The Carter Family Justices

1877  Justice Cornelius Carter

1910

Mrs. Minnie Carter Obituary, 1961

The Family History of Mary June Smith (1894-1965)

During and shortly after the War of 1812, a number of small hamlets and clusters of homesteads were settled by immigrants and farmers in a previously uninhabited 50-square-mile portion of St. Lawrence County immediately south of Canton, NY. These settlements were incorporated into the Town of Edwards (named after Edward McCormack) in 1827, of which the former Village of Edwards (dissolved in 2012) was the center. Edwards is of relevance because of George Smith, our ancestor, who served as one of the first town supervisors from 1861-62.

A detailed history of the origins of the Town of Edwards is available here.

History of Edwards, NY

George Smith was born in 1820, (Father Abial Smith and mother Abigail Smith from Vermont) and by the time of the 1880 census, at age 59, he was living in Edwards, NY with his wife Sarah, and their grown sons Frank (b. 1856) and Charles (b. 1859). Frank was 24, and lived with his wife Mary E. Smith (b. 1855) in a nearby house with their one-year-old daughter Lola (b. 1879). Their younger son, Charles (b. July 1860) who was 20, was unmarried and still living with his parents, but this didn’t last long. This 1880 census shows young Charles still single and living with his parents.

In 1880, 21-year-old Charles Smith married 17-year-old Jessie Carter (b. Dec 1863), and had a baby boy that same year named George Smith after his father. Little George was joined two years later by Bower Smith (1882) and then a whopping twelve years later by Mary June Smith (1894), to parents who were then 35 and 31 years old. The 1900 census below for the Town of Edwards shows the Smith family. Charles and his sons George (19) and Bower (17) were listed as “farmers” for occupations. Mary June was nearly 6 years old, and everyone in the family could read and write, according to the census, meaning the children all went to some form of school.

Unfortunately, this census was the last time the five of them would be all together in the documents; in late may of 1900, a deadly pneumonia epidemic struck Edwards and many people were affected, including 41-year-old Charles who died late at night on Thursday, May 31st, and their older son, little George. George, who had just turned 20, was otherwise healthy and strong, and he was able to fight the disease for a few days before it became serious enough to require surgical intervention on June 3rd. These early 20th century forms of pneumonia were not only deadly, but frighteningly fast, and affected young healthy people as well as the very old or very young. Several people in Edwards between the ages of 5-40 died, and the surgery to save their lives was also very dangerous. 20-year-old George underwent the surgery on Sunday June 3rd, but sadly died on the following Tuesday, June 5,1900. In the space of a week, two of the three Smith men were dead, and Jessie Smith remained with Bower (17) and her young daughter Mary June Smith, who had just turned 6.

While Bower was virtually a grown man and able to support himself, the 37-year-old widow Jessie Smith had a young daughter to look after. Jessie met Wesley Dodds (b.1873), who lived a few doors down in Edwards, and was working at the time as a servant for Elizabeth Smith (no obvious relation). Between 1900 and 1905, Wesley and Jessie married and Wesley appears to have taken over Charles Smith's farm. The new Dodds family raised Mary June as Wesley's step-daughter. At the time of the 1905 New York State Census, Mary June Smith would have been almost 11 years old, and they were still living in Edwards on Pond Road.

By the 1910 U.S. Census, 16-year-old Mary June Smith had taken the name of her stepfather and become Mary Dodds.

Sometime between 1910 and 1914, Mary Dodds met a man named Francis Durham (b. June 29, 1885 from Pitcairn, NY) and they married, and their son Leon was born that same year. By the time of the NYS 1915 census, the 21-year-old newlyweds and one-year-old baby Leon lived with Mary June's parents Wesley and Jessie Dodds in Edwards. Francis worked as a general laborer and Wesley still worked as a farmer.

Leon was joined by a baby sister, little Jessie Durham, in the winter of 1916.  Though the U.S. was only involved briefly in World War I, Francis Durham was in no danger of being drafted: his 1917 Draft registration card indicates that he only had one arm.

By the 1920 U.S. Census, Wesley and Jessie Dodds, Mary June Durham, Leon, and little Jessie Durham, were now living on Main Street in Denmark (Town of Copenhagen), in Lewis County. Mary Durham was still living with her parents and her two children but her husband Francis Durham was no longer living with them. 

In the 1925 NYS Census, 30 year old Mary June and her children were still living under the care of her parents Wesley and Jessie Dodds, and the three still had the last name Durham. They lived on Main Street in Copenhagen, and 8 year old Jessie was going to school, but 11-year-old Leon is listed as "crippled." 

In 1927, 33-year-old Mary June continued what was by then a tradition of marrying younger men when she met the handsome, 21-year-old Milton Baker. They married on November 19, 1927 in Heuvelton, the still relatively-young Mary June Baker taking what was then her fourth surname, and their first child, her third, Robert Baker was born in 1928. The 1930 census below shows that they lived in Pinckney, Lewis County and Milton worked on a dairy farm as nearly all of his neighbors did.

 Above: Leon and Jessie Durham (left and right) and their baby half-brother Robert Baker (center). This photo was likely taken in mid- to late-1929, right around the October 29th 1929 beginning of the Great Depression (and within months of the birth of Frederick "Bud" Brand).

We don't know exactly what happened to Francis but, interestingly, he resurfaces as well in 1930 in the U.S. Census as an inmate in the Vermont State Prison at Windsor. He had also possibly remarried in 1928 in Vermont. We were unable to determine his offense, but the Vermont Secretary of State maintains a microfilm database of prisoners from this time, that can be searched at the state office building here: https://www.sec.state.vt.us/archives-records/state-archives/find-records/archival-records.aspx?creator=Vermont+State+Prison.

Laura Louise Baker was born in February, 1933.  This photo was probably taken in about 1938 when Laura was five. It includes Milton (middle), Mary June (right) and Milton's mother Mrs. Laura Cassaw Baker (left center), as well as Robert (left).

Milton and his brothers, the Baker boys, in the 30s

In 1940, the Baker family continued to live on the farm but with the onset of the war, Watertown became a thriving armament-building town. At some point in the early 1940s, Milton started to work for New York Air Brake and built hulls for tanks. After this, he turned to working in the St. Regis paper mill. On February 26th, 1948, while still working for St. Regis Milton suffered a heart attack at work, and died. He was only 42 years old, and for the second time (and tragically similar to her own mother when Charles Smith died) Mary June was left alone with her children, this time Robert (20) and Laura (15). According to Laura, the photo below was taken either the Fall before or the Spring after Milton's death.

It was very near to the time of Miton's death, or shortly afterward, that young Laura met and subsequently married Robert Thompson (continuing a parallel tradition of women in her family marrying exceptionally handsome men) on July 4th, 1949. Their young love radiates from the many photographs of the couple, and they went on to have a 33-year marriage that ended with Robert's death (also from a heart attack) in 1982. Here is a photo from their wedding, which includes the 16-year old Laura and her recently widowed mother, Mary June, who was then still only 55 years old. 

Mary June lived for 16 more years, seeing the birth of nine grandchildren, including Laura's children Robert, Robin, and Randy Thompson, and six great-grandchildren. Mary  June  who went in her lifetime by the surnames Smith, Dodds, Durham, and Baker, passed away while a patient in the House of the Good Samaritan (where her daughter Laura also passed away in 2011) at the age of 70, on March 16, 1965, of heart-related chronic illness. She is remembered in this detailed obituary from the Watertown Daily Times: Mary S. Baker