My Cousin, Mary Margaret Strong, aka Margaret De Patta, Mid-Century Jewelry Artist

"De Patta with her second husband, Eugene Bielawski, in 1957. Courtesy of the Margaret De Patta Archives (Bielawski Trust)." http://www.eichlernetwork.com/blog/margaret-de-pattas-house-sale-and-her-influence-shows

My 2nd 2x removed cousin, Mary Margaret Strong (1903-1964), was a jewelry designer in the San Francisco Bay area.  I knew nothing about her until I found her in my genealogy, but she made some very cool jewelry (that I can't afford lol). 

Her original name was Mary Margaret Strong.  She married Sam De Patta (1900-1967), a hat salesman, in 1928, and although she later remarried she kept his last name.  Her second husband, Eugene Bielawski (1911-2002), was also an artist.

Accoring to Wikipedia:

Margaret De Patta (née Strong; 1903–1964) was an American jewelry designer active in the mid-century jewelry movement.[1] Her innovative jewelry was influenced by the "Bauhaus school, constructivism, and democratic ideals".[2] Her work is collected in many major museums including the Smithsonian American Art Museum[3] and the Oakland Museum of California.[4] The first major retrospective of her work, Space-Light-Structure: The Jewelry of Margaret De Patta, opened at the Museum of Arts and Design in 2012.[1]

Her obituary named her as Margaret DePatta Bielawski:

San Francisco Chronicle
Sunday, Mar 22, 1964
Page: 30
from GenealogyBank.com 

Bielawski - In Oakland, March 19, 1964, Margaret DePatta Bielawski, beloved wife of Eugene Bielawski and sister of Mrs. Benjamin Ginsburg of Van Nuys, Mrs. William, J. O'Brien of Oakland and Harold Strong Jr. of San Diego; aunt of Mrs. M. Mathans of Escondido, Mrs. Charles Carter of Santa Maria and Miss Diane O'Brien of Oakland.  A member of the Metae[sic] Arts Guild, the Designers Craftsmen of California, and the American Craftsmen Council.  A native of Tacoma, Washington. 

Private services were held Saturday afternoon, March 21, in Oakland.
(Albert Brown Mortuary)

Margaret's grandmother was a sister of my 2nd great grandmother Mary Jane (Tibbetts) Hartley.

© 2018 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Monday Is for Mothers : Freedom Woodward (1642 - 1681)

This paternal eighth great grandmother died in her late thirties on May 10, 1681, just a week after the birth of her 14th child.*

Freedom was born in Dorchester in about 1642, the daughter of Henry and Elizabeth (Mather) Woodward. The family moved to Northampton in the Connecticut River Valley of eastern Massachusetts and that's where she married Jedediah Strong (1639-1733), who was originally from Hingham, in 1662.

[1677 Map of New England by William Hubbard.

 Source:http://www.histarch.illinois.edu/plymouth/images/1677map.jpg]

[Ancestry.com. U.S., New England Marriages Prior to 1700 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2012. Original data: Torry, Clarence A. New England Marriages Prior to 1700. Baltimore, MD, USA: Genealogical Publishing Co., 2004.]

Jedediah** outlived two more wives, finally dying in his 96th year in Coventry, in Tolland County, Connecticut.

Northampton has had a rich history since it was first settled by the English in 1654.*** The view of it painted by American landscape artist Thomas Cole (1801-1848) shows the how the area looked 179 years ago.

[View from Mount Holyoke, Northampton, Massachusetts, after a Thunderstorm—The Oxbow. Artist: Thomas Cole; Date: 1836.

Medium: Oil on canvas. Metropolitan Museum of Art: Gift of Mrs. Russell Sage, 1908]

*Her children were Elizabeth, Abigail, Jedediah, Ford, Hannah, Thankful, John, Sarah, Lydia, Mary, Experience, Preserved, John (again) and a baby who was unnamed. Of the children, four were known to have died as infants and another died at age 17. Hannah is my direct ancestor through her granddaughter Esther Carpenter who married Benjamin Porter and are thereby my fifth great grandparents. My source for this information is here.
**You can learn more about Jedediah Strong here.
***Historic Northampton has a short video here.

© 2015 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Working on Wednesday: Henry Woodward (1607 - 1683), Tavern Keeper, Miller and Selectman

I'm in the habit of saying that my mother's people were all Northerners and my father's ancestors all Southern-born, but that's not strictly true because in each lineage there's one branch that's an exception. My father's maternal grandfather Tracy Darrow Porter's male ancestors can be traced to New England as early as 1630.

[1677 Map of New England by William Hubbard.

 Source:http://www.histarch.illinois.edu/plymouth/images/1677map.jpg]

Henry Woodward, this paternal ninth great grandfather, was born in what is now part of Liverpool, England and is believed to have come to New England on the ship "James" in the fall of 1635. (I haven't found any reference to him so far in The Great Migration Study Project. Perhaps the new Directory will include his name.)

[View of Savin Hill in Dorchester about 1830 from the Dorchester Historical Society]

He settled first in Dorchester, married a young woman named Elizabeth* and became a member of the church, a freeman of the town, and served as Selectman, Constable and on several committees over the years.

In 1659 Henry, Elizabeth and their four children, three daughters** and a son, moved to Northampton (possibly at the suggestion of Reverend Mather) where he repeated his involvement in church and local affairs, again taking on the role of Selectman and acting as Surveyor of Highways among other civic duties.

In 1665 he was granted a license to  open a tavern which remained in business until 1681. As was typical of the time, he also farmed some land and owned a "corn mill." In this transcribed list of deaths in Northampton, we see what happened to him there in 1683.***

[Ancestry.com. Massachusetts, Town and Vital Records, 1620-1988 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2011. Original data: Town and City Clerks of Massachusetts. Massachusetts Vital and Town Records. Provo, UT: Holbrook Research Institute (Jay and Delene Holbrook).]

If you want to read more about flour milling in the 17th century, look here; and learn more about colonial taverns here. This blog has more information about Henry.

*It's possible that this Elizabeth was the daughter of the influential Puritan minister Richard Mather who founded a religious dynasty that included his son Increase and grandson Cotton Mather, but it's not certain.
**I am descended from their second daughter Freedom who was born in about 1642. She married Jedediah Strong in 1662 and it's through their granddaughter Esther Carpenter who married Benjamin Porter in 1756 that they find their place in my family tree.
***Note that his daughter (and my ancestor) Freedom Strong is the first name on the list above, having died almost two years earlier.

© 2015 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.