|
3/26/97
Women Who Lived
Julia Lippitt Mauran |
Adelaide Knight |
Cora Lamoureux | Bertha D. Carr
A special series from the West Bay region
The West Bay region has been blessed with strong women. They have served in government, managed farms, created dance and art. They have been spouses to powerful, often difficult, men. They have picked up and carried on when the men in charge -- husbands or fathers -- were gone. In honor of Women's History Month, we profile four of these remarkable women.
Julia Lippitt Mauran
Crusty 'old farmer'
By MARTHA SMITH
Journal-Bulletin Staff Writer
CRANSTON -- Julia Lippitt Mauran, known as "Kitty," was a woman ahead of her time. A teacher, farmer and craftswoman, she was also the first woman licensed to drive a car in Rhode Island.
It was a 1910 Ford and she drove it until she was 87.
"She drove right down the middle of the road because she was a Lippitt and she didn't have to stay in one lane," says family descendant Adelaide Knight, laughing. Knight lives on Lippitt Farm, on Hope Road in Western Cranston, adjoining Mauran's former property.
"She didn't stop at intersections either."
Slightly over 4 feet tall, Kitty Mauran was nearly as famous for being cantankerous as she was for a host of achievements.
"If somone knocked on the door she'd go upstairs and lean out the window with a 12-gauge shotgun before she said hello," says Knight.
Disgruntled employees once burned down her barn.
Bob Brayton, 84, of Hope, recalls, "My uncle was driving along Hope Road when he got a flat tire. He pulled over to the side of the road, which happened to be directly in front of Kitty's house. She came out with a whip and smacked him across the face, telling him to keep away from her house.
"If she happened to like you, she would do anything for you but if she didn't, she'd throw anything she had in her hands at you."
Born in Providence on June 25, 1860, Julia Lippitt Mauran was the daughter of John and Sarah Mauran and, through her mother, was descended from Roger Williams. Educated at the Mary C. Wheeler School, she later became a teacher there. She also became proficient in the art of woodworking and carving and, after teaching those crafts privately, helped found an all-women's club devoted to crafts. Besides woodcraft, club members also did metalwork, basketry, weaving and pottery.
Mauran also was interested in horticulture. She ran Lippitt Hill Farm as a subsistence farm, growing vegetables, keeping livestock, cutting ice from the pond and churning butter. Her interest in horticulture led her to found the Providence County Garden Club, and gardening enthusiasts would travel great distances to visit her Colonial gardens.
Mauran's mechanical skills were put to good use in maintaining the farm, where she kept up a 20-room house and did such tasks as shingling a shed roof.
Sometimes she took on extra help. Bernadette Wunschel, 66, of Coventry, then Mauran's neighbor, remembers how Kitty behaved toward the employees. "One of my teenage friends was hired by Miss Mauran to do some part-time housework. When she reported for work in jeans, she was promptly sent home to change into a dress. One day she finished her chores early and Miss Mauran handed her a ball of string to unravel. When she'd finished she ordered her to rewind it into a ball."
Norman Larney, 70, of Cranston, describes what happened when one of Mauran's hay fields caught fire. "The firemen arrived and were refused entrance to the property. She told them they would be charged with trespassing if they set foot on her land. After some bickering, she finally relented."
She was the subject of an extensive Providence Journal piece appearing on Oct. 31, 1915, called "Back to the Farm: From a Woman's Standpoint." In another interview, published in the Evening Bulletin when she was 87, Mauran referred to herself as "just an old farmer."
(An interesting aspect of Lippitt Hill Farm is that it has been handed down from woman to woman: Julia inherited it from her aunt. Ten years ago it was purchased by Alma Green, president of the Women's Development Corporation, which builds low-income housing for women. She restored the farm herself.)
Julia Lippitt Mauran died in May 1949, just shy of her 89th birthday. She was buried in a pine coffin made on the farm by a neighbor. Her coffin was borne to the family cemetery in a wagon drawn by her beloved team of white oxen. She was the last person to be buried in a family cemetery on private property in the state.
"The day before she died," says Adelaide Knight, "she was out chopping wood."
With reports by Anthony D'Abrosca, a freelance writer who contributes to the Journal-Bulletin
Adelaide Knight
A life of quiet resolve
By MARTHA SMITH
Journal-Bulletin Staff Writer
WARWICK -- In terms of personality, Julia Lippitt Mauran's cousin, Adelaide Knight, could not have been more different.
A shy, self-effacing woman, she led a quiet life on the 125-acre Warwick farm where her father, the industrial titan Webster Knight, raised champion Ayrshire cattle and Morgan horses.
Born to Webster and Sarah Lippitt Knight on Oct. 8, 1885, Adelaide would grow up to bear a striking resemblance to Eleanor Roosevelt. Similarities can be seen in her prominent teeth, haired pulled back into a bun at the nape of the neck, and a fondness for large, concealing hats.
Adelaide, who never married, but was a prominent horticulturist, grower of hothouse orchids and benefactress of charity. "The story handed down was that she fell deeply in love with a lawyer but the family didn't think he was good enough for her so they stopped the romance," says her great-niece and namesake, Adelaide Knight, who lives on the Lippitt family farm in Western Cranston.
The Knight family farm, which the first Adelaide ran after her father died, was situated where the Community College of Rhode Island now stands. In its heyday, the gentleman's -- and, later, gentlewoman's -- estate, was considered one of the showplaces of the state. Its expenses were underwritten by the lucrative textile mills that turned out products under the Fruit of the Loom label.
Under Adelaide's stewardship the estate was a place of great beauty, famous for its bluestone walls, windmill, fabulous flowering shrubs and greenhouses where she often entertained touring garden club members. The farm also had a horse-powered cider press, elegant carriage house and artesian well.
Sixteen years after Adelaide's death, in 1948, her nephew, Royal Webster Knight, gave the land to CCRI, having already sold a large adjacent parcel to the developers of what is now Rhode Island Mall.
Mildred Longo, one of Warwick's foremost amateur historian, says, "I remember the farm before the mall. There were beautiful hills and a pine forest. The Girl Scouts would go out there on field trips."
Betsy Fitzgerald, a reference librarian at the Providence Public Library, has similar recollections.
"I remember the paddocks, driving by. And that white house with black shutters sitting atop an incredibly beautiful hill. I thought it was Tara. My fantasy was to live there."
Adelaide Knight lived there all her life, pursuing her keen interest in flowers and animals. Nearly every photograph in the family album shows her holding puppies or kittens in her lap.
"On the outside she seemed very quiet, introverted," says Adelaide Knight of her great-aunt. "But she was a hot ticket. She was very independent. She ran the farm and didn't require any help from my grandfather."
Tony Caniglia, who works at Bald Hill Subaru, says, "During my early childhood I was a member of the Natick Baptist Church. Miss Knight was a member, someone who gave a lot of anonymous donations. She donated the church organ. She always took the bus to Providence, wore dark clothes and big hats.
"She was quite a lady."
Cora Lamoureux
Town Hall 'was her whole life
By MARTHA SMITH
Journal-Bulletin Staff Writer
WEST GREENWICH -- When Cora Lamoureux was 83 and the town clerk, she was given tenure -- which meant she didn't have to run for office anymore.
Not as though anybody ever gave a thought to challenging her. She was, after all, an institution.
For nearly a half-century, Mrs. Lamoureux had served the town she loved, first as a member of the War Rationing Board, then as welfare director, auditor, treasurer and part time clerical assistant. She became town clerk in 1956, and didn't retire until she was 88.
No one in town government ever was more popular. Before the Town Hall was built, on Route 102, people with town business would go to Mrs. Lamoureux's house and she was happy to oblige them.
An elfin woman with curly silver hair and twinkly eyes, Mrs. Lamoureux was a grandmotherly figure famous for her encyclopedic knowledge of the town. When she died, the presiding minister at her funeral, the Rev. Henry Bell, lamented that "West Greenwich has lost a whole wealth of information" most of it not stored anywhere but in Cora's memory.
Tax Collector Shirley Baton is the last person left in Town Hall who worked with Lamoureux.
"She was one of a kind," Baton says. "To this day, so many people come in and remark about her: `Remember when Cora did this and Cora did that.' What a wonderful lady she was. She worked all of her life and, as she got older and her children were grown and gone, the Town Hall was her whole life.
"I think of her very often, the nice little things she did and the funny things she said."
Born July 2, 1896, Cora Lamoureux got involved in town government after the death of her husband. Left with two sons to raise, she first ran her mother's restaurant and then, when that closed, became a secretary. To supplement her income, she took part-time jobs clerical jobs working for the town.
As the town's population grew and, with it the duties of administering government, the clerk's office became a full-time post.
"They told me I had to take the job because nobody else was qualified," she once told a reporter. "I had experience doing deeds and title searches. I was familiar with the work. Besides, I didn't like to stay home."
When she was in her late 80s, she continued to report to work every day, not the least slowed down by arthritis, a hearing aid and thick-lensed glasses.
"I don't particularly like housework and I'm not somebody who visited the neighbors all the time," she said in explaining why she continued working. "I don't know what I'd do with myself if I retired."
One of her favorite parts of the job was consulting historical records.
She remarked that people from all over the country come to town to look up their families. In one instance, when a couple from Maine appeared to work on their genealogy, they brought a picture of an old house to help in their research. Mrs. Lamoureux knew the current owners of the house and phoned them. The Maine visitors were invited over.
"Things like that make the job very enjoyable," she said in an interview.
She was, herself, involved in a history-making event: As a young woman she marched in Boston in support of suffrage.
Bertha D. Carr
Taught dance to generations of Rhode Islanders, until her death at 92
By MARTHA SMITH
Journal-Bulletin Staff Writer
EAST GREENWICH - Bertha D. Carr was the pied piper of culture.
Owner of the Bertha D. Carr School of Dancing, a mainstay of the downtown scene for decades, she drove the state's roadways teaching dance and fine speech in rural communities from Burrillville to South County.
She taught in her own studio for 61 years but also brought elegance and manners to far-flung meeting halls, teaching adults as well as children.
Born in West Warwick in 1903, Bertha Carr had extensive training and a professional dancing career before becoming a teacher. She studied with the famous ballerina Madame Papparella, attended Staley College of the Spoken Word, and graduated from the Rogers School of Stage Arts and the Chicago National Dance Training School, where she specialized in ballroom dancing.
She began her career performing at the Majestic Theater and was still demonstrating steps to her students until the end of her life, in 1995, at the age of 92.
Ever eager to spread the word about dancing, Miss Carr was a founding member of the Dance Teachers Club of Boston and a 50-year member and officer of the National Association of Dance Masters of America. (Although a widow, she preferred to be called Miss Carr, finding it more traditional and stylish for the head of a dance studio.)
She was Rhode Island Woman of the Year in 1976 and was honored by the town and the state for her contributions to the arts. In 1991, only two members were honored with achievement awards by the National Dance Masters of America -- Broadway choreographer Tommy Tune and Bertha Carr.
As a nonagenarian, teaching the great-grandchildren of her first students, Miss Carr was still the epitome of grace, her posture straight and her voice perfectly modulated. In an interview she expressed pride that some of her little girls had gone on to become successful professional dancers.
"You can easily spot the ones who have natural talent," she said, "but sometimes the ones who are so good only go so far and then they get involved with something else. But you get a girl who hasn't had any dancing and she can turn out very, very well because it opens up a whole new world."
Although today it's mostly girls who attend the school for ballet, tap and jazz lessons, Miss Carr in her heyday taught ballroom dance to practically everyone.
"I taught ballroom dancing at the Varnum Armory," she said. "There were 50 boys and 50 girls; all the girls wore party dresses and white gloves. I taught them manners, too. Now when I go up to [Kent County Memorial] hospital, all the doctors say they took ballroom dancing with me."
Someone else who never forget her training is John Botelho, formerly the East Greenwich police chief and Town Council president.
"I took classes at Eldredge School in the eighth grade," he says. "She came over and taught once a month. The girls were all on one side and the boys on the other. She taught not only how to dance but how to act properly: how to introduce yourself, thank someone after a dance, return them to their seat. I'll always remember it because it was the only dance lessons I've ever had. That was almost 50 years ago.
"She was quite a dancer, really. She'd get one of the boys and demonstrate and she was really good. Probably the only dance I really remember is the waltz. But I can still go out to a dance and not feel out of place."
More Women in R.I. history
|
ore
Women of Note
