• Called “Mother Superior” by the Holyoke clan

• I have been told that Dorothy has been married multiple times (up to 5 times), but I only have info for only two marriages.

• Dorothy adopted Kim Margurite Elizabeth HOLYOKE, the 3rd child of Dorothy’s sister Pauline Frances HOLYOKE

• “I was born at my grandparents William and Minnie Dearth’s house in Brockton, MA (aka The Great Shoe City). My mother saying I was born “Just in time for dinner” I was born in the same house, in the same room and bed that my mother was born in April 13, 1912 … as well as my brother Olin, Jr. Oct. 2, 1930.”

• “Grandpa George Holyoke was a shoe maker and worked in the shoe factory in Brockton.” Grandpa George Holyoke died Apr. 5, 1932 at age 56. I was four months old at the time. When he died, they took him back to Brewer, ME where he was born, to be buried with his parents.”

• “Sometime before 1933, when my brother Richard was born and we moved to grandmother Carrie Holyoke’s small farm in West Bridgewater, MA - in the part of town called Cochessett (an Indian name). Gram-Holyoke’s house had no electricity, we had oil lamps for light; no running water, we got all our water from the well outside - which we drew up in a bucket tied on a long rope.”

“During the winter we would have to remove the snow, then the ice before we could the water. In the later years a pump was put in the well so it was a bit easier. I was always in fear of falling into the well and for years I would dream falling in. During the summer we would tie a rope to large cans of milk and would drop them down into the ice cold water in the well. I remember how cold that milk was.”

“We had an ice box in the kitchen, the ice man used to come by every 3 or 4 days and put a block of ice in the top of the ice box to keep the food , stored below cold. When the ice melted, the water ran through a pipe into a pan under the ice box. It was my job to empty this pan. If I forgot, the water would ran all over the floor. What a mess - and I was in trouble.”

“All we had for heat was the old wood cooking stove in the kitchen and the pot belly stove in the front room. We all had to help with the chopping, splitting and carrying the wood into the house and stacking it by the stoves.”

“We had the outhouse outside for a toilet. It sure was cold running out there in the winter. We took all our baths in a big wash tub (in front of the kitchen stove during the winter) every Saturday night so we would be nice and clean for Sunday school and church. In the same wash tub my mother washed all the family laundry by hand with a scrub-board.”

“In the barn we had a milking cow, goats, chickens, ducks and turkeys … and in the barn cellar we had pigs. We got our milk, cheese and butter from the cow and goats. Gram sure made the best cheeses and butter. We got plenty of eggs from the chickens. Sometimes Gram would sell, or trade, eggs, milk, cheese and butter for money or something we could use.”

“The rest of the livestock was raises for meat, plus my father used to hunt and bring home venison, rabbit, pheasants and quail. My mother could make the best rabbit, pheasant or quail pie. Mom and Gram (and I helped) did all the baking - bread, biscuits, pies, gingerbread. We didn’t have to buy much of anything, which is a good thing because we were very poor. We all wore hand-me-down clothes and shoes (we didn’t wear shoes in the summer).”

“We had a large vegetable garden during the summer. We preserved vegetables in jars for winter, such as string beans, tomatoes, beets, spinach and dandelions, which actually grew wild in the grass during the spring. We also made all kinds of pickles. We made strawberry, grape and apple jam. We stored root vegetables in the root cellar. We mowed the hay field & stored the hay in the barn. This was for the animals during the winter. It was hard work for everyone, but we were better off than most in the hard times of the 1930’s when the country was trying to recover from the Great Depression.”

“I remember the hurricane of Sept 1938. I was almost 7 years old and just started the 2nd grade in the little old school house on Lincoln St. I remember the teacher telling us we had to go home early and for us to run fast and not to stop anywhere because we were going to have a very bad storm. I remember the warm wind that was blowing around me. I remember stopping at Mrs. Holbrook’s house, our neighbor, and she’s telling me to hurry up and get home. I remember the strong wind and my father coming and carrying me home. The storm blew our barn and our outhouse down and the small trees into our neighbor’s yard. Our house and the big Elm tree (with our swing) was still there. We lost most of our poultry. We still had our cow, goats and pigs because my father put them into the barn cellar. We thought we lost our dog, Rover, but he was hiding in the cellar as well. Our cats stayed in the house with us.”

“When I was 12, we moved to West Hanover, MA. My father went to work for the National Fireworks Co. making ammunition (World War II). His sisters Lelia (and her husband James Finch), Alice (and her husband Paul Colins) worked at National Fireworks as well. We moved into a house owned by the company my father worked for so he could walk to work. We had no car (my father never did own a car). This house had no electricity and the toilet was outside, but we did have an inside pump at the sink for water. On payday, us kids used to meet my father at the company gate and he would do the food shopping and we helped by carrying the food home.”

“This house sat back into the woods and we had to walk through the woods to go to school. My brother Olin (Jr.) at age 13 used to work at any job he could make money. One day my brother Richard and I saw Olin in the woods buying a baking soda can. After he left, Rich and I dug up the can and found it was full of pennies. We took the pennies and walked the train tracks to Rockland (the next town) and bought candy and then went to the movies. Jr. dug up a very large areas trying to find where he had buried the pennies, of course he never found them. Rich and I kept the secret of what we had done until Jr. came home from the ARMY and I told him (he was 27 years old then). By that time we were all grown up and Rich was in the ARMY.”

“I remember the day President Franklin died. I carried my baby brother (Robert) to the store to get some things for my mother and to check the mail. I sat Bob on a stack of newspapers that had just come in on the train. Bob wet his pants and got the papers wet. When I picked him up I saw the headline “Our President is Dead” and I also saw the wet spot. Boy was the store keeper mad at me because most of the newspapers were ruined.”

“I don’t remember how long we lived in W Hanover, but I do remember not liking it. I wanted to go back to my grandmother’s.

“I do remember going to Rockland Rolling Skating every Saturday - I loved to skate.”