The Story of Our Mother

Sarah Frances Studwell Mead

February 6, 1838 – June 16, 1919

By Loretta Mead Smith

“Once upon a time there was a little girl”, that’s the way the story begins – “a little girl” – a long time ago”, for it was in the year 1838, on February 6th, that a dear little girl was born in Harlem, New York City, in a house which stood near 127th Street.

The father, John Jay Studwell, was only twenty-two, and had not long before left the little farm on the Hook Road, near Bedford, New York, where he lived with his father and mother, Joseph Studwell and Rebecca (Mead) Studwell, and five brothers and sisters.

The family of Studwell was originally English and their home in Kent County was known as “Stidulfe’s place” (Nasted’s History of Kent mentions Robert de Stidulfe before the Reign of Edward III 1327, in ancient deeds without date, as proprietor of Stidulfe’s place in Seale, Kent). The name has undergone the following changes in form: Stidulfe, Steedale, Steedweel, Studwell.

Our first American Studwell ancestor was Thomas, who came from Kent County, England to Rye, Connecticut, as it was then. Between 1692 and 1697 Thomas Studwell moved to Horseneck, Greenwich, Fairfield County, having sold his land at Rye on account of the dispute over the rival claims of New York and Connecticut to that territory.

It was in Greenwich that our great-grandfather, Joseph Studwell was born in 1777, and where, about 1800 he married Sarah Mead, and there their first child, Edwin, was born.

Edwin Studwell as a young man left his home in Bedford, New York, where the family were then living, and came to Mead Street. He was a cobbler by trade and he had a small shop near the entrance to the Cousin Mary Eliza Mead’s place. He married Eliza Hull of South Salem, whom he probably met at the home of her grandfather, Capt. Moses Bouton, a Revolutionary Soldier, who lived in a house which stood near the well on the Richard Stevens place.

Edwin and Eliza Hull Studwell lived the rest of their lives in South Salem – now the Thad Keeler home. They had five children – Leander, (the father of Fred Studwell), Dwight, Smith, Edwin Augustus, and Mary Eliza. She married (1859) Elbert Mead, a cousin of our father’s, and came back to Mead Street to live in a house in the dooryard of which her father as a young man had set up his cobbler shop.

Edwin Studwell is interesting to all of us as he is probably our longest lived relative. He lived ninety-nine years and three months. He was born in November 1803 and died March 1903. There were no deaths in his immediate family for seventy years with the exception of his wife who died in 1876.

The mother of this aged man died at twenty-two and our great-grandfather, Joseph Studwell married her cousin Rebecca Mead. They had six children – Alexander and Augustus – father of Cousin Mattis, born in Greenwich, Conn. Then the family moved to North Salem, N.Y. where the third son, John Jay, was born. Of this Grandpa Studwell writes as follows:

“I, John Jay Studwell, was born December 2, 1813 in, as I have been informed, a log house which stood on the sunny side of a hill, a short distance southeast of Somers Village, Town of North Salem, in Westchester County, New York. When quite young my father moved to a farm about two and one-half miles north of the Village of Bedford.”

This is the old house on the Hook Road which many of us have seen. Here were born Joseph, Sarah and George. Here his second wife, Rebecca, died, and from here Alexander and Augustus went to New York to find work, soon to be followed by John. Grandpa Studwell writes:

“When a boy about seventeen years of age I commenced learning the carpenters trade, but before I accomplished the same I packed up my little effects consisting of my clothes and a few carpenter tools and $96.00 in money, which I had saved from my hard earnings. Although but twenty years of age I considered myself quite a man, so much so I thought I would try my luck in the City of New York.”

So Grandpa left forever and probably not reluctantly, the Westchester woods and streams where he had trapped and fished as a barefoot boy. Strange as it may seem from this start in the country, Grandpa never liked the country; in later years it was not altogether strict devotion to business, but an active dislike of the inconveniences of country life, which held him winter and summer in town.

Grandpa continues his diary:

“I procured a situation from a carpenter by the name of Hoyt in Christie Street, New York, that winter. The next summer the first Cholera year – I think the summer of 1832 – I returned to the Country, but in the fall I resumed my labors in New York, and with constant application to business I succeeded in accumulating in cash about $500.00. (Grandpa’s carefully kept account books of these early days are in pounds, shillings and pence.)

“In the spring of 1836 I commenced on my own account in Manhattanville, New York, at the age of twenty-two. The first year I married and added to my capital $1000.00, making about $1500.00. I thus continued to add $1000.00 a year so long as I was in the business.”

John Jay Studwell married Elizabeth LaFarge Moore, September 18, 1836. She was the daughter of Peter Moore of Woodbridge, New Jersey. Her mother was born a LaFarge and came from Perth Amboy where there was an early settlement of Huguenots. That Grandma was of French origin there could be no doubt. She was small and dark, with the blackest hair even at eighty-four. She had a quick wit, a quick tongue and a quick step which carried her far in a day within the bounds of her own immaculately kept house, and into the homes of her friends and neighbors where trouble or sickness had come, with dainties made by her own hands. Grandma Studwell’s beef-tea and calfsfoot jelly were renown. She was one of the many women of her time who made the lack of hospitals tolerable by being nurse and doctor, first-aid in very truth, and often the only aid.

Oh, what did other people do
Lacking such a friend as you,

To paraphrase Stevenson.

As long as Grandma Studwell lived she made it a religious duty to attend funerals, fair weather or foul; she was always present, a reverent mourner. When remonstrated with, her answer was quick – “My child, if I do not attend other people’s funerals, who will attend mine?”

The little baby who came to that unpretentious home of John and Elizabeth Studwell on that, for us, memorable sixth of February, 1838, was not a Moore, nor a LaFarge, but a pink and white baby with almost reddish hair, proclaiming the Studwell, and that she was all her life. The soft chestnut brown hair, the brown-blue eyes, the large nose, and better than all, the rugged constitution of forebears who lived well into the eighties.

Mother was named for her father’s only sister, Sarah; the “Frances” Mother did not remember the signification of, but she was always called by her parents her full name – “Sarah Frances”. Aunt Sarah Studwell, when asked why she called Mother “Frank” said she always hated the name Sarah herself and she did want John to have a boy. As one can easily imagine Sarah Frances was the apple of her parents’ eye, but also, I imagine, they took great pains to hide this.

If she were an only child, she was not a spoiled child, being very carefully brought up, perhaps unduly repressed from our point of view. Her clothes were not conducive to romping. She wore dresses of nankin and linen, stiff with hand-run tucks and embroidery and scalloped edges, such as the French alone can attain. Even in winter she wore, as other children of that time, low neck and short sleeves, and pantalets starched like a board and embroidered with pierced work, a task at which the dear little fingers were soon proficient, for Satan then, more positively than now, was believed to find mischief for idle hands to do.

Grandpa’s diary continues:

“In the spring of 1839 I continued the lumber business in Harlem, N.Y. with a capital of about $2,000. In the providence of God I still continued to accumulate about $2,500 a year for the next two and a half years. Then, in consequence of being affected with chills and fever I sold out my business, and in the following spring, 1842, we moved to Brooklyn. I commenced a lumber business at the foot of Bridge Street in connection with my brother, Augustus, with a capital of $10,000. I continued that until November 1, 1846, when I retired from business altogether with a capital of nearly $40,000. I left my business to my brother Augustus and to my brother-in-law, Cornelius Moore.”

Mother was about four years old when the family moved to Brooklyn. They lived at No. 40 Prospect Street. In 1842 only a few streets were built up with rows of houses, but many fine old colonial mansions still furnished the background for lavish and brilliant entertainment. Along the waterfront grassy terraces and patches of woods remained.

There were three ferries connecting Brooklyn with lower New York – Old Ferry or Fulton Ferry, Catherine Street Ferry and Wall Street Ferry. The old horse-drawn ferries had lately been discarded for Robert Fulton’s great invention. The streets, unlighted save by oil lamps dim and far apart, were unpaved, and pigs were allowed to forage there as the garbage was disposed of in the gutters. It is a matter of record that a City Ordinance was enacted and is probably on the statute books to this day, prohibiting people from turning swine into the street and pasturing horses and cattle in the same.

All business was transacted on Fulton Street between the Ferry and Sands Street. Sands Street was in those days the fashionable residence street of the town. The City Hall was at Cranberry and Henry Streets, but a new building was projected in the yet unoccupied area at Court Street. Red Hook Lane is all that remains of the road by which South Brooklyn and the Village of Red Hook could be reached. From near the site of the present Court House the streets ran off with crooked lonely roads following the cow paths of yet earlier days. The two exceptions were Myrtle Avenue, which was the post road to the Town of Williamsburgh, and Fulton Street, which ran on through what is now East New York to join the Jamaica turnpike.

Town pumps furnished the water, and one such was located at Monroe Place near No. 24 when Grandpa built there.

Grandpa belonged to the Volunteer Fire Brigade. It is difficult for us to imagine that Grandpa we can remember, stout and staid, roused in the dead of night by the ringing of the fire bell, getting into his red shirt, insignia of office, and running with his neighbors to pull the tragically small engine to the scene of the conflagration, leaving his timid wife and little daughter to the very real terror of fire in a city of wooden houses.

Though Brooklyn was young it was growing fast. Grandpa became one of the City Fathers, along with J.A.T. Stranahan, Tasker Howard, John Hunter, Cyrus P. Smith. They founded banks, built churches, and financed public utilities; to all these and other interests, as he himself told us, he gave his time and business ability liberally. I quote from his journal again:

“From November 1, 1846 to May 1, 1857, I was well out of any regular business, except to seek for comfort and ease, my time being principally taken up with riding and fishing, etc., it being understood I was a man of leisure. I was selected to discharge the duties of a number of small offices, such as Supervisor of the County of Kings for twelve years, Director of the Mechanics Bank, Director of Nassau Insurance Company, Trustee and Steward of Sand Street Methodist Episcopal Church, Executive Committee of Poor Association, Trustee and Treasurer of the Brooklyn City Dispensary, Trustee of the Brooklyn Hospital, Advisory Committee to the Female Employment Society, Advisory Committee Industrial School Association, Manager of Brooklyn Bible Society, Manager of Brooklyn Tract Society, Manager of American Tract Society.”

“In May 1857 I assumed the Presidency of the Montauk Fire Insurance Company which commenced business at that time.”

After five years he resigned to become President of the National Bank which office he held for the rest of his life – twenty-seven years.

But John Jay Studwell was not the only one of the brothers who had traveled far from the little house on the Hook Road. Cousin Tilly wrote in a little book on her father’s (Uncle Augustus Studwell) life:

“That a degree of success followed this enterprise (the lumber business in Bridge Street) seems to be proved by the fact that both my father and Uncle John (John Jay Studwell) bought lots of Brooklyn Heights and built there what, in those days, were considered very desirable residences.”

“The popularity of the Heights was on the increase and soon become the aristocratic quarter of Brooklyn, where most substantial and respected citizens preferred to locate. Property increased in value. Alexander and George soon followed their brother’s example and built homes on the same block – Augustus at No. 3, George at No. 18, John at No. 24, and Alexander at No. 41. Here for many years the brothers lived, near neighbors, enjoying delightful brotherly intercourse, living in good style, giving the rising generation all possible educational advantages, regretting that their own school days had been so limited.”

Uncle Augustus lived at No. 3 (M.P.) for forty years. No. 41 is still held by the Alexander Studwell family, and No. 24 has been almost continuously occupied by our branch of the family for seventy years.

In the early days of their married life Grandma and Grandpa Studwell were not regular attendants of any church, but during the forties there crept across the country one of the recurrent wakes of religious enthusiasm. Grandma and Grandpa joined the Sands Street Methodist Church, and Grandma was baptized, and thereafter they were most earnest and devoted Christian workers.

On Thursday evenings they attended together “Class Meeting,” and on Sundays, a morning and evening service, having perhaps as a guest for mid-day dinner the visiting clergyman, or prominent lay-man, or the friend who came from a distance to service. A Sunday dinner at No. 24 was for many years a cold dinner, the cooking being done on Saturday. This was not attractive to us but it was done for “conscience sake.”

Grandma kept open house for the Methodist Ministers of the New York Conference. They knew they would find a welcome and could exchange a good story for a good dinner.

Until 1883 Sands Street Methodist Church stood on Sands Street near Fulton Street where now the Brooklyn Bridge swallows and disgorges its multitudes. It was a quaint old church and Grandpa was Trustee for many years and gave generously to its support. In 1883 he gave Five Thousand Dollars toward the building of the new church at Henry and Clark Streets, though he did not live to worship there. In a little book kept from May 1853 to 1881 he records gifts and donations of over $1.00. At the end of one year (1863) when the total of such gifts reached $183.10 there is a note – “This is too small, I must do better.”

The same little book of gifts and donations throws an interesting light on the state of the unorganized charities of the time. There were Old Ladies’ and Old Mens’ Homes, there were Industrial Schools and Asylums for Orphan Boys and Girls, but the great mass of intemperate and shiftless were allowed to beg from door to door, little boys and girls barefooted, mothers with tiny babies in their arms begging for a little food for “me child,” blind and crippled asking for a “penny” or a “night’s lodging.” Some of this was the result of abject poverty unrelieved; some were fake, the baby being a roll of rags, the missing arm slipped inside the coat. To mother’s thrifty up-bringing this was abhorrent. She never gave or let us give to such cases, and I am sure it influenced her judgment when, in later years, she opposed our desire to put time and strength in Y.W.C.A. or settlement work.

Grandpa was a strict Sabbatarian and he expected the young men in his employ to conform to the rules he laid down. He would not employ a man who went to the races, or who used tobacco or drank. His work for the cause of temperance was earnest and unflinching. He had a little card printed which he distributed among his friends and acquaintances. It read:

Will you please use your influence against the use of Rum and Tobacco? For Humanity’s sake, please do it.

He never played any game of chance; he would not allow playing cards in his house, nor attend the theatre or a dance. Partly this was due to the Methodist training; partly it was the result of a keen observation of life. He also had printed the following “Pocket Piece of Good Advice”. As one of his friends said of him, he was a man of maxims, but he lived up to those on this list as faithfully and scrupulously as if he had found them between the covers of his well-read Bible.

Pocket Piece of Good Advice

1. Keep good company or none. Never be idle.
2. If your hands cannot be usefully employed, attend to the cultivation of your mind.
3. Always speak the truth. Make few promises.
4. Live up to your engagements.
5. Keep your own secrets, if you have any.
6. When you speak to a person, look him in the face.
7. Good company and good conversation are the very sinews of virtue.
8. Good character is above all things else.
9. Your character cannot be essentially injured except by your own acts.
10. If any one speaks evil of you, let your life be so that no one will believe him.
11. Ever live (misfortune excepted) within your income.
12. When you retire to bed, think over what you have been doing during the day.
13. Make no haste to be rich, if you would prosper.
14. Small and steady gains give competency with tranquility of mind.
15. Never play at any game of chance.
16. Avoid temptation, through fear you may not withstand it.
17. Earn money before you spend it.
18. Never run into debt, unless you see plainly a way to get out again.
19. Never borrow, if you can possibly avoid it.
20. Do not marry until you are able to support a wife.
21. Never speak evil of any one. Be just, before you are generous.
22. Keep yourself innocent if you would be happy.
23. Save when you are young to spend when you are old.
24. The smartest man is he that can say the most in the fewest words, and can do the most work with the least fuss.
25. The best way to accumulate property is to buy when others want to sell, and to sell when others want to buy.
26. Will you please use your influence against the use of Rum and Tobacco? For Humanity’s sake, please do it.
27. Read over the above maxims, at least once a week, and try to be good and I trust all will be well with you.

He also had compiled and printed a little book, leather bound, which he distributed among his friends containing his favorite verses from the Psalms and New Testament. From this he read often during his leisurely day, and in the latter part of his life he used it at morning and evening prayers, the family consisting of Grandma and any grandchildren who happened to be with them, or guests, and the servants, who in those days were very much a part of the family.

If a cold Sunday dinner seems a penance to us today, what will we say of the program for Sunday afternoon, followed by a simple supper, and a second church service? Sunday afternoons were spent in visits to their friends who were ill or in sorrow, or a trip to Greenwood Cemetery.

Grandpa was one of its founders and took an immense pride in its development. I think it is a very touching thing that on the death of the Mother in 1852 and the Father in 1865 they were laid to rest in one of the most beautiful spots in that beautiful cemetery in adjoining lots owned by the Studwell brothers, loved by them, and under their constant and personal care. Here two simple white marble headstones stand in the midst of those of their children. Plain people, simple country folks who seldom if ever visited the city, but revered and beloved mother and father.

As long as the old people lived it was the delight of our Mother’s heart to visit at the Bedford Farm. There she went with her grandfather to drive home the cows, to feed the chickens, for the little old grandfather was so feeble and quiet the birds, attracted by the grain, would fly all about his head and fearlessly perch upon his shoulders. It was her delight to see the churning done. After Grandma or Aunt Sarah put the cream into the barrel churn, Grandfather would get into a swing which hung at the door of the buttery and rock back and forth keeping the churn, as it balanced on its pivots, constantly moving.

Aunt Sarah was the one daughter and her life was devoted to her parents. Her mother died in 1852 and her father died in 1865 at the age of 92. After his death she lived for some years at 24 Monroe Place with Grandma and Grandpa Studwell, and in time of sickness or trouble came to live with us to help Mother and the little Meads. Though she was for over 65 years that superior being “an old maid,” she married then a widower and lived a few happy years as Mrs. Peter Bussing in Mt. Kisco, New York. In her last years (widowed) she received the interest of unselfish devotion of her family for she was the object of our mother’s tenderest love and care.

There were other cousins who kept Mother company at the old farm. Aunt Lucretia, Alexander’s delicate wife, came with little Minnie and Stella, and Uncle Gus’ motherless Martha and Tilly were often there, as their maternal grandmother, Patty Clark, lived nearby on the Hook Road. But no summer was complete without a visit to Uncle Edwin Studwell’s in South Salem. A good season for such a visit was cherry time when the trees were laden with Ox-Hearts, of which Mother was always very fond. But the very best time was haying, for then all the Studwell boys were home from New York to help with the crop. Leander and Smith, Dwight, Edwin Augustus, can tell many stories of their pranks.

At that time our mother was twelve years old and as she grew from a sweet-faced child into a lovely fun-loving maiden her charms were noised abroad, even to Mead Street.