Dixon Getman article

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Thanks to Bruce Devine for this submission!!

From: Watertown Daily Times
Date: Sunday, November 28, 1999

Thompson Park Photo Tells Story of a Family

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Photo Caption:
The Dixon-Getman Family in 1909. Front, from left: Edith Elsie Dixon, Ruth Elizabeth Getman (child), Mrs. Charles M. Getman(Nellie Cornelia Dixon), Albert Charles Dixon, Nancy Elizabeth (Myers) Dixon, Hazel Lucerne Hengge(child), Florence Estelle Dixon, Robert B. Dixon, Mrs. William Woodman (Mary Elizabeth Dixon), and Dantforth David Dixon (sitting cross-legged). Back, from left: William Woodman, Mrs. Danforth D. Dixon (Katie Augsbury), Mrs. Robert B. Dixon (Emma Colwell), Charles Martin Getman, John Augustus Dixon and Mrs. Louis Hengge (Irene Dixon).

Editors Note: The photograph to the right appeared in the Times with promotional advertisements about the Millennium editions. The picture was made from an glass negative labeled “Getman Family Group” that was found at the Times. Nan Dixon of Clayton recognized those in the photo as her relatives at a picnic in Watertown’s Thompson Park, and she was invited to write the following account.

Nearly all of Nancy Elizabeth (Myers) Dixon’s family had gathered for this picnic in Thompson Park, probably in 1909. Nancy’s husband, the father of this family, was John Augustus Dixon (1838-1903). Nancy Myers (1842-1911) bore 10 children, and acted as midwife for others. She was petite. I have the dress she wore in the picture. Even accounting for her matronly spread, she was still a small woman.

About 1882, the Dixons moved from Wolfe Island, Ontario, to a larger farm in the town of Lyme, where their last two daughters were born. About 1887 they moved to Pamelia, where they rented the Anthony farm, which, at that time, had the longest barn in Jefferson County.

To go back to the picture: Edith (front row, far left) sites beside Nellie (Dixon) Getman, who is holding little Ruth, born in 1905 at 625 Academy St., and who died there nearly 90 years later in 1994. Ruth (Getman) Martell Gamble was a teacher in the city of Watertown’s junior high school system nearly all her professional life.

Nellie was the sweet glue that held the family together. In days before telephone or email, Nellie’s letters to her far-flung siblings, nieces and nephews were regular, cheerful and full of news of the family. All of her brothers, Nellie wrote, lived with them in the little shanty at Piercefield, where her husband, Charles, was a supervisor at the paper mill there. When orphaned sister Florence married Evard Wagoner in 1912, the wedding was from 625 Academy St., with the huge wedding cake provided by Mr. Bolt for his daughter’s boatman crowned with flowers.

Between Nellie and her mother sits Albert, son of Rob and Emma (Colwell) Dixon. Because his father often supervised paper mills in towns with little opportunity for a good education, Albert attended a military academy in Texas. Albert was not much younger than his Aunt Florence, sitting next to him, behind her mother.

Florence recalled Albert’s birth. Emma and Rob had returned to the Anthony farmer to have their baby, Nancy being “a good nurse”, as her daughter Nellie wrote of her. Little Flossie, at age 6, was considered to young to be told of the imminent birth, so when she came home from school that day, it was a great surprise when her big brother told her jubilantly that there was anew baby in the house. “Goody!” Flossie exclaimed. “You be the papa and I’ll be the mama!”

Florence was the youngest of the brood, born 1885 in the town of Lyme, and the only one of her generation to finish her education. She graduated from Sandy Hill Training Class to become a country school ma’am, early enough to take on of the last regularly operating stage coaches in New York state to her first position. Dresden Station, in the foothills of the Adirondacks, was her first school and had no other transportation. She started out with a trolley ride, and perhaps a train ride somewhere in the middle. The situation was made even more memorable by her landlady, who didn’t speak to her husband during the entire time Flossie boarded with them. The couple communicated with each other by either sending notes, or by talking to their son, who dutifully carried the message, across the dinner table, from Ma to Pa, and back again.

“Hazel, hatchel, teasel!” irritably exclaimed old Nancy (Smith) Dixon, the child’s great grandmother, when she heard what the new baby was to be called. She didn’t hold with these newfangled names that sounded like a bush in the woods, rather than a proper girl’s name. Here Hazel (Hazel Lucerne (Henggee) Bowen) graceful as always, leans on her Uncle Rob, in front of her own grandmother, who was never less than loving.

Robert B. Dixon, who had the distinction of an unknown middle name (at least his sisters argued over whether it was Barnet or Bernard) came home from the Midwest to be buried in North Watertown Cemetery. Like his brother-in-law, Charles Getman, Rob supervised paper mills, but in the Midwest. He was a large, jovial, generous man, his mother’s favorite (he always called he “Mammy”) and a favorite with his siblings in this close knit family.

Mary (next to Rob) and her husband, William Woodman, operated a farm on the foot of Wolfe Isalnd for some years, before moving to Marysville and opening the Woodman House, a boarding house for fishermen, still in the family and still in operation there. The eldest of the family and the only one to remain in Canada, she took her position seriously, and was always in touch with her younger siblings.

Sitting at the end of that row is Dantforth David Dixon, tall, lean and blue eyed. After a stint at paper mills with his brother-in-law, Charles Getman, Dant and Katie moved in with Katie’s bachelor brother, Ai Augsbury, in the beautiful limestone farmhouse in Pamelia. It was the house in which both Katie and Ai were born, and was know to nephews and nieces galore by the feather beds with awaited one in every guest room.

They ran a dairy farm there until Dant died in the 1940s. Ai could not manage on his own, and so the house finally passed out of the family. Uncle Dant had a soft, whispery voice, and needed all of his even tempter to get along with fiery little Ai.

Dant told stories, chuckling himself at the funny parts. Nina recollected that when her marriage became rocky, it was tall, quiet Dant who went to the support of his younger sister. Nina laughed herself at the memory of “Dant, shaking that long forefinger of his in Herb’s face, and your mother (Florence) right beside him! And Herb trying to hide behind me!” Herb and Nina divorced, and Nina spent a long life making lemonade out of the lemons life tossed her. For 84 years, the sisters Nina and Florence were also best friends, writing weekly, visiting each other at every opportunity, though for many years, separated by hundreds of miles.

Behind Dant sits Irene, called by her sisters the prettiest of the Dixon girls. By the time this picture was taken, she had been a widow for some years. Her husband, Lewis Hengge, was custodian of the county court houses. They lived in an apartment at the top of the building. He died in a typhoid fever epidemic in 1904, and Irene supported herself and her daughter as a practical nurse, eventually building a little house for herself, her daughter and her widowed mother on Michigan Avenue.

At Irene’s right, bespectacled John Augustus Dixon Jr. was by far the smallest of the Dixon brothers. Unmarried at the time of his father’s death, he made a home for his newly widowed mother and his three unmarried sisters, Edith, Nina and Florence, at Sandy Hill where he was working in the paper mill. Sandy Hill is no longer on the map, having changed its name to Fort Edward.

The four grieving women moved from Jefferson County to Washington County on the eastern border of New York state, away from family, away from friends. Edith soon left, finding work in a shirt factory, then as a nurse companion for Mrs. Stevens in Watertown. Later she became a housekeeper for the family, retiring in the 1930s. Nina married early, Florence became a teacher, and their mother, Nancy, moved back to Watertown to spend her last year or so among more children and old friends. John married and moved to Massachusetts, finding a farm there, he worked while he raised his family. He, too, continued to be connected with paper mills.

Charles Getman, behind Florence Dixon, was a superintendent of public works in Watertown for many years. He was instrumental in supervising the construction of Thompson Park Zoo. Charles was responsible, h is wife said, for the high crowns on the streets of Watertown, now replaced. A niece can remember being nearly always certain of two pennies every day when she spent a week or so at 625 Academy St. Tow pennies bought an orange Popsicle on two sticks in a corner store then on Academy Street. Occasionally he parted with a nickel instead of two pennies which called for a longer excursion, across William Street to State Street, where the drugstore on the corner sold ice cream cones.

Emma(Colwell) Dixon, daughter of John and Rhoda L. (Blodgett) Colwell, pretty and popular with her sisters-in-law, was Rob’s wife. The Colwells were from the town of Lyme, as were the Getmans, Charles’s family. Rob and Emma were married in Depauville, noted in Nellie’s writings as the place to go for dances and good times. Charles and Rob were the best of friends, and attended the centennial exposition in Chicago together, leaving their wives at home, of course.

Last of the women is Katie (Augsbury) Dixon. Katie, with her energetic ways and tart tongue, was still a favorite aunt for all the nieces and nephews this large family produced. A farm wife, she made the most delicious cookies, and only scolded briefly (unlike her sister-in-law, Edith who jawed and jawed, as the family said) when one of her wine drops was shared with Brown Jack, the patient old farm dog with the pleading eyes. Her son called her Dr. Kate, because Katie was always right there with the antidote for suffering. Oil of cloves stopped a toothache, and peroxide went on the cuts and scrapes. Her sympathy was never expressed in words (you should have known better!) but always in her actions.

We end with William, the proprietor of Woodman House. In 1914, Florence, his wife’s youngest sister, spent some weeks with the Woodmans on Wolfe Island helping in the boarding house and waiting to hear from her husband in Saskatchewan that he had an apartment for her. When the word came, William (never called by any nickname, always William) helped her pack her household belongings, and took her to Montreal to take the train. She wrote later that William saw to all the details of getting the tickets, checking the baggage, seeing that it was loaded, seeing her one the train, giving her all those cautions that protective brothers feel necessary for younger sisters, and then waving her off. She was not to see him again for over 10 years.

Conclusion :
Just another family picnic at Thompson Park, but to make it happen, Mary and William Woodman traveled from Wolfe Island by Horne’s ferry to Cape Vincent, and then to Watertown, to stay with Nellie. Rob and Emma came up the St. Lawrence from Quebec, while Albert may have come from school in Texas. Florence, John and their mother Nancy Dixon, came by train from Sandy Hill. Dant and Katie Dixon drove their buggy from Pamelia. The others all lived in Watertown.

The Islands: Island Stories: Dixon Getman article