Grama Martha (as she introduced herself) died of dementia from stroke on Saturday, August 21, 1997 in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Her last years were lengthened and troubled by the progress of her disease, much as degenerative neurological disorders had also claimed her mother Julia and sister Hilda. We had begun to mourn the loss of her spirit, creativity and optimism, and her uncanny awareness of others, long before her passing, but she remained "a gutsy lady" to the end--still making her beloved flowers from Fimo when she could no longer use the glue gun on her delicate shells.
She lived to participate fully in the marriages of her two oldest grandchildren, to preside over a wonderful family reunion in North Carolina for her ninetieth birthday, and to know that she had achieved her oft-stated goal of being a great-grandmother, though she died just ten days before the birth of Mia Olson Hartl. She often spoke of being ready to die, and of looking forward to her next adventures after death.
Since her passing, friends seeking to sympathize and understand have often asked me, "Who was she, in the world? What did she do?" Especially as a student of women's history, my answer reminds me yet again that history may define us by what we have "done" or not done far more than what, and who, we have been.
Martha never achieved fame in the public eye, or produced accomplishments for public history. Like so many women of her era, and despite her early career as a financial secretary, she held no job outside the home after marriage; nor was she particularly active in social or civil causes. She earned no graduate degrees or honors (yet defined herself proudly as a Mount Holyoke woman into her nineties). Her financial success as an investor was largely invisible outside the home, as she reinvested her wealth in her family from education to business to travel. To measure her life by such public yardsticks would be not only unjust, but simply irrelevant. Martha left a much larger legacy.
Martha left us the priceless gift of her vivid memory in her life book, so that we may know her beyond our own lifetimes and now beyond hers. What I remember best of her is her laugh, that great smile of delight when a child or grandchild brought her some new discovery of self or the world. What I miss most is that loving insight that seemed to seek out the best and the truest in each of us as an individual, and to love that self unconditionally, even when we had lost that sense in ourselves. For we, her family, are her life's work, and Martha was above all a masterful handcrafter of human beings. May we honor her creation together.
In college, she drove an ice cream wagon on the beaches at the Cape. She carried her youthful love of skiing, hiking, paddling and horseback riding into adulthood and beyond, always seeking the thrill of the new. Not everyone grows up with a picture of Grama riding a camel to the Sphinx on the mantelpiece, but we did. Round the world with Grampa Charlie. Ireland and Italy with son Bill and his wife Marty. China, Hawaii and the Philippines with son John. Maine schooners and Santa Fe pueblos with daughter Margy. Europe, Anguilla and Newfoundland with me, and always Sanibel Island. She drew her energy and her peace from the ocean, and sought out the beach no matter where she traveled. Even when she could no longer walk unsupported, she met the rush of Outer Banks surf on her bare feet with her memorable "Ooph!" of delight. Small wonder she looked forward to the journey after death.
a "spirit creative and free" in the truest possible sense. Her boundless creativity filled our lives with art, from crewelwork, knitting and oil painting to a lifetime of shell flowers and nature crafts. She delighted in storytelling, adapting "The Little Red Airplane" to each child or grandchild and each new environment as they came along. Her hands were always busy shaping and teaching, reminding us that creation is as manifest in gingerbread cookies as in a flower arrangement or a collage. Those hands shaped our tiny ones as children, until we too were moved to create as part of our beings.
Grama, you are the matriarch of the family. You are a very special grandmother, mother, and person. As a person grows up, their family acts as their first and most important teacher. I feel very lucky to be a part of this, your family. What I have learned from you is the value in being flexible, adaptive and above all loving. Your ability to care for people is immense. You have been one of the most important teachers in my life and certainly one from whom I learn most joyfully.
This brings me to this present (the life book). I spend much too much time wishing that I communicated with you more often. There is a tremendous amount I want to learn about you. On the following pages are some questions. I would like you to answer any of them that you would like to. I envision this book being a resource for future generations and any of your history that can be recorded now will without question bring countless moments of joy to those who love you now, and to the next generation who surely will.
I was born October 16, 1905 in Wellesley, Massachusetts to parents Julia Clark McGill and John Alexander McGill, originally from Dover, MA. He was the son of Thomas and Margaret McGill, both from Glasgow, Scotland. They had five daughters and three sons. This is the family at the beach in North Scituate, around 1910.
Their first auto, a Ford, sits out front, and down Linden Street is his office at F. Diehl, then a company that dealt in coal, grain and lumber. Most of his life [my father] was in charge of the lumber department. He was greatly beloved by his men who worked under him, [for] his kindness, his listening ability. [He was] a basically quiet man, a good but strict father.
What was transportation like from 1910 to 1930, say? My father drove a handsome [sic] carriage with two horses on our daily outings before getting his first Ford and then Oldsmobiles. I drove an auto at sixteen and was one of few classmates who could or were allowed to drive the family auto.
Diehl's delivered goods in winter in a pung (a boxlike sleigh drawn by one horse). We kids ran to catch up with it and jump on. Much fun.
We had bicycles; there was always trouble with flat tires, as with auto tires. Always tire trouble and no garages [meant] we had to learn to fix flats. [There were] trolley cars in towns; I particularly remember the trolley to or from Boston or Worcester, now Route 9. Railroad travel to everywhere; my father went south on the RR to play golf with lumber salesmen.
I went to Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Massachusetts. This was due to the influence of my father's sister Margaret, who herself went to Mount Holyoke, graduating in the late 1890s. I majored in Mathematics due to the influence of a wonderful math teacher in high school. This led me to become a financial secretary upon graduation in 1927. [I worked] first for three years in Ithaca, New York, for the Board of Education under the Superintendent of Schools. Then, [I worked] three years in Augusta, Maine, for the treasurer of the Bates Mill.
In the nineteen-twenties and -thirties, not easy. Lonely, living in a room in a boarding house, then in an apartment with two teachers. I was living on a salary of $1100 for ten months. [I received] no support from my parents, who had paid my way through college. None of my friends married right away, so they all had jobs like I did, mostly in New York City since we had been shut in on a country campus and anxious to get out to more exciting life.
I had many boy friends in Ithaca, from Cornell and one a minister in Ithaca. He asked me to marry him, and presented me with a diamond ring which had been reset from a previous offering. I turned him down: I didn't like his habits, like always wearing rubbers when we went walking in the glen or even to the movies, and leaving the rubbers behind. Anyway, he wanted a wife who could speak French and I didn't qualify. I often wondered how many times the ring was reset?
... and different from the run-of-the-mill gals back in the Twenties. All of my best pals are live and kicking at eighty years of age in this year 1985. But I always wanted marriage and children.
He came to be known as "Mr. Wellesley" because of all his activities in the town: head of Boy Rangers meeting every Saturday for forty years, Town Meeting member for many years, very active Kiwanian, and a Congregational Church officer.
We bought a farm in East Rindge, New Hampshire where we spent every summer until the children went to camp or to work. Charlie commuted weekends. Charlie and I loved skiing; that's how we found the farm.
Life on the farm each summer was fun, a learning experience for all of us. Gas was rationed so we had to stay at home pretty much. I cooked and gardened, had chickens and eggs, raised two pigs each summer (the milkman kept them until Christmas and slaughtered them, so we had one and he had one for meat). The children learned to shoot since porcupines and hedgehogs were a menace.
...a hound dog who chased animals up trees and often went off into the hills baying at the moon. We had a big garden, pigs, chickens and many chores for all to keep busy and learn many new things; filling wood box for our kitchen stove, feeding the hens and pigs, gardening, etc.
We bought the farm in 1938 for $2500. Twenty years later, it sold for $10,000!
... and some lovely children and grandchildren who are all adding zest to my present life.
All over the US for the Babson bookstore, three times to Hawaii, to Ireland three times to visit relations, to Japan to visit John in the Army in Lasebo, then home by way of Thailand, India, Egypt and Ireland. A trip to Tahiti, Bora Bora (most beautiful), New Zealand, Australia, Bali, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, the Philippines and Hawaii. We visited Bill and Marty in the Air Force in southern Italy twice. Travel has been a very rewarding and a growing experience.
I remember how happy he was to hold [grandson] David for some time a week before. After his death I took a trip to the Philippines with John and Judy: a great thing to do at that time. Then in December Lynn and I went to London for Christmas, then on to Paris and Austria at Lake Maggiore. It was a great trip, including an overnight train from Paris and jumping off at Domodossola, Italy to take the trolley across Switzerland.
Lynn has been my traveling companion in this life and the next. And here I want to thank [daughter] Margery for allowing me to do this, with never any trace of jealousy--only thankfulness!
Realize they know a lot more than you think at an early age. Treat them as people--not just children.
Keep the future in mind. Recognize their talents and try to lead them toward a happy future.
Teach them to be creative. Use their hands as well as their heads. Lynn often called me "the Creative One." I find it very important for later life to have something to do besides reading and TV. Also playing games at home: remember [the card game] Pounce! It did teach many things, didn't it!
I have a thing about jealousy. I do believe it can be created at home, partly by attempting to equalize everything (for instance, if one child gets a coat, each one doesn't have to get a coat). Life isn't like that. Equalizing sort of falls into place in other ways.
Scott asks about making choices. You can't always know what is the right choice, but pray about it: usually it will feel right or wrong. If you feel you made the right choice at the time, that's all you can ask.
Try not to blame your elders for what looks to you like a mistake for your life: give them the benefit of the doubt. Think that they were doing whatever they thought best at the time and under the circumstances they were in then.
![Charlie died in September 1979, very suddenly [of a heart attack].](../../_Media/Martha_sunset_thumbnail.jpeg)
