broadstory

Mother`s Two Families-in Canada and Maine.

My mother,Hattie May Broad,was the secondborn to parents who were to see eleven more children arrive after her and older daughter Alice.Aunt Alice was born in 1882,and on March 13,1884,Mother joined the Broad family in Holmesville,New Brunswick.Twin brothers,Fred and Howard,followed Mother in 1887,and another brother,Mose,came along two years later.Mose,however,lived only into 1890.That same year Estelle(Aunt Stella)arrived to take his place.Still another daughter,Ruth,added to the mouths to feed in 1892.
Grandmother Broad,Jerusha Holmes,at the age of fifteen,became the wife of Charles A Broad,a farmer/carpender nearly twice her age.They were poor to begin with and as the number of children increased so their poverty deepened.At the time of her sister Ruth`s birth in 1892,Mother,only eight years old,was compelled to quit school and "go out to work."I assume it was as a helper in some more affuent household and that her pay was sent home,or more likely she just earned her board and keep.So while Mother was trying to forget that she herself was yet a child,her brother wilmot was born in 1893.Then two more sisters came along Gussie in 1896 and Daisy in 1900.At the turn of the century Mother was a young woman of sixteen.At some point in her younger years she left New Brunswick,crossing the border to the Caribou,Maine area where she continued working as a domestic.There her path crossed that of a young farmer/woodsman,Maurice Ward Perkins,who was originally from Brooksville on the Maine coast.They were married in Caribou the 13th day of June 1903,she was nineteen,he was one month short of twentysix.As of the exact date when each of them had arrived in Caribou,I`am not certain.Father,I believe,was still at his home in Brooksville in 1898.But,according to author Milton T.Lufkin of caribou,Pa was working in Caribou on an ajoining farm to the old Lufkin home in 1902.
Earlier records of Caribou present the winters as not too hospitable in that part of the county.In 1897 people used Caribou steam as their winter road.and lumbermen in 1898 reported the snow was eight feet deep.Heavily loaded teams were able to drive on the crust in late March.
In Caribou the first child of of Hattie and Maurice was born on September 15,1904 and named Iva May.Also that year brought news that a last brother, Levert,was born in the Broad family,while a little sister Beatrice born two years earlier,had died.
Sometime between 1904 and 1906 Mother and Father,with tiny Iva,moved sixteen miles north from Caribou to Stockhome,where lumber and milling industries dominated.About twenty-five
years before the Perkins family`s move to Stockholm,the first settlers had arrived there.
They had been Swedish immigrant farmers who
spread out from the nearby colony of New Sweden.There in Stockholm,November the 8th, 1906 Iva was joined by a brother Roy Ward.
The skill of mother`s hands is well displayed in a picture of Iva and Roy when they were about five and two.Apparently taken in a studio in Stockholm ,they are sitting on a fancy chair decorated with curly-kews and spools.In keeping with the custom
then,Roy has on a dress,as well as Iva.The dresses
were made by Mother,each the same style and color,a lovely maroon,and beautifully sewn.Fine tucks run from the neckline in a V-shape down to the waist.Within the V,tucks also run horizontally,
stitched with light colored thread.Six pearl buttons
decorate either side of the V-line.As styles were then,the waist is sewn low,and three more rows of
tucks run around the bottom of the skirt.Both of the children have blonde hair,Ivas long,curled and pulled back on one side with a big,perky pink bow.
Looking sober but curious,Roy sits comfortbly
pearched on part of the chair back,his hands grasping a long string of beads.Iva has just a hint of a smile but i think she is concerned with keeping her balance on the end of the chair seat as her left hand is slightly blurred from movement, (con:t)