Dorothy Mae Scott, born 1929, died 1996, New Hampshire.
Part 2, 1930s.
1930 age 1
Here is little Dorothy, not yet able to walk when the census-taker knocks on their door. Her parents Chester and Cecelia Scott and her older brother Norman Scott (see his first post here). |
| Census Franklin City, Merrimack County NH Scott Family starts line 2 |
Here the same information as I posted when writing about Norman.
Little Norman in his first Census. He was about 2 years old, and his little sister Dorothy was just a few months old. I wonder what happened to that first child. I wrote in the last blog about NFS birth certificate, and that he is the second child born to Cecelia.
He lives with parents Chester and Cecelia at 538 Central Street, Franklin NH. This is a rented house. I looked through the neighbors on this sheet, and I don't see anybody who may be related. It seems they were on their own, here.
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| Scott Family on the map, 1930 census 538 Central Street, Franklin NH |
Above and below are the map view, from Google Maps 2017, and the streetview image captured November 2015 from Google Maps. You can see where the house might have been, but it doesn't look like it is there anymore. Point of research -- see if there are historical photos of this house, and any record of when it was torn down and why.
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| Google Maps streetview 2017 538 Central Street, Franklin NH |
Dorothy is aged 7 months old, born in NH. Chester was a laborer in the Saw Shop. Chester has never been in the military.
1930 Historical Insight
The Great Depression |
| 1930 Great Depression Credit: Dorothea Lange/Wikimedia Commons/Public Domain Ancestry.com Historical Insight |
The Great Depression was still in it's devastating tour of the nation.
Though the vast majority of the jobs created by President Roosevelt during the Great Depression were for unskilled laborers, he also employed artists to document life across the country. This photograph of a migrant family escaping the Dust Bowl was shot by Dorothea Lange and has become an iconic work from the era. 1936, Nipomo, California. – Ancestry.com Historical Insight
1931 age 1
Birth of Sister Yvonne
Her sister Yvonne L. Scott was born on 25 April 1931 in Franklin NH when Dorothy Mae was 1 year old. There is not much information about this little sister, except stories I'd heard throughout my marriage into the family. We'd heard she'd married a man named "Pugh" and that she'd had nose cancer that disfigured her face and eventually she died of that condition. If you have any information, contact me. Information on the Scott side of the family is really scarce, both in anecdotal evidence and stories from family, as well as in actual records and documents. It's almost as if -- had I not begun researching them, they would have disappeared from the face of the earth.
1934 age 4
Parents Divorce
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| 1934 Chester & Cecelia Scott Divorce |
16 February 1934. Dorothy's parents Chester and Cecelia divorced. Chester was the one who filed for divorce on the grounds that Cecelia was adulterous. Merrimack NH.
I will include things like this because, although they did not happen to her in particular, they had to have influenced Dorothy's life in some way. I mean, imagine being a little 4 year old girl, with a protective older brother age five and a three year old little sister. Who did they live with after the divorce? Is this when the kids were placed into orphanages? Let's explore this little thought experiment further.
And, remember. The country is still in slow recovery from the Great Depression.
Four years ago, Chester was a laborer in the Saw Shop (according to the 1930 census). There is no apparent family nearby for him to call upon. He seems to have had nobody to watch three young kids. Since Cecelia -- although she contested the divorce -- there had to have been enough incriminating evidence for the decision of adultery. Would that automatically exclude the children remaining with the mother? Or, if Cecelia was awarded the children anyway, What was life like then? Where was momma living? Women simply did not just raise children as a single mom in those days. While Cecelia remarried at least once more, It looks like Chester never did.
1935 age 6
Residence per 1940 census
She's living with someone -- who? I don't know, but she's living in Concord NH. Could Dick S. Bell and Mary L. Scott Bell have lived here and taken her in? I wish I had records!1938 about age 8
Historical Insight -- The Great New England Hurricane of 1938Dorothy Mae Scott was likely living in Franklin New Hampshire, one of the areas battered in 1938 by a hurricane boasing cyclones with extremely high winds.
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Credit: Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
– Ancestry.com
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A hurricane pummeled the northeast with sustained winds of 109 mph on September 21, 1938. In New York City, the sea level rose seven feet in 30 minutes. Some 50,000 homes were damaged or leveled and 2 billion trees snapped like toothpicks in a single day. “It came as a shock and it came suddenly,” one survivor remembered. Conflicting weather reports left locals unprepared, and by the time the tempest subsided, 700 were dead, and 700 more injured. – Ancestry.com
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