LOVING GRANDMOTHER, "VICTORIAN VILLAIN," AND LIBRARIAN:

LOVING GRANDMOTHER, "VICTORIAN VILLAIN," AND LIBRARIAN:

HELEN MARIA ROBERTS ACKLEY

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My great-grandmother, Helen Maria Roberts Ackley (1869-1951) was quite a remarkable woman. Not only did she have a strong sense of family values, but she was also socially conscious and active in many civic organizations, an avid member of the DAR, the Women's Christian Temperance Union, and the Eastern Star. She also participated in the early civil rights movements, joining in on at least one of the early protest marches. Married to William Kilbourne Ackley, an East Hartford shade-grown tobacco farmer and prominent businessman, she was widowed at a relatively young age (she was 54 when her husband died). After William's death, she went to work as a librarian in the East Hartford public library. Her career as a librarian, highlighting many of her accomplishments and her very respectable reputation, was summarized in a newspaper article which appeared in the Hartford Courant in May of 1940, on the occasion of her resignation due to ill health:

"ILLNESS FORCES RETIREMENT OF LIBRARY OFFICER,

EAST HARTFORD"

Mrs. Helen Roberts Ackley, for nearly 15 years assistant librarian of the East Hartford Public Library, has tendered her resignation to the Library Board because of ill-health and her resignation has been accepted by the board with regret. Mrs. Ackley has left to rest for a time with her son and daughter in New York. Before her departure, she was presented with a corsage by the library staff.

Mrs. Ackley was stationed at the delivery desk in the main library and she came in personal contact with the thousands of readers and students who made use of the library's facilities and volumes. She endeared herself to the clients of the library through her courtesy and assistance and through suggestions for reading. Her wide knowledge of books, being herself a great reader, was of great help to book borrowers.

BOARD LAUDS SERVICE

The Board of the Library has adopted the following resolution concerning Mrs. Ackley's services and her resignation:

“It is with reluctance that the Board of the East Hartford Public Library accepts the resignation of Mrs. Helen Roberts Ackley from its staff. For nearly 15 years Mrs. Ackley has served the reading public, always cheerfully and helpfully, earning the affection and appreciation of all, including pupils in the schools, those doing research work of wide variety, those desiring technical books on many subjects, as well as the host of borrowers who want “a good book” ranging from mystery novels to the latest problem novels. She could be firm when the occasion demanded, but never antagonistic. Her knowledge and love of books is deep and scholarly, an inheritance from a family of scholars, and she knew the contents of her shelves to an amazing degree, as she knew her clients.

Therefore, it will be many a day before her appreciative friends become resigned to the fact that she felt it expedient to tender her resignation."

On a more personal note, in the summer of 1996, Priscilla Howland (daughter of Frances Ackley Howland, who was my maternal grandfather's sister) recorded many of her remembrances of her grandmother, Helen Maria Roberts Ackley. That tape is excerpted here:

“...Grandma...was a very forceful woman, but I always felt that she loved me. She looked back after me while Mom worked. She had four children -- Frances (my mother); Aunt Mary; Aunt Mir; and Uncle Fred.

What do I remember? I don't know what my first memories of Grandma are, but...when I was 12 or thereabouts we all got dressed up in long dresses, tuxedos, etc., and went off to the double wedding [of two sisters, who were cousins]. There's a picture of that in my mound of pictures upstairs, and it is just absolutely incredible. We had a great time. Grandma and I had an even better time because although she'd been President of the WCTU [Women's Christian Temperance Union], she and I...started drinking the [punch] that tasted better. Guess what? It was the spiked punch. My father roared when he found out we had done this!

When I got old enough to do this (which was probably 10 or so)...my Christmas present [each year] was to go to New York City with her in a Pullman car to the Radio City Music Hall, staying...with Aunt Mir and Uncle Doug. I saw many musicals that I never, I don't think, would have seen.

I drove everybody nuts in those visits because of two things. One, I loved eating in the Automat instead of going to a fancy restaurant, and, secondly, I had trouble sleeping because I slept in Uncle Douglas's study, and there were these mounds of books, and I was always afraid they were going to fall over on me. But I remember those train rides and the talks that I had with Grandma.

[A younger cousin] asked me recently what kinds of things Grandma liked. Grandma obviously loved reading. She worked in a library, and I think I got my love of books and my love of reading from her. I sometimes have two or three books going at a time, just like she did. I can picture her in our living room on Garden Street doing a couple of things that I don't know that anybody else could do. Grandma was able to carry on a conversation, knit, read a book, and watch television (it had just started to be in our home) at the same time, and tell us exactly what was happening, while keeping one eye out on the ball game going on across the field in Stillman Park! I had no idea how she did that!

She was always irritated, but amused, by how our cats loved her. I don't know that they loved her, but they loved the perfumed handkerchiefs that she wore, and proceded to get drunk on them, and roll on her lap and just go absolutely crazy. I think she didn't like it because they upset her knitting. I'm not sure she was very fond of animals because when we lived on Hillcrest Avenue for a little bit, there was Queenie, the bull dog, next door (a white, ugly bulldog), and every time Grandma (as she loved to do) sat out in the shade underneath a tree, with one of her wide-brimmed hats, to knit or to make a quilt, Queenie would appear. And it was then this match of wills between the two!

Grandma [also] loved sewing, quilting, and knitting. I have more of her quilts than I have of anything else that she sewed. She also loved cooking. I remember when I came home from school as a little kid in the winter, she always had two things ready for me -- tomato broth soup (which I have the recipe for) and oatmeal bread. The tomato broth soup recipe was written down. The bread, we had to literally take the dough out of her hands (or what made the dough, rather) and put it into a cup so we could get the measurements. The first time I tried to make it, it wound up to be beer bread, as opposed to oatmeal bread, but now I can do a fairly good job. She had the little loaves and then the big loaves, and that was great.

The other thing that I made with Grandma was...pepper relish -- the sweet pepper relish, which Cain's (sorry, Grandma!) makes almost as well now; Christmas cookies, which I made with both my grandmother and my mother -- tons of cutouts and slicers and freezers and all kinds of things like that. I also remember making root beer with Grandma. Now part of this [root beer making process] is not clear. I mean, I know I was the capper, and I know we had to wait until one of the bottles blew up, before we knew it had fermented enough, and then you put everything else in refrigeration. We kept them downstairs in the Garden Street house. That was really fun and I really enjoyed the cooking.

Speaking of cooking, I think I frustrated Grandma a little bit because, like a little kid, I thought bigger was better, and so when we went dandelion hunting (she loved dandelions...I hated dandelions), I always got bigger because I thought it was better and of course, it was more bitter. For years and years, I kept her dandelion digger that she had. Eventually I learned cooking, sewing, reading...but I think Grandma also made me the current affairs, liberal, interested in the world, kind of person that I am now, because that was something that she also enjoyed.

She was very family-oriented, rotated visiting various family members. I remember going to the farms with her. I remember visiting, I guess, all of the family households, visiting Aunt Mary and Uncle George, Uncle Fred and Aunt Hazel.

So, here's Grandma in the WCTU, the DAR, the Eastern Star, but also very much involved in her own way in the early, early civil rights movement. I remember a story that told about how tough it was that there was one black woman who graduated with her from Hartford High School, who had no one to march with [in civil rights marches], and Grandma marched with her, because she thought it was an absolute crime that she had no one to march with. So I think she saw the black woman as more of a "who" than a "what."

Grandma had a sense of humor -- a kind of a dry one. I remember one time when she was cooking dinner, and one of the cats pounced on her and the boiling water (I don't know what she was making) went all over the place. Instead of yelling or screaming, except at the cat, Grandma just looked at me and said, "Well, I guess we'll just have to start over, won't we?" I thought that was really amazing that she did that.

Grandma, to my knowledge, never mentioned her husband, my grandfather. I have some old pictures but everything I learned about him (which wasn't a lot), I learned from my mother and her sisters, and that really surprised me.

But anyway, there were some people that called Grandma "Victorian Villain." I think that sometimes her strong will was the only way she survived after my grandfather died when she was in her 50's, and she went to work for the library. But on the other hand, it put some people off. There were some people she scared. But there were two people she didn't scare, and I don't know about any others -- me and Connie [Constance Davis Cole, another grandchild]. We are probably the grandchildren who knew her the best. I remember one day (and I can't remember the reason right now) about 10 years before Connie died, somebody wanted me to talk about my grandmother and I called up Connie and I said, "Help! How do I describe Grandma to somebody else?" Grandma was hard to describe and Connie said what I was thinking and feeling, which was, "Well, you know, she was Grandma." We both knew what we meant, but it was hard to convey it to other people. But we both knew this woman who liked wide-brimmed hats, who could be stern, but sometimes smiled and chuckled. Of my grandparents, she's the friendliest looking. Some of the others are pretty scary, even more stern-looking.

I find that when I think about Grandma and her relation to people in my family that it must have been really hard for my father to have his mother-in-law living with him. On the other hand, that seemed to work out fairly well.

What gifts did my grandmother give me? Somehow the cooking didn't take. I can cook, but nowhere near the way my grandmother could cook. Her sense of family (the extended family is important to me), with gatherings of thirty-plus that we had at our house all the years that she was alive, I just loved (even though I had to sit at the kids' table). Sewing also didn't take since I was left-handed and nobody wanted to teach people who were left-handed. However, what did take were her values about how it was important to be involved with people in your community. I don't know if Grandma was an introvert or an extrovert, but I know that she felt that people were important. I also know that what seemed to be liberal views certainly stuck on me. I've thought about her a lot as I've been involved in the Civil Rights movement, in the Peace Movement, and just generally caused problems for people with my liberal views sometimes.

Grandma certainly influenced my reading -- my just having to know the "why" of everything.

One day not too long ago, maybe a year or two ago, I was thinking very much about Grandma because I had gone from a computer search at the library to a computerized car wash to two or three other computer-type things, and I wondered what she would think of computers. (I think she would probably be absolutely fascinated.)

It was through her that I got to know almost all of my relatives, like Aunt Catherine with her corn cob pipes, who when she came to visit she hardly ever sat in a chair. She sat on a radiator covered with newspapers. That was just the way Aunt Catherine was. It was also through Grandma that I got to know a woman who I thought of as my other grandmother, Ella Burr, whose husband died early as well. Ella Burr then took over the Cleveland Legal Bank Service and ran it for years. It was the first time I ran into a notary...

The last year of Grandma's life was really tough. Mom had moved from her job in Hartford to one maybe a mile away and we took shifts -- Mom, Aunt Mir, Aunt Mary and me. Grandma had a lot of heart problems. She was 82 when she died [in 1951], and that was a very strange overwhelming event for me. We must have spent over six months doing the nursing, and somehow I did and didn't know what was happening; that she was dying. But I must have known something, because I spent a lot of time and energy taking care of her and being glad that I could do that. But on the other hand, then she died. When she died, as was traditional for kids my age, I had to move out of the house. [I was told,] "Go to a friend's, and don't show up until you go to the funeral home."

My family did learn from that, because that was one of two incidents where they didn't know what to do with me. It was an open casket and when I saw Grandma, I just started screaming. Eventually I stopped. Then there was the funeral. I remember absolutely nothing of Grandma's funeral except there were lots of people there, but nothing that was said, which was a real shame. I know it was at Newkirk Whitney [funeral home], until we got to the cemetery. I then started screaming again, and the only person who could stop me was Connie, my cousin.

I remember a tree nearby where Grandma is buried. When...I last went to the cemetery, having not been there for 25 years or so, I remember how there was that tree. Absolutely no problem whatsoever finding it and finding where Grandma was. After she died, I would go and sit and talk with her. I haven't done that in a long time. There were times when I was very aware of her presence, and still am to this day.

...Going back to Grandma's sewing. Grandma made a lot of my dresses and somehow kept a swatch from each one. Poor Grandma! She was so disillusioned when I wasn't happy when she presented me with my quilt from all my dresses (which somehow in the shuffle of everything has gotten lost). Why? Because she had used a tremendous lining and the first night I slept under it I felt like I had a ton of bricks on top of me! She never did get to take that lining out.

I remember her teaching me how to use the sewing machine...how to thread a bobbin (it was the bullet style, instead of the round one). Grandma was a packrat. So was my mother, and so are all of the Ackleys; but Grandma was a packrat. I wasn't surprised the other day when [a young cousin] said she had boxes (at least a big box) of thread that Grandma had had. I've got two. The threads are still good. They're wonderful. They're colors that maybe you can't even find today. Grandma loved that machine and what it could do. To her, it was almost as much of a miracle for her, in some ways, as a computer or a television set might be to other people. I would push the treadle back and forth with my feet and she would keep the material going straight. We had a good time doing that.

My impressions of my grandmother, Helen Roberts Ackley, are, as I think I've said before, that she was a stern woman, who was also very loving. She was only stern and set limits because that was how she expressed love. That's how she'd learned it, and that's how she expressed it...So my sense of family came from Mom, but came more or at least as much from Grandma. She wanted to make sure that we knew who all these people were -- her son (Uncle Fred), and her daughters.

I have to admit that I thought I knew Grandma pretty well, and yet, when I read the genealogy that Connie wrote, I was absolutely amazed to discover about this relative, Jennie, that Grandma basically feuded with. My comment and reaction was, "Grandma? Feud? You'd have to be kidding!" But the more I think about it, the more I am aware of how the strong temperament that Grandma had, and had to have to survive after Grandpa died, probably contributed to that.

...You know, the person who is alive today, who reminds me the most in looks of Grandma (not facial, but what she wears) is the Queen Mum. Grandma didn't wear polka dots, but Grandma wore brocaded long dresses. I never ever, that I know of, saw her in short sleeves, no matter how hot it got!

However, having said that, I remember...something else that Grandma left to me. And I guess that was a time she wore short sleeves. She and Mom and Aunt Mir and I were at the farm, and we were all doing gardening and it was pointed out to us that we all had the "Ackley derriere." So we all lined up and (can you believe?) we leaned over and there is a picture of that! That's the only time I ever remember seeing Grandma in anything other than her rather formal "Queen Mum" outfits.

...I must admit that as I think of the formal picture that I have of Grandma, that I'd better go through the pictures and find another one with the glasses that she wore the last five years of her life because they made her look friendlier. She just got more modern, friendlier glasses, kind of like those rimless ones, and there are pictures of her smiling in those. In her state picture, she sure isn't smiling.

...Back to oatmeal bread again. Grandma had (and I still have -- they're in my kitchen; I don't know why; I guess they're just things that remind me of her) a gigantic bread paddle that she used. It's a real antique...and her bread pans, every single one that she used. They have worn well...

I guess Grandma had an impact on me because Grandma had an impact on everybody, whether it was positive or negative. But also because with Mom working, Grandma was the person who was primarily in charge of bringing me up, of imparting values. I don't know how my mother would feel about that, but [Grandma] had the most influence on me in my early years, though I remember spending lots of good quality time with my own mother. But my own mother was not as assertive as Grandma and I can now see why. Some people would say Grandma wasn't just assertive -- Grandma was aggressive.

So we're back to the dilemma that Connie and I had -- how do you describe Grandma? A true Victorian lady (though I must admit I blanked it out, the one time I remember seeing her in pants at the farm, I just about fainted -- I couldn't believe it!), who thought that the world and other people were really important, but not more important than her family. She passed that on to [us all]. Those of you who didn't know Grandma, I'm sorry that you didn't, because she made a remarkable difference in my life, and 45 years later, I still miss her.

I remember Grandma's 80th birthday. We had a card shower for her. That's one of the few times I ever remember my grandmother crying. She was so overwhelmed at all the cards that arrived from all kinds of people. "How did they know it's my birthday?" They just did. We notified some of them, but they just did.

...Mom and Grandma used to joke about their weak ankles, but that must be something that Grandma grew in to, because Grandma talked about when the Connecticut River was frozen and she used to skate from East Hartford down to Middletown to go see her relatives. That just absolutely blows my mind that the Connecticut River was that frozen and that anybody could skate that far! I don't think that's a myth, because I can remember it coming up a number of times.

Well, anyway, a couple of [other] things I remember. When I was little Mom went to work at Family Services Society, partially I guess because Grandma was on the Board of Trustees. At one point or another they needed (for some reason, I'm not sure; I guess some benefit) a young child to sit in their star attraction's lap to raise money for the Family Services Society. I guess I was 6 or 7. Well, guess who? Yes, me. And guess who the star attraction was? Katharine Hepburn. That woman scared me half to death, and Grandma really chuckled...Katharine Hepburn had a very loud voice, and as we came out onto the stage and I started to sit in her lap, two things happened. One, [Katharine Hepburn] looked out at the Bushnell [Auditorium, in Hartford, CT] and said, "My God, what a barn!" and I was sitting there, little me, and I vividly remember this. Then I asked her for her autograph and all she had was a check and she scratched out "Katharine Hepburn" on the front of it and then signed the back of it. I have no idea where that went, but I do remember Grandma getting a big bang out of how scared I was of Katharine Hepburn's loud voice.

The other incident also took place at the Bushnell. When I was 11 or 12, Grandma took me to see "Harvey" [a play in part about an imaginary rabbit]. I think she thought I was more grown up than I was, because about every 10 minutes, I would poke her and I would say, "Grandma, where's the rabbit?" At first she started to get upset, and then she laughed, partially because she thought it was very funny, and realized that she'd expected me to be more grown up than I was.

A third thing we went to at Bushnell was "The Red Shoes." I just thought of that this minute (this is July 25, 1996), and I remember it was one of Grandma's favorite plays that she liked. I don't think anybody bargained on my then deciding that I wanted a pair of red shoes!

...In looking at the pictures of Grandma, I was surprised to learn that Grandma was from Wethersfield. I guess I always thought she was from West Hartford, and that kind of puzzles me...

Well, anyway, the other thing is that thinking about Grandma as a librarian, I read her letter of resignation and the articles about her when she resigned in 1940, and they described the friendly Grandma that I knew, not the abrupt crisp one that people called the "Victorian Villain" (like my babysitter, and sometimes my father...). But anyway, it talked about how efficient and effective she was as a librarian, and I must admit I've been thinking about that as I spend hours in the Newington library, particularly with their reference people, and with the two reference people that I know the best at Quinnipiac, and the intra-library loan people. They do have to be patient people and Grandma really liked what she did. I have no idea of where and how she got her training to be a librarian. [The article] didn't say, and I don't know that, and now I'm beginning to get frustrated at all the things that I don't know about Grandma. But...maybe she just did on the job training. I don't know.

But as I said, the Grandma that I knew is described in these articles...

But this brings me to another question. Grandma resigned in 1940 because of ill health, and if you look at a couple of pictures...she looks in ill health in the early '40s. She looks just absolutely wilted. And then in the middle '40s she looks very well. She stands straight (she isn't wilting) and then in one that I have in the late '40s she starts to wilt again. So apparently she got better.

But the other thing is that I remember Grandma as a very active person in the '40s, where she did cooking and sewing, and we went and got dandelions, and we traveled. You know, not very far, but to New York and to New Hampshire (i.e., the farm), and so I guess she had her ups and downs. But whatever made her resign in 1940 made her aware that she wasn't well, and then she got better. I remember her taking medicine (I don't know if she had angina), the name of which escapes me right now, but it was heart medicine, I know that, and I certainly remember giving it to her in the last days of her life.

I'm glad that if she was so ill that she had to resign in 1940, after 15 years [as a librarian], that she got better and could enjoy her family and that I could enjoy her. It's a very selfish reaction, I guess, but it does strike me that she was very active for someone who was ill.

As I am making this tape...I keep thinking of all the questions that I want to ask Grandma now about the holes that I'm discovering in what I didn't know. But on the other hand, my knowing of Grandma is not so much events, and things about her life (like where she did this and where she did that) before I was alive, but it's more the person that I knew, who was very kind to me, and sometimes made me shape up, but was very influential in my life; a person that I experienced, and not the person that I read about. Though I wish she'd kept a journal like my mother did when she was a teenager (which I find fascinating reading), Grandma didn't. I have no writings of Grandma's whatsoever, and I wish I did.

About Grandma being able to be so active in the middle to late '40s, I know Grandma had what was then called rheumatism, which I now have, which is arthritis, and I know she had heart problems. But for somebody who was ill and felt she couldn't work anymore, she certainly did a remarkable number of things, which may go back to her strong will, which I only ever experienced as loving, but (I can now see) would be a put-off to some other people, who didn't know her as I did...

I have one of Grandma's sewing cabinets. I've got my answering machine on it now. I wonder what she would think of that, too. I also have [some] jewelry...which I need to wear more...I get a sense of Grandma with that, particularly with the ring...The pin...is what my Grandfather gave her on their wedding day.

As I said, the more that I talk about Grandma, the more comes up that I remember, but the more I realize how much I didn't know or don't know now. But I'm glad to be making this tape...But I realize that I think I've remembered about as much as I think I'm going to remember. Those of you who have listened to it, I hope that you have enjoyed parts of it, though I realize that coming to the end that I've been a little repetitive.

The only correction that I wish to make is that Grandma, I don't think, was ever stern. I think it was just strong minded, though it would be interesting to compare her against other women now. But compared to her contemporaries, I think she was very strong-minded, but never stern, and I'm not quite sure why I used that word.

I hope [this] is helpful for you in either remembering someone who you knew, or remembering someone who you've heard about, but never met...I hope this might spur you on to [record remembrances] about people that have been influential in your life.”

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