Carrie E Pearce/Pierce was born on 05 January in 1859, in Woodbury, Vermont, USA. I visited Woodbury in late June 2009, to learn more about her. Woodbury is a small, rural town not far north of the state capitol on Montpelier. Small plots of agricultural land dot the valleys where main roads amble along side of the creeks,small rivers and waterfalls. Tall, rolling mountains flank the valley. The various town names that spring up in this research of her family are scattered down through the valley and then turn, up and over the ridge to the west. They are all in fairly close proximity to each other. These little towns (villages?) stretch across road and river without an obvious town center.
Cattle were grazing in the fields and tall road signs cautioned me about bear and moose; I assume that the signs are so tall so that they would show above the winter snowline. I stopped to chat with a family riding along the gravel road in a horse-drawn wagon. They were out for their regular Sunday ride through the hills. It is a gentle, wild country. I don't know how anyone could make a living in this area if not for the tourists. I understand why my ancestors continued to move West.
Carrie's parents were also born in this valley, as were their parents. The Pierce family migrated to this area from southeast Massachusetts shortly after the American Revolution. At the age of 13, Carrie's mother (Harriet Nelson Pearce) died, at the young age of 25. Her father, Lorenzo James Pearce remarried soon after and had two more children: Cora and Silas. Lorenzo worked at various jobs in the Woodbury area, including farmer, carpenter, joiner and later as a store clerk.
Carrie wed Nelson F. Kelley of Bradford in 1881, just after her twenty-second birthday; it was his second marriage. Nelson worked as a poultry dealer and farmer. A year later, their son Curtis Stevens Kelley was born in the nearby town of Barre, famous for its granite quarry. An interesting side note is that in the summer of 1975, my parents and I visited the Rock of Ages quarry as my mother had a keen interest in earth science and especially in rock. My father would be so surprised to know that we were in the same area where his Gramma Carrie lived as a girl!
Sometime following the birth of her son Curtis, Carrie and Nelson divorced. He remarried and raised Curtis in East Montpelier but Carrie moved out of the area. I don't know when or why she left and, I don't know how she ended up in West Michigan just a few years later.
In the summer of 1891, in the county seat of Allegan, Michigan, Carrie wed Francis "Frank" M. Mellen. Frank was a widower; his first wife, Eva Young died the previous year at their home in Byron Township of neighbouring Kent County. Frank was left with two small children: Arthur, aged nearly 10 and Irene, aged nearly 6.
Frank Mellen (Mellin, Mullen, etc) was born in March of 1850, in the canal-side town of Baldwinsville, New York. He and his family moved to south-central Michigan in 1860 and established a home in the small agricultural town of Reading, just north of the Indiana State border. Frank remained there for another 10 years. In 1880, he was living with his first wife, Eva in Byron Township, Kent County...north of Reading. Their daughter Irene, was born in 1884 in Labette County, Kansas. Some reference has been found that Frank may have served in the US Army for a while, being based in Kansas. Returning from Kansas, the Mellen family lived in Byron Township until approximately 1891, when Frank then married Carrie Peirce Kelly.
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| Frank Mellen, 2nd from left. Carrie Pierce Mellen may be one of 2 women standing in right rear. My father, seated front left. |
Carrie began a new family with Frank at their home near Burnips, a small agricultural community to the south of Hudsonville. They had two daughter's together: Winifred and Vada, my fraternal grandmother.
A few key questions still bother me:
Where did Carrie spend those few years following her divorce in Vermont?
How did she meet my great-grandfather?
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