Olive Marian Chesley

OLIVE MARIAN CHESLEY (11 Aug 1848 – 5 Dec 1883) is the second child of Lemuel C. Chesley and Lucy Maria Morrison and the second of their two daughters.

Her birth date in the Curtis Copy Book agrees with the date on her headstone. Olive’s birthplace is uncertain. Various records list either New Hampshire or Massachusetts, but no evidence for either has been found. Since the Chesley family had been living in Boston for about four years at the time Olive was born, that is likely her birthplace.

She was just two days shy of her 6th birthday when her father died in 1854, and the following year Olive and her mother are found living in Boston with her maternal uncle, Nahum M. Morrison, a builder in the city. It isn’t known if her mother died in Boston or New Hampshire and we therefore don’t know where 8-year-old Olive and her sister were at the time.

MISSING FROM the RECORDS

No record of Olive has been found between June 1855, when she is living in her uncle’s household in Boston, and January 1866, when she marries in Wolfeboro, New Hampshire. During that eleven-year timespan, she is presumed to be living with relatives, although my research of both maternal and paternal sides of her extended family has produced no evidence of this.

Her sister, Mary Ellen Francis, married in Boston in 1862 and migrated west in 1865. The sisters likely never saw each other again afterward, although vital entries for Olive and her family that appear in the Curtis Copy Book show they must have corresponded.

Olive was 17 when she married 35-year old John Berry, a currier who was born in Salem, Massachusetts. Their 1866 marriage in Wolfeboro implies she had been living there before her marriage.

The couple lived in Wolfeboro until Olive’s death in 1883, of gastritis following cerebro spinal meningitis. She was buried in Lakeview Cemetery in Wolfeboro. Daughter Lucy was 14 years old at the time her mother died. John Berry never remarried and remained in Wolfeboro until his death of apoplexy in 1913. He is buried beside his wife.

Child of John E. Berry and Olive Marian Chesley

Lucy M. Berry (23 Aug 1869 – 18 Jan 1926) – Lucy was born in Wolfeboro, Carroll Co, New Hampshire. She appears to be the namesake of her maternal grandmother, but no record has been found to verify that the middle initial of her name stands for Maria. Before her marriage, Lucy work in a shoe factory and later as a maid. She married Eben Eldridge in Ossipee, Carroll Co, in July 1905. The couple settled in Wolfeboro, and Lucy’s father lived with them until his death.

At the time the couple married, Eben was a laborer at a sawmill and Lucy worked at a shoe factory. Both were later employed at a local woolen mill. In 1910, Lucy was noted as having born no children, and the couple do not appear to have had any afterward. Lucy is therefore the end of the line of this branch of the Chesley family. Lucy died in Higgins Hospital in Wolfeboro after suffering for six months from cholecystitis. Eben Eldridge died of carcinoma of the bowels in October 1932. The two are buried in unmarked graves in Lakeview Cemetery in Wolfeboro; the exact locations of those graves are unknown.

EXTERNAL LINKS