In Search of Lovey Hart

Step Two on the Ladder to Providence

Last week we took a close look at the records that provide supporting evidence for what we know about my maternal great-grandfather. This week, we will review the evidence for his mother:

Florence Mabel Hart married John Jackson Tuttle on 28 May 1891 in Succasunna, Morris, New Jersey. She was the daughter of Seymour C Hart (1851–1934) and Hattie Isette Wells (1854–1879), born on 2 Nov 1874 in Clinton, Worcester County, Massachusetts. Her mother died when Florence was 5 years old, and she went to live with her grandmother: Hattie's mother, Sarah (Fletcher) Wells, also in Clinton, Massachusetts.

My grandmother, Albert (Tuttle) Clark, seemed to think that her grandmother, Florence, was called “Lovey” by her family; and that’s possible. John and Florence also named one of their 12 children Florence, and the nickname may have been passed down to her.

We have pretty solid evidence for all of Florence’s major life events. We can see her with her family in all of the expected Census records, beginning with the 1880 Census when 5-year-old Florence lived with her grandmother and two 20-something aunts, Emma and Nellie. The available Massachusetts Town and Vital Records give us her parents’ names and her birthdate.

Florence was an only child, and she doesn’t seem to have grown up around other children. Her father did remarry, but not until 1890; Florence married the following year, and the older of her two half-siblings, Charles, was born the year after that.

Records are scarce for the period between the 1880 and 1900 Census, so Florence might have moved back in with her father at some point; if he moved to New Jersey for business and took his young daughter with him, that would account for them being in New Jersey in the late 1880s.

But other than some of these gaps, I feel confident asserting that Florence takes us up one more solid rung on the ladder we are building. If you’re descended from any of her 12 Tuttle children, or her half-siblings, Charles Hart or Harriet (Hart) Schaub, drop a note!

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