Generation 2

Walter started working as an auto mechanic in high school and opened up his own shop. He wanted to be a doctor and tried to save money to do that, but got married when he was about 17.

My father's birth certificate in 1925 says that Walter was a Loom repairman. During the Depression, Walter was able to work at a number of jobs and maintained a home on the Salem End Road, Framingham that later became FDR's son's. In later years, Walter was a manager in the Roxbury Carpets factory in Saxonville, MA - shown here with Mason the General Manager:

Evidently, he took alot of correspondence courses whenever he was interested in learning about something. He also went to Northeastern University at night and received a certificate in Business and Industrial Training that Olive still had in her things after Walter's death.

Olive in her early teens

Olive's mother died when she was three months old and she was taken in by Aunt Esther and Uncle Timothy Longley in Royalston, MA until she was in the third grade and then went to Athol, MA to live with the Etta Pike family before she met my grandfather in Westborough, MA. Year's later when she tried to get a birth certificate, she had problems in Nova Scotia apparently and had to go to the school in Royalston. Esther Longly my have been William Jean's sister. She and Timothy Longly were evidently quite comfortable, but had no children of their own. They had two "buggies", one for every day and one for church on Sundays. When Timothy died, he left some money to Olive, but for some reason, he called by a different name somehow and she did not have the resources to pursue it in court. Apparently, she was sent to Etta Pike's because the Longley's no longer felt up to taking care of a young child. I do not know if Etta was related. My father Donald went to Royalston several year's ago, trying to find some information about the Longley's and actually met a woman who went to school with my grandmother there and still lived in the house that she grew up in, probably as a neighbor of the Longleys. The Pike's in Athol were very simple farm people and since my grandmother was very resourceful and had a great deal of common sense in the Depression years raising 6 children, she may have gotten such a solid ability in her years with the Pike's. Eventually, Olive went to live with her sister Myrna in Worcester, but Olive did not feel comfortable in a city environment, so she when she was about 14, she went to see her mother's sister Bertha Stewart in Westboro. Bertha had a three story house there. Bertha was evidently was somewhat superior in attitude, and financially comfortable, but when Olive asked if she could rent a room there, Bertha said no that she didn't do that sort of thing. Lorraine remembers Bertha as being unpleasant or fussy and looking in my grandmother's closets or otherwise criticizing her. Lorraine also remebers Bertha as looking like a tall "prune" or not particularly attractive. Olive found a job in a factory and rented a room or an apartment in Westboro. She met my grandfather Walter at a church social and Lizzie Varnum befriended Olive, so that Olive met the rest of the family and married Walter. Walter and Olive lived with Lizzie through the births of their first two children, Walter Raymond and Jean Elizabeth, and then they moved to Framingham, probably an apartment on Rt 9 or Worcester Road. From the Worcester Road apartment, they moved to Summer Street and then to Hastings Street, where they bought a house. The Hasting's Street house was lost to the bank during the Depression. They then rented a house from a Mrs. Dunbar on Salem End Road. There Walter, during the Depression, worked for Mrs. Dunbar in the stables, picking apples and so on. Lorraine believes that he was able to work 4 days a week this way during the Depression. Eventually, Walter went to work for Roxbury Carpets in the Saxonville area of Framingham and that is where I remember him working when I was a child. From Salem End Road, they moved to Summer Street in Framingham and then Proctor Street in Hopkinton, a dirt road at the bottom Ben Pond Hill. Then they rented a house on Pleasant Street from Mrs. Madagan that they wanted to buy, but Mrs. Madagan wouldn't sell it to them because they weren't Catholic. Finally, they bought a house on Grove Street. This is the house that I remember when I was a young child. Then they moved to Newton Street in Southboro some time before my aunt Marilyn's marriage. This is the house where we had annual family cookouts in the summer and that my parents bought from my grandparents shortly before Walter died.