Photo # 16: Elizabeth Lyon SCHOFIELD

Elizabeth SCHOFIELD Mann, a photo by midgefrazel on Flickr.

Photo # 16: Lizzie's Dress

My ancestor, Joseph Schofield's older sister, Elizabeth Lyon Scholfield, wife of Charles L. Mann lovely photo was kindly shared with me by Joe Bott of Dead Fred's Web site, is identified by her name Lizzie Mann in this photograph. Since it is the same size as her brother's photograph, and from the same collection of photos, it gave more evidence to who she was. This made her fun to research.

After studying her clothes, I have decided that this lovely dress falls in the period of 1865 to 1870 because of the collar, the wide sleeves with trim (possibly velvet), the white undersleeves. Lizzie's hair is a center part and is smoothly over her ears. I certainly wouldn't be able to analyze that if it weren't for my collections of book by Maureen Taylor. Her books on photographs and hairstyles and her book, Finding the Civil War in Your Family Album make it really fun to learn about Lizzie's clothes. One photo in the Civil War book leads me to believe the photo could have been taken a bit earlier than 1865 when Lizzie was in her early 20s.

Lizzie married Charles L. Mann in Christ Church (Episcopal) in Westerly, RI in March of 1868. Charles was a bookkeeper in his wife's step-father's grocery store and later, in 1898, he was a bank teller in the Niantic National Bank. Lizzie and Charles had a son named Arthur.

Arthur's death is recorded in the History of Montville (CT) as having drowned in the Palmer Bros. Pond (near the Palmer's Bros mill, I suppose) I located a newspaper account of the drowning in the Boston Daily Advertiser (Vol 150: Issue 133: page 5) on 3 Dec 1887, titled, "The First Skating Accident". It states, "Norwich, Conn., Dec. 2 - Arthur Mann, aged 17, broke through the ice on Hooper's Pond in Montville tonight while skating, and was drowned. Frank Holman, a 13-year old boy with him was rescued." 

  

The gravestone for Lizzie, Charles and Arthur in River Bend Cemetery in Westerly, RI, Section 3, is granite and it is hard to clearly read the numerals. If Arthur was born 18 Nov 1866 and died 2 Dec 1887, he would not have been 17, he would have been 21 years and 14 days old.  

 

But, still, he was old enough to know better to try to ice skate in early December. This means of course, that Lizzie and Charles left no one to remember them having no descendants. Thanks to Joe Bott, we had a reason to find and photograph their gravestone. We remember….

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