"...Susie out in the afternoon."

To be sure a stepmother to a girl is a different thing to a second wife to a man!
Elizabeth Gaskell


The Nora Diary, Day 17

Spent in Somerville.
Susie out in the afternoon. Had a
real nice time. Got
home at nine thirty.
GCH came as far as
Newton Corner with
me.

Susie Godfrey Mahoney was Nora's stepmother. Nora's mother, Lulu Ellen, died after giving birth to Nora's brother in 1895. Nora and Paul went to live with their maternal grandparents for a time.

In 1897, Nora can be seen photographed at age 4. She's dressed and pressed for her father's second marriage to a local woman, Susie Godfrey, who was 21. Nora's dad Eugene, a bookkeeper for local Lubec, Maine sardine factories was 32.

Susie and Eugene had one son together, Max Mahoney. More favor was lavished on Max by his mother than was granted to poor young Nora & Paul. Susie seems to have left Lubec for Boston after Eugene's untimely death from blood poisoning(the tragic result of new shoes, a blister and black sock dye leading to an infection) in 1913.

Nora speaks often of Susie in the diaries from 1919 and 1920. Reading the pictured clipping I learned that Susie was a seamstress in Boston. I have no idea when she returned to her Maine hometown. I met Susie once at the Nursing Home pictured in the clipping. She had three siblings living in a small cape perched on the edge of the bay. We visited them also, but I escaped to the beach with my dad while my mother visited inside the dark little house. One brother was named Arthur Godfrey, and that was really puzzling to me as a 9 year old . You see, another Arthur Godfrey was a very big TV star in the States then. Why and how did that thin man with a cane have his name?

Susie went on the live to 100, celebrating her centennial in 1976. She died shortly after, but imagine Nora, at 83 with a stepmother!

For the Record,
This day came in dark and rainy, no snow here.

To the airport tonight to welcome gj, home for a month on vacation from his studies in London.