Elizabeth V. Harper, called Lizzie, was the daughter of Henry Harper and Sarah Timmins. She was born in Wakefield, Massachusetts, on August 14, 1872. She married Frederick William Hiatt and had four children: Ruth, Edith, Albert and Frank. Her grandchildren called her Nana.
The back of the card shows a medal the studio won at the seventeenth exhibition of the Massachusetts Charitable Mechanic Association in 1890, so the picture was taken in 1890 or later, when Elizabeth was at least 18. It may have been taken around the time of her marriage in Boston in 1893.
A Wakefield Family
The Harpers were in Wakefield while Elizabeth was a girl. In the town's report for the year ending February 28, 1882, Henry Harper was paid $4.32 for 72 loads of gravel used on the roads of the Woodville District. By 1895 he lived at 44 Nahant Street and owned several houses, one of them on Stark Avenue.
Elizabeth came from a musical family. Her granddaughter Joan remembered that Elizabeth's eldest sister, Jessie, had been an accomplished pianist. A brother had a traveling orchestra, and a sister who played the harp married a musician, and the two of them ran a conservatory in Vermont. Another sister was Alice Louise. Her brother Ira Harper was still living in their father's house at 44 Nahant Street in 1941. Jessie M. Harper appears in the Wakefield tax lists of the 1890s as the owner of a lot on the "Harper Plan" off Stark Avenue.
Marriage and Stark Avenue
Elizabeth married Frederick William Hiatt in Boston on November 4, 1893. She was 21. Fred was born in Somerville in October 1863 and worked as a bookkeeper. The Wakefield Citizen and Banner reported the wedding the next week.
The couple began married life in Boston. The next spring they moved to Wakefield, "into one of Henry Harper's new houses on Birch Hill avenue for the summer." By 1895 they were living on Stark Avenue, near her family.
Their first three children were born in Wakefield:
- Ruth Frances, August 15, 1894
- Edith Kingdon, September 24, 1895
- Albert Ernest, June 28, 1897
The house seems to have come from Elizabeth's father. In 1895 the town taxed Henry Harper for a "dwelling house, Stark ave., 650; shed, 40," while Fred W. Hyatt of Stark Avenue paid only a poll tax. By 1899 a $650 dwelling and a $40 shed on Stark Avenue, on lot 126 of plat 19, were assessed to Elizabeth Hyatt in her own name. In 1898 the newspaper gave the address as No. 4 Stark Avenue. In 1902, when the administrator of her father's estate sold the corner lot at Nahant Street and Stark Avenue, the land next to it was described as "formerly of Henry Harper, now of E. Hiatt."
At Taunton, 1898 – 1899
The town of Wakefield paid the board of its poor residents who were in state hospitals, and listed each one in the overseers' report every year. "Elizabeth Hiatt, at Taunton" appears on that list twice. Taunton was the State Lunatic Hospital at Taunton.
Elizabeth Hiatt, at Taunton . . . 65 46
(year ending January 31, 1899)Elizabeth Hiatt, at Taunton, . . . 153 68
(year ending January 31, 1900)
A full year's board cost the town $169.46. Her first amount covers about 20 weeks, and she is the last name on that year's list, so she was probably admitted in the fall of 1898. The second amount covers about 47 weeks, so she probably left near the end of 1899. She is not on the list for the year before or the years after. When she went to Taunton, Ruth was four, Edith was three and Albert was about one.
Earlier that year Elizabeth had been very ill. On June 3, 1898, the "Social and Personal" column of the Wakefield Citizen and Banner reported that "Mrs. Frederick W. Hiatt is seriously ill at her home No. 4 Stark avenue." The paper does not say what was wrong with her. Whether this illness had anything to do with her stay at Taunton a few months later is not known.
Is this the same Elizabeth?
The town reports do not give her husband's name or her age, so this is indirect evidence. The Hiatts were the only Hiatt or Hyatt family in the Wakefield tax lists from 1895 to 1903, and the town paid only for people whose legal home was Wakefield, so she is very likely Fred's wife. In the 1900 census only one Elizabeth Hiatt has been found, and she is living with Fred in Wakefield. The hospital's admission and discharge records, now at the Massachusetts Archives, should settle it and may tell why she was there.
Medford and Malden
Elizabeth's father, Henry Harper, died in 1896. In June 1900 the census taker found Fred, Elizabeth and the children back together in Wakefield, living at 44 Nahant Street. This was Henry Harper's own house, where he had lived in 1895, so after his death Elizabeth and her family moved into her father's home. Their youngest child, Frank Cyril, was born in Medford on November 1, 1901. In 1903 Fred Hiatt still had a house on Stark Avenue in Wakefield, which was given a new water service that year. After 1900 the family moved several times. The city directories list Fred at 185 School Street in Somerville in 1901, at 97 Summer Street in Medford in 1902, and at 35 Partridge Avenue in Somerville from 1904 to 1907. Edith wrote her letter to Santa from Partridge Avenue in 1906.
In 1907 Fred built a house at 29 High Street, in Ward 1 of Malden, and by 1909 the family was living there. Elizabeth lived there for the rest of her life. Her granddaughter Joan remembered it as a big three-story house with a winding front stairway and steep back stairs, a parlor that could be divided by floor-to-ceiling doors, and a library. The house was older than electric lights, and the old gas outlets could still be seen on the walls. Elizabeth kept fruit and butter in an oak icebox by the side door long after she had a refrigerator, and the entry always smelled of apples.
Soupy Nana
Joan wrote down her memories of her grandmother in 2020. She remembered Elizabeth best in the kitchen, in an apron with big pockets, stirring soup on the big enameled stove, with her gold and gray hair held up in a bun. She was thrifty and turned every leftover into soup, so Joan named her "Soupy Nana." Fred sat in his rocker by the window, smoking his pipe and reading the papers, but Joan did not remember Nana ever sitting down.
On weekends Elizabeth and her daughter Ruth visited elderly relatives who were sick or in nursing homes, among them her sister Jessie, whose hands were bent with arthritis. Elizabeth also went to séances with her sisters. She did not play an instrument that Joan knew of, but she knew enough music to give good advice on piano lessons, and she gave Joan her first dictionary and a book of O. Henry's stories.
Read Joan's full story, Remembering Elizabeth Harper Hiatt (PDF).
Her Last Years
Fred died at home at 29 High Street on July 7, 1941, at the age of 77, and was buried in Wyoming Cemetery in Melrose on July 10. Joan remembered that it was the only time she heard Nana cry.
Elizabeth lived on at 29 High Street with her daughter Ruth. Early in 1947 she had pneumonia. Joan remembered that when Elizabeth felt better she got up to do the laundry and fell down the steep cellar stairs with a basket of sheets. In a conversation with the author, Joan said that the fall caused a blood clot, and Elizabeth died that night. Her death certificate gives the cause as chronic heart disease, "probably coronary occlusion (sudden death)." A coronary occlusion is a blockage, often a clot, in an artery of the heart, so the certificate and Joan's account may describe the same thing. She died on February 17, 1947, at the age of 74. Her death notice ran in the Boston Traveler the next day:
HIATT—In Malden, Feb. 17, Elizabeth Hiatt, widow of Frederick W. Hiatt, very suddenly, at her home, 29 High st. Funeral service at the Margeson Funeral home, 830 Main st. Malden, Thursday, Feb. 20, at 2:30 P.M. Relatives and friends are invited to attend. Interment at Forest Dale.
Forest Dale or Wyoming Cemetery?
The death notice says she would be buried at Forest Dale, which is Forestdale Cemetery in Malden. Her death certificate says she was buried on February 20, 1947, in Wyoming Cemetery in Melrose, where Fred had been buried in 1941 and where Ruth was buried in 1973. Where she was actually buried is not yet known. The records of the two cemeteries should settle it.
Her Children
Ruth Frances Hiatt (1894 – 1973) was a graduate of what is now Salem State College, and earned her bachelor's and master's degrees in business administration at Boston University. She taught commercial subjects at Wakefield High School from 1921, was head of its business education department from 1960 until she retired in 1964, and was active in the American Association of University Women. She lived in the house her father built at 29 High Street in Malden. After she retired she married Frederick Howland, who, according to family lore, had gone to high school with her. Ruth died at New England Memorial Hospital in Stoneham on December 6, 1973, after a short illness, and was buried in Wyoming Cemetery in Melrose.
Read her full obituary from the Wakefield Daily Item, December 10, 1973.
Edith Kingdon Hiatt (1895 – 1990) married Philip Duncan Stevens in Malden on November 3, 1923. She died in Warwick, Rhode Island, on January 16, 1990.
Albert Ernest Hiatt (1897 – 1978) married Marguerite Wells Small, who was born in Newfoundland, in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, on July 27, 1929. He lived in Medford and died on June 30, 1978.
Frank Cyril Hiatt (1901 – 1985) married Mildred E. Stimus in New York in September 1934. They lived in Dumont, New Jersey, where he died on October 27, 1985.