Changing Names and Changing Roles

What we call people in our lives tells a lot about our relationship with them. In the hundreds of family letters I have, sometimes a name will come up that is obviously a close relation, but I am not sure who is being referred to. I discovered that Poddy is actually Great-Uncle George and Jim or sometimes Jimsey is Great-Uncle Roy. There are the great grand aunties who are at times Rosa, Rosie, or Bella (Rosabella) and Axie or Ria (Achsah Maria). There is also a custom to name children after an older generation, either a first name, or a last name from the mother’s family, so that it will be preserved as the generations pass. This was the case with Great-Aunt Rosie’s choice of a name for her eldest child.

From the Francis W. Parker School
website, Rosabella Carley at center

Ira Merrill Carley was born in 1870 in Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts to Rufus Carley and the former Rosabella Merrill, one of my great-grandfather George G. Merrill’s four sisters. The first born son of that generation, Ira Merrill Carley was named after his grandfather, Ira Merrill. Merrill, as he was usually called in the letters I have, attended Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, graduating in 1894. He then attended the Sloyd Training Class at the Normal School in Boston, completing that degree in May, 1895. (Sloyd is a Scandinavian educational system that uses woodworking to help children develop character. The word sloyd comes from the Swedish word slöjd, which means "crafts" or "handicraft".)

Merrill’s expertise in the Sloyd Method and his impressive educational background caught the attention of Colonel Francis W. Parker, a pioneer in the progressive education movement in the later eighteenth and early twentieth centuries. Colonel Parker hired Merrill to take charge of teaching the Sloyd method at the Cook County Normal School in Chicago, which he directed. In 1901, when Colonel Parker opened a school bearing his name on the north side of Chicago, Merrill was hired as Associate Principal. In Chicago that same year Merrill met and married his wife, Helen Keightley, a teacher at the school. In 1902, the couple’s first daughter, Eleanor, was born. Tragically in 1904, when Helen was pregnant with the couple’s second child, it became evident that the baby had died before birth. The doctor needed to “bring on a miscarriage” in order to save Helen’s life. The shock of the ordeal was too much for her heart, and Helen died later that same day at 6:30PM. Even more tragic is the fact that Helen’s own mother had died under the same circumstances, and with hindsight we can suspect that there was a genetic component at play. This sad event revealed a great deal about Ira Merrill Carley and the relationships he shared with his coworkers and family.
The day of Helen’s death, Flora Cooke, principal of the Francis W. Parker School, wrote three letters to Merrill Carley’s family: one to his mother, one to his Aunt Olive, and one to his Aunt Emma and Uncle George. The fact that she wrote to extended family members, even when Merrill’s brother Neale and his cousin Arthur also worked at the school, demonstrates a close friendship and high regard for her colleague and that she recognized the tight family bonds he had. In the letter to George and Emma, she refers to him by his full middle name, Merrill. When she writes to his mother Rosabella, she refers to him as Iram. This amazing nickname, a combination of his first name and middle initial, indicates a very close and affectionate connection between the two. At first I thought the m may have been a handwriting flourish at the end of his given name, but this pet name is repeated in later letters from Flora Cooke as well.
What is even more fascinating is the discussion of the name of Merrill Carley’s twenty-month old daughter Eleanor. In the days following Helen’s death, a discussion ensued regarding Eleanor’s name. While Helen can be a nickname for Eleanor, Helen was almost certainly the baby’s mother’s given name according to her marriage record. Possibly baby Eleanor was named to honor her mother, but in such a way that made reference to each easier. From a letter six days after Helen’s death in February, 1904, Merrill’s mother Rosabella writes to her sister-in-law Emma about the discussion of baby Eleanor’s name:

This morning at the breakfast table I said I wish now that the baby had been named Helen. Her father, Mrs K., and Merrie all said "So do I.” and then her father said let us make the change now as Helen would have liked the name for her…and had no sentiment or preference at all for Eleanor, only to give her some name. So Helen she is to be.

There is no evidence of a legal name change for baby Eleanor, but her social security and death records have her as Helen. Her grandfather, Edwin Keightley was a judge and a former U.S. congressman, so the name was likely changed legally with his guidance.
Merrill Carley carried on, devastated by the loss of his wife. With all of his family living in Massachusetts, he did not have a great deal of help from them, although his mother would come for extended visits and his aunties would stop in Chicago on their travels. The Keightley family also stayed close to young Helen as she would often spend extended time with her grandfather and his wife in Constantine, Michigan, often staying there until her father or an aunt would travel through and take her back east to stay for a visit.

Ira Merrill Carley with daughter 

At some point prior to 1906, Merrill Carley became infected with tuberculosis. It slowly affected his heart and restricted his physical ability to work so much so that he was forced to leave his position at the Francis W. Parker School that year. He began an odyssey across the U.S. to try to recover in a more supportive climate, traveling with his mother, Aunt Maria, and Aunt Olive; they went to Colorado, Albuquerque, NM, and Arizona. His two aunts had each lost their husbands—Olive had buried two— and ALL of their children—Maria lost two in infancy, Olive three, each under the age of twenty-one, and even Rosabella had lost a daughter, Nettie (Rosa Antoinette Carley). They must also have been thinking of their sister Mary Caroline who had died seven years earlier, and who also had lost her infant child at birth. These women were holding onto their dear Merrie with all their collective might.
Unable to improve, Merrill Carley traveled home one last time in September of 1909 to spend his final days in Lowell, Massachusetts at the home of his Aunt Maria. Maria, as she signed the letter dated September 10, 1909, wrote to Emma and George with a request, “Can you and Roy or someone get that old stove we always had in ‘the other room’. The one that was there as long as I can remember. It is all iron & doors in front open making it like a fireplace…I want it for Merrie’s room. He may start to-morrow so please start it by America Ex. crated.” The same day sister-in-law Emma Merrill wrote to Rosabella, “I am glad for Rosabella and Merrill they have the nicest resting place possible for them to go to. Maria’s never failing loyalty to them will make a good welcome for them.”
On the 6th of October in 1909, Ira Merrill…Merrie, Iram…Carley died at 349 Beacon St in Lowell, Massachusetts, only thirty-nine years old. Officially the cause of death was “angina pectoris.” His seven year old daughter Eleanor, now Helen, remained in Lowell to be raised by her grandmother Rosabella and Auntie Ria. Growing up with Merrill sisters, New Englanders by birth and by culture, indeed must have been interesting for a young midwestern child. A letter from a grown-up Helen in 1944 to her father’s cousin Alice Merrill Ware (my grandmother), sheds light on the household she was a part of after her father passed away:

You may picture me having a mild case of hysterics when I opened the box, which I assume was sent by you, to find The Quilt. Well I remember that hot August day in Shelburne Falls when the Merrill sisters were giving a good imitation of fish-wives over it. Tempers ran high, and something had to snap—so Maria, the red-head, with her blue eyes flashing, seized a good sharp pair of scissors, and with a great dramatic flourish, cut the thing in three sections. a great personal triumph, it was, followed only by horrified silence. It made an indelible impression on a child of ten or eleven, as you can see!

The two animated sisters continued to raise Helen together in Lowell until Rosabella’s death in 1916, when Helen was only fourteen-years-old. The red-headed sister, ever devoted, saw young Helen through to her marriage in 1925 before passing away herself in 1926.

The children and grandchildren
of Ira and Dolly Merrill in 1897

When I was growing up, I knew vaguely of the Carleys. Evidence of their existence was scattered throughout the old house I had spent my summers at in Shelburne Falls. Very few descendants exist of my great-grandparents Ira and Dolly Merrill—of their five children, only Rosabella and her brother George, my great-grandfather, had children who had children themselves. My generation includes twelve second and third cousins. About a year ago I was researching the Carley family a bit more on ancestry.com and came across a public tree that clearly was managed by a woman who must have been young Helen’s granddaughter, with her hometown in Illinois listed next to her name. This was the same town…well city…that my husband grew up in and where his mother still lives. Like a good sleuth, I checked Facebook profiles for family who live in that area to see if she was connected to anyone. To my shock, she was. After connecting by email, we decided to meet at her home and look through her family albums. I brought with me cookies I had made from her great-grandmother Rosabella’s recipe. (Ginger puffs—a favorite recipe of mine as a child.) I was able to walk to her house….a mere two short streets and fifteen houses away from my mother-in-law was my long-lost cousin. Coincidentally, the day before my visit to her, another of Helen’s granddaughters contacted me through familysearch.org, thanking me for posting a photo of our shared ancestor, Ira Merrill. I can imagine the Merrill sisters—in particular the fiery redhead, who had been a life-long member and officer of the DAR—with their brother George sitting quietly on the side, his wife Emma fully in the mix of estrogen, somewhere in the far beyond cooking up a scheme to bring their few scattered descendants together, to remember their dear Merrie and the rest of the Merrill and Carley clans.