All posts in the ‘ Woodman Family ’ Category

At our house in New Delhi, during the 1950s and early 1960s, our head bearer (major domo), Pratap Singh, ran the show. Pratap came to us on our first night in Delhi. My travel-weary parents were already on the job and had to go to a formal reception; the hostess told them that she’d send someone over to mind me, Lee, and Jane, then aged eight, six, and two. Come evening, there was a knock on our hotel …Read More

December, 1952: My mom doesn’t look all that encumbered in this picture, but actually she was within a very few weeks of delivering my sister Jane to this world. My parents had arrived in Madras (now Chennai) just the previous month. They’d traveled from the US via London, Frankfort, Istanbul, Beirut, Basra, Karachi, and Delhi, with my sister Lee and me in tow. Lee and I carried Pan Am bags full of coloring books and games, plus a …Read More

I’m back from two weeks in India. Among other quests, in Delhi I searched for the two houses my family had lived in. I had done this on an earlier visit—in 1986—and found both houses almost exactly the same as in the 1950s and early 1960s. The streets they were located on were also little changed. Not now! Delhi’s a different city. There are roughly ten times as many people there as when I was growing up. Neighborhoods that used …Read More

The other day, I went to Musterfield Farms in North Sutton, NH. They had their apples and vegetables for sale in a little shed that smelled delicious, just like fall. The prices were listed up on the wall. Anyway, the system is that you help yourself to the produce and then put the money  you think you owe in a cookie can. I got some apples, filling a bag for $2.  The owner saw me and said, “You …Read More

My sister Lee and cousins Nancy and Persis put on a wonderful party for friends and family last month to launch Love Potion Number 10. I was too busy signing books to get my own fortune told, but out on the porch, folks were lined up waiting for Madame Lee to read their cards and to consult the 8-Ball. Here’s Lee exchanging vibes with neighbor Marcus. Now, Lee has not admitted to any previous experience in divination. She …Read More

I found some well turned out ladies in the biscuit tin. The woman above wore a ribbon at the neck, lace collar, fancy tie, and brooch, just as the younger girls did. She’s added a festooned hat, which to my mind gives her an air of confidence. Lovely but wistful Priscilla Parker looks ready for a ride in a carriage. Oh dear, this tintype is pretty rusty, but you can still see the nice plaid, popular at mid-century. …Read More

Here’s something else I found in that box of tintypes and photographs: It was folded up, and inside it was this: Had that lock of hair been undisturbed since 1872? Was the person who saved it in the grip of some obsessive, unrequited love? Far be it from me to toss the program or the lock into the trash! Maybe the New England Conservatory archives would take them.

Well, gang, just call me Ms. Gumshoe. While sifting through the tintypes in the biscuit tin, I actually found one that was labeled. Not dated, alas, but the subject of the portrait was “Mrs. Woodman” and the place, Waterbury, VT. A bit of googling nailed the woman’s identity. She’s my great-great grandmother, Mary Jane Sanborn (1821-1887), who married Albert Alonzo Woodman in 1847 in Compton, Quebec, and then came to Waterbury, VT. She looks terrifying. Was Mary Jane’s …Read More

I’ve been cleaning out closets. In a tin biscuit box, I found a pile of tintypes (photos on metal) and other old photographs dating from about 1860 to 1880. With them was a little scribbled note: “James, Keep all pictures in desk until we can look at them together, Mary.” James would be my grandfather (who died in 1958) and Mary was his sister. Unfortunately, almost none of those pictures had names or dates written on them. I’ll …Read More

The sixtieth anniversary of the invasion of Normandy was approaching, and my eighty-eight-year-old dad, Everett Woodman, very much wanted to go to the ceremonies at the American cemetery at Colleville-sur-Mer. He’d been a young naval officer in the historic battle, serving on a Landing Craft Infantry that carried American special forces to Omaha Beach and led the way for other such craft. My mom, Ruthie, then eighty-three, would have preferred to stay home; plus, she was having memory …Read More