As far as I can tell, they were a comfortable working-class family. Her father had a farm, boarding house, general store and a feed and coal business. Boarding houses were quite common in the Catskills for the New York City vacationers as hotels were not established there yet. On a side note, Darius is distantly related to the original Rockefellers who settled in Germantown N.Y.; the same Rockefellers as John D. Rockefeller although they may not have known this. (1)
Laura had two half siblings, Grace Theodora, and Alfred Miner Hover from her father’s first marriage to Theodora Miner (1848-1867), and seven full siblings with his second wife Mary Caroline Turner (1847-1911). Her siblings were: Elizabeth “Lizzy” Mary (1862-1943), William Morton (1873-1880), Benjamin Loren (1875-1933), Franklin W. (1877-1886), Burton Darius (1879-1908), Edna May Hover (1881-1948), and Eva Ada (1884-possibly 1906 but not verified).
Edna May earned a little notoriety and was in the New York Times when she ran away and eloped with Frank Boice at the tender age of 15. It is nice to know that they were together until her death at age 67 and are buried together in Catskill, NY.
 |
After Darius died in 1904 at age 65 his boarding house was taken over by Lizzie and her husband William and Benjamin took over the store and other businesses.
In the 1900 census the following were living in the boarding house:
Darius W. Hover age 62, merchant and farmer (he was also listed as general merchant, farmer, and retail grocer in other documents)
Mary C., age 54.
Benjamin L, age 25, schoolteacher and his wife Nina E., age 22.
Barton D, age 20, Quarryman.
Anna L, age 11.
The fact that Barton worked in a quarry is another indication that they were not upper-class. Also, this must have been a very large house to house all these people and also be a boarding house. Unfortunately, this area was drastically changed later when a reservoir was created splitting the town in two.
In the 1905 N.Y. State census the family were living in three different locations in the area:
Burton D., age 25, Olive Bridge Rd, Olive, Ulster, NY.
Lillian G, his wife, age 22.
Donald W., son.
Benjamin L., 30 Brodheads, Rd, Olive, Ulster, NY.
Mina (sp), his wife, age 27.
Grace, daughter, age 3.
Hoover (sp), Mary C, 59, head (does not give an address but I am assuming she is still in the boarding house).
Anna L. 16, daughter.
By the 1910 census daughter and son-in-law William and Lizzie have taken over the boarding house and Mary and Laura are living with them.
Hover, Mary C, age 63, widow
Hover, Laura, age 20, single
Somewhere during this time, she met Theodore Gordon Peck, Jr. How? I have no idea. They were definitely not in the same social circles. The Pecks were very wealthy and lived on an estate in West Haverstraw, almost 70 miles south of Olive. Plus, at the time, Theodore was at Yale and I cannot find any record of Laura going to university. So, my only guess is that he was on vacation in Catskills and they somehow met.
But met they did, and they were married on May 14, 1910 in Kingston, NY. Interestingly I could not find any marriage announcements in the newspapers, even in the local Kingston newspaper. As I mention below this seems to be the norm with the Pecks.
In the 1915 census Theodore and Laura were living on the Peck estate with his parents, brothers Harold and Gordon. Theodore was listed as an insurance broker.
Their son Theodore Gordon Peck III was born on Sept. 12, 1914 in West Haverstraw. Sometime between 1914 and 1917 the family moved to Englewood, N.J. probably to be closer to his work in the city, and it was there on June 18, 1917 that Mary Louise Peck was born. They did not live there long; the 1920 census shows them living in Orangetown N.Y. and Theodore was working as an insurance broker on Wall Street, a job that led to tragedy.
On Sept. 16, 1920 Theodore was walking past the J.P. Morgan building:
The lunch rush was just beginning as a non-descript man driving a cart pressed an old horse forward on a mid-September day in 1920. He stopped the animal and its heavy load in front of the U.S. Assay Office, across from the J. P. Morgan building in the heart of Wall Street. The driver got down and quickly disappeared into the crowd.
Within minutes, the cart exploded into a hail of metal fragments—immediately killing more than 30 people and injuring some 300. The carnage was horrific, and the death toll kept rising as the day wore on and more victims succumbed. (2)
Theodore died on September 29, of blunt force trauma and severe burns. The anarchists responsible for the bombing were never caught. This website has photos and lists of the victims.
Again, much like his marriage, there was not much coverage in the paper from the family. There was a small article in the NY Times (with wrong information about Laura's father) about his death but the obituary the family placed was rather underwhelming:
PECK – At the Post-Graduate Hospital, Wednesday, Sept. 29, from injuries received in the Wall St. explosion Sept. 16, Theodore G. Peck, Jr., husband of Laura Hover Peck, son of Theodore G. and Kate J., Peck of Samsondale, West Haverstraw, N.Y. Interment at convenience of family.
I have noticed with the Peck family that this is not an unusual occurrence, they were not in the newspaper often, obituaries were short, and wedding announcements were a rarity. This was rather unusual considering how prominent the family were. Usually, they only made it in the paper when they died or there was some sort of tragedy. This was about to change by Laura.
On Nov. 6, 1921 there was a small announcement in the papers that Laura was engaged to Graham Youngs who was from an old, prominent, wealthy Long Island family. They were married on January 9, 1922 at the Church of the Heavenly Rest Episcopal Church in New York City. She was given away by her late husband’s father.
Laura and Graham split their residences between 1120 5th Ave. in Manhattan, a very gorgeous apartment building across the street from Central Park, and Via del Lago, Palm Beach, near the soon-to- be-built Mar-a-Lago home of Marjorie Merriweather Post.
 |
| View from their apartment building overlooking Central Park. |
Youngs was a stockbroker in New York City but by 1935 he was basically retired (he was listed as a special partner in the NY Stock Exchange firm of Stokes, Hoyt & Co.) and they divided their time between New York City and Palm Beach.
He had been in the military; he was an enlisted man in the U.S. Army First Cavalry Division from 1900 to 1912. After leaving the US Army he was immediately accepted into the NY National Guard as a First Lieutenant; by the end of WWI, he had been promoted to Major. He served stateside in WWI and officially retired from the National Guard in 1941.
During this time, Graham and Laura went on a lot of cruises, there’s records of them being in Panama, the Bahamas, and various Caribbean islands. As much as they liked to cruise, it seems fitting that Graham died at sea on the cruise ship SS Franconia on June 27, 1937. They were just starting a six-week cruise to the North Cape.
 |
| SS Franconia, courtesy of State Library New South Wales |
He is buried at the family plot in Youngs Memorial Cemetery in Oyster Bay, Long Island. Youngs Memorial Cemetery is also the resting place for Teddy Roosevelt and his family. Graham's death must have been a shock for Laura as he was only 59 and in good health.
Youngs will was filed soon afterwards and Laura received the bulk of his estate. He also set up trusts for his stepchildren Mary Louise and Theodore, and several articles of personal jewelry went to Mary’s husband Mortimer Seabury. A small amount went to a cousin, Edgar G. Youngs. Later there seemed to have been an issue with the trustees of his will, Lutkins and Robinson, as they took his heirs including the cousin to court in 1944. I could not find out any other information besides the newspaper listing.
I think that he was fond of his stepdaughter Mary Louise. Besides leaving a sizable trust to her, he was her biggest defender during a minor scandal involving a costume she wore for a charity fundraiser ball that was deemed too risqué by society matrons, although the costume was not too risqué to post in the newspapers! The article was plastered in papers all over the country, but prominent was a section where Graham came to the defense of his stepdaughter. I do not know if he had much interaction with his stepson, who was away in boarding school and university during this period.
After Graham's death Laura threw herself into the Palm Beach social scene. Before his death they were not in the Palm Beach Post often, after his death, Laura was listed very often. She both attended and gave many parties during this time.
On December 12, 1939, the Palm Beach Post had an article in the society pages:
Capt. Richard Drace White, who was at the Everglades Club for a few days, entertained with a dinner Sunday night at Brazilian Court, having as his guests Mr. and Mrs. Clinton Sibley Dow and their houseguest, Mrs. Graham Youngs: Mr. and Mrs. Emile Schmidt with Dr. John Emauz, president of the Bank of Portugal at Lisbon and Cyril Baikoff of Paris.This is probably the first time that White, a widower, and Laura met.
They were married on June 12, 1945 and lived at his house in Redding Ridge, CT. I do not know how long they dated between meeting in 1939 and marrying six years later.
However, it was obviously not a good marriage because they were divorced less than a year later on April 19, 1946 in Arkansas. At first, I was confused why they were divorced in Arkansas, but two things became clear with further research: Arkansas was a quickie divorce state at the time (3) and White was living in Arkansas when he died in 1953 so he may have been living there. Laura was not mentioned in his obituary.
Laura died on May 12, 1957, and White is not mentioned in her obituary either. She had reverted to Youngs after the divorced. In her death she went back to her roots. She is buried at the Wiltwyck Cemetery in Kingston NY.
(1) https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Transactions_of_the_Rockefeller_Fami/IZpPAAAAMAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&bsq=darius%20hover page 138
(3) Interested states still competed for the migratory divorce trade. Nevada, Idaho, and Arkansas engaged in a “veritable trade war … each vying for out-of-state clients for its divorce courts.” https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/law-and-history-review/article/nofault-divorce-reform-in-the-1950s-the-lost-history-of-the-greatest-project-of-the-national-association-of-women-lawyers/89AF1985E15EE93178450E5B6A02AF14
No comments:
Post a Comment