sing to us, Billy Boy was one of her favorite songs to sing to us. They made life fun. They liked simple things. It was very simple living and as kids we just loved it. My grandmother was a miserable cook. She would never admit it. She could make pies that were out of this world, but anything else was not good. But I’ll take that back, she could fry fish and make pies, but nothing else. The food here was very ordinary. Lottie did a lot of the cooking, but neither of them were great cooks. They ate very simply. They didn’t bother fussing. One of the other things I remember being here with people coming by with deliveries. Of course when I was here there was a man that brought fish in a wagon and the vegetable man. That’s how they kept their supply going. They didn’t drive or have a horse or wagon. Everything was delivered. Milk, although I don’t know how much milk they used. Although when mother was here, she insisted that these things were here. My grandmother loved it when we got a car. She loved to ride in that car. Dad would take her everywhere. Just to sight see. They never did anything, just drive around. Going over to east Marion over to Kittansett. That was one of her greatest pleasures. It was a whole new world to her. Sally: He probably took her to places she’d never seen. Betty: Or if she had, it wouldn’t have been seen for years. And that would have been by horse and buggy. She always had to be in the front seat, because she got car sick when she sat anywhere else. I’m not sure that was true, but it was a good excuse. She could really see better. Sally: This concludes the interview with Betty Wish, April 27, 1996. |
Search Terms |
Catholic Rectory Baseball Bird Island Light Post Office Universalist Church Marion Art Center Outhouse sewer system Ice Chest Blankinship Cove Cemetery Red and White Store Bicentennial Park A&P Store Tabor Academy Town Hall Scrimshaw Box Silvershell Beach Masonic Building |
People |
Wish, Betty Blankinship, John Bates Blankinship, Stanford Hooper, Betty Blankinship, Althea (see Entwistle, Althea) Blankinship, Charlotte (Lottie) Blankinship, Abbie C. (see Taber, Abbie C) Taber, Abbie C. (see Blankinship, Abbie C.) |
Category |
10: Unclassifiable Artifacts |
Sub-category |
Need to Classify |
Accession number |
2005.007 |