The Writings of Agnes "Donna" McD. Chapman.
Submitted by her Great grand-daughter

Agnes-the "I" of this narrative married Dr. E. A. Chapman of Belleville N. Y. He was a widower with tree children, Clara, Florence and Walter-and to these were added in course of time five by the second marriage, Ross, John, Margery, Sanford and Donald.

Clara became a teacher and was following her profession when she died very suddenly at Grand Junction Colorado in 1897.

Florence has for many years done clerical work in the office for a law firm in New York City.

Walter has for a number of years been head of department in the Metropolitan Ins. Co. of New York. He has three sons and two daughters - Ralph, Eugene, Richard, Althea and Helen.

Ross became a physician. He married Harriet Cornwell of Ann Arbor who won all our hearts. She died a year and a half later when their son Richard was two months old. The child had died two days previous to that.

Later Ross married Marion Clapp of Ithica. To them was born one daughter, Mary , a child of great promise. It was a heavy sorrow when she died in 1925 after a very brief illness at the age of fifteen just as she was growing into womanhood.

Since 1920 Ross has been Superintendent of the Sheppard-Pratt HOspital at Baltimore. He is also a professor of Psychiatry in the University of Maryland.

We lived in Belleville Jeff Co. N. Y. for twenty-five years and there all our children were born. In December 1900 we moved to Watertown N. Y. Dr. Chapman having been elected County Clerk which office he filled two terms or six years.

Soon after we went there a terrible typhoid epidemic occurred which filled the hospitals to overflowing and the new high school building which was then nearing completion was used as an emergency hospital. We did not escape. Margery was ill for two months. John then fifteen years of age was ill but a few days, and died. Those weeks were a dark, heavy cloud in our lives-never quite dispelled.

On Sept. 4th, 1912 Margery was married to Richard Valentine of Stafford Springs Conn. and we were left quite alone, Sanford and Donald both being away from home.

Sanford was in Detroit at work with a Construction Co. and in dec. of that year we received a telegram saying he was in a hospital very ill. Doctor's health would not permit him to make the journey so I started for Detroit by the first train. Ross preceded me by a few hours - from Binghamton- but both were too late to see him before he died. A very bitter experience, the more so as we were convinced that the attending physician had blundered.

In 1913 we left Watertown and established our home in Stafford Springs Conn. to be near Margery, since Richard's connection with the Warren Woolen Co. seemed to indicate that their residence there would be permanent. There Dr. Chapman died four years later-in 1917-after several years of failing health.

Another tragedy was Donald's death resulting from and automobile accident in Nov. 1924 in Hartford Conn. He was twenty-nine years old. Both he and Ross had served in the World War.

Margery and Richard have four children, Virginia born in 1913 Carol born in 1915, Margery (called Peggy) born in 1920, and Richard H. Junior (called Dick) born in 1923. We are all growing up together in the brown bungalow on the hillside-a most happy arrangement for me.

Note: Some entries on this site may not directly relate to Belleville but are connected in some way to an individual
that was born in Belleville or lived in Belleville as part of the local community.

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