Recently I've been working on developing a story about my grandmother Lizzie Spalding's autograph book. Many of the pages have the notation P.F.S. on them, and I wondered what that could stand for. It seemed to be a school, since most of the pages with the notation were from schoolmates, but I couldn't figure out what the F. would be. Portsmouth came to mind for the P, since she had been attending the Hampton Academy the year before. Hampton and Portsmouth are both on the New Hampshire coast.
Yesterday, I saw a blog entry about the Historic Land Ownership and Reference Atlases, 1507-2000 recently updated on Ancestry.com. Curious, I started checking town maps from Essex County, MA. I found a map of Newburyport, MA which dated 1884. Browsing it, I noticed a building labeled Putnam Free School. P.F.S.! A little more searching revealed that Lizzie's two older brothers graduated from Putnam Free School in 1885, and at that time, Lizzie's family lived in neighboring Salisbury. It's still an assumption to think that Lizzie attended the school, but I definitely have a good lead to follow now.
No comments:
Post a Comment