A couple of weeks ago, I received a call from Lynn Marino, an artist from Alabama who had an interesting research question for me: Could I find information on an Ethelyn Manchester, who lived at 19 Main Street in Fairhaven in 1931? About 25 or 30 years ago, Marino had purchased Manchester’s diary from an Alabama antique store, and she now wanted the diary to find its rightful home, with descendants of Ethelyn or here in Fairhaven.
I began my search in the town newspaper, the Fairhaven Star, which had one article mentioning Ethelyn Manchester, dated February 13th, 1904. It was about her sixth birthday:
Fast forward a few decades, and Ethelyn was living at the address listed in her diary, 19 Main Street, where she would live until her death in 1980. Though she never had children of her own, she worked for many years in Fairhaven elementary schools and helped run the Sunday School at Centre Methodist. Her nearest living descendent, I would tell Marino, was a great-nephew living in New York City, the grandson of her bother, Everett Raymond Manchester.
Ultimately, Marino decided that the best home for Ethelyn’s diary was right here at the Millicent Library, in our Archives & Special Collections Department. She told me that she was in the process of cleaning out her attic when she came across the diary, which she’d forgotten about. She didn’t want the diary to end up in another attic, to be cleaned out by someone’s children someday – maybe sold at a yard sale or, worse, thrown away. Better to send it here, where it could be preserved and accessed in perpetuity.
Once we received Ethelyn’s diary, her life ceased to be a series of black-and-white facts (Date of Birth. Occupation. Date of Death.) and took on more color. Ethelyn was dutiful. In her very first entry she wrote, “Mrs. Fisher gave me this diary. I shall use it as I can’t give it away. I dislike diaries extremely but will do my duty as I believe nothing should be wasted.” She wrote a brief entry in her diary every day for the whole of 1931. She never missed a day. She always noted the weather.
While her entries were economical and matter-of-fact, taken together they paint the picture of a life. Evelyn was a devoted daughter, helping her “Ma” (Sarah Anthony Gibbs) and “Pa” (William Gibbs, her stepfather) often and tending to them in illness. She was a loyal friend, especially to Betty, Carolyn, and her sister-in-law Velna. She enjoyed games like cribbage, Parcheesi, and bridge. She often went to the movies, and enjoyed concerts and plays. She liked sweets, including ice cream, candy, and hot chocolate but, as a member of the Temperance movement, she did not drink alcohol and disapproved of those who did. She loved to read, especially enjoying a “good murder story.”
Ethelyn was a dedicated teacher, often staying after school to help her students, whom she invariably referred to as her “kiddies.” She helped with school plays, including in 1931 the Tripp and Anthony Schools’ production of “A Garden Cinderella,” about which the Fairhaven Star reported “The children had been painstakingly directed by their teachers, who, it could be easily seen, are blest with an infinite amount of patience.”
One of the great mysteries of the diary is the identity of Ethelyn’s romantic partner, “Izzy,” whom she saw or spoke to on the phone nearly every evening. Little is known about Izzy’s identity, except that he, like Ethelyn, lived in Fairhaven, enjoyed the movies, was close to his family. He may have been an Isaac, an Israel, or an Issachar (first or middle name), or even had a last name that started with “Is.” Evelyn notes that his birthday was on March 16th, which has proved useful for ruling out suspected Izzys but has not yet helped us to track him down.
If Ethelyn remembered anything about the year 1931 later in life, it may have been the dentist’s chair. 1931 was the year she had her remaining teeth – at least 14 – extracted in a series of painful appointments. She was fitted with dentures that summer. Or, she may have recalled the tragedies she wrote about that year, like when one of her “kiddies,” Margaret Leamen, was badly burned in an accident and died, or when the night watchman from the Iron Foundry was killed by the trolley right in front of her house.
But one hopes she would remember the happier times, like the trips into New Bedford with her friends, the days passed happily reading a good book, or her many movie dates with Izzy. We may be biased, but we hope she would remember her many trips to the Millicent Library, which she mentions walking to at least once a week in her diary. We hope she would be happy that her diary ended up here, one more Fairhaven story preserved for the community to remember, enjoy, and learn from.