Ella Montreuil

• General Notes
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    Married in New York 1884
    Hi Brian
    James M. Stuart and Ella A. Montreuil were married by Mayor Franklin Edson in New York City in 1884.  Sometime before their first child was born, they returned to Ireland.  Their eldest two children were born either at Kylemore, or at least in the neighborhood of Kylemore.  The younger children were born in Massachusetts, USA.  I'm not sure why they came to Ireland, nor do I know why they went back to the US.  In the US, James M. Stuart worked for the New England Candy Company.  He and his wife were members of a fairly conservative church, which I think was called Church of the Brethren.  My father remembers them as very serious people.  If I had a scanner, I'd send you a photo.  (I very much enjoy looking at the photos you have on your website!)  I believe you already have all of James' and Ella's children listed on your website.   Their daughter Alice Angelique Stuart (named Alice for both a Stuart aunt and a Montreuil aunt) was born in October 1891 in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts, and married my grandfather John Henry Sharpe in 1913 (possibly April 1913.)  Her husband, John Henry Sharpe was born either June 15 or June 18 1885; he was the only child of a former (American) Civil War soldier from Vermont (Union side) whose name was Henry Sharpe; Henry's wife had died young and I'm not sure of her name; my grandfather's social security application lists his mother as Annie G. Marks, but I heard she may have actually been Georgianna.  In addition to Marks, her relatives were named Greene (perhaps the G. is for Greene?) and Harriman and I think they owned a store in Lowell, Massachsetts.  Henry Sharpe was a brick mason; I believe he was a Mason (the "esoteric" organization) also.  Henry's brother drowned in a lake near Fairley, Vermont.  Henry Sharpe died in a Veterans' Home in Chelsea, Massachusetts, USA, before his only grandchild, my father, was born, and was buried in the Civil War section of the Medford, Massachusetts, cemetery.  John Henry Sharpe, my grandfather, was a compositor (typesetter), I believe for the newspaper, but I don't know which newspaper.  He also invested in real estate, and owned at least three houses; he lived in one and rented out two or more houses.  John Henry Sharpe's and Alice Stuart Sharpe's only child, my father John Stuart Sharpe, wasn't born until August 9, 1923, ten years after their marriage.  They both doted on him.  At some point, probably when James M. Stuart retired, James M. Stuart and Ella Montreuil Stuart moved in with Alice Stuart Sharpe and her family.  Alice Angelique Stuart Sharpe died of breast cancer December 23, 1929.  Her parents helped her widower raise her son, but they were getting old.  Eventually, her sister Violette Stuart Ryan took him in, and Ella Montreil Stuart moved in first with her sister, and later with her daughter Violette.  John Henry Sharpe (also known as Jack Sharpe) came to see his son (who was known at the time as Jackie Sharpe, but now goes by Stuart Sharpe or Stu Sharpe) every weekend and sent money to Violette.   My dad remembers Violette as a very generous woman and a good cook.  She walked with a limp as she'd had polio as a child.  She was a heavy-set woman.  Violette not only raised her own son, but her husband's children from his first marriage, and my dad, and her son's children  (Her son Stuart Ryan married young and he lost his job in the Depression so the young family lived with his parents; then Stuart Ryan died of TB, leaving a widow and three little children.)  Violette also cared for her mother in her old age.  John Henry Sharpe brought his son back home to live fulltime with him (in Lynn, Massachusetts?) when his son was about 10 or so, but they continued to see dad's Aunt Violette frequently.  Eventually (circa 1940?) John Henry Sharpe remarried, to a widow named Lillian.  My father was very smart, and his father managed to save up enough money for my father to go to college.  My father was accepted to Harvard University, but chose instead to go to Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts.  He majored in Economics and Political Science.  Fairly late in the war (WWII), he was drafted and sent to special training in engineering by the Army.  Then he was sent for further training in England, and then probably in late 1944 to France, and then in 1945 to Belgium, and Switzerland.  He was in a Headquarters Company so he was never in much danger.  After the war in Europe ended, he came back to the US to be shipped out to the war in Asia, but the war in Asia ended, so instead he finished his BA at Williams.  He worked in business for a bit, spent a good percentage of a year in Costa Rica going to Law School (not that he wanted to be a lawyer in Costa Rica, but it was a good way to improve his Spanish) and then the government changed in Costa Rica and he was sent home, and then applied to graduate school in business.  He was accepted to Stanford University and got his masters' degree in Business Administration in June 1949.  He had also met my mother, Joan Willoughby, at Stanford--she had gone 2 years to Rhode Island School of Design and then transferred to Stanford.  My mother was born May 13, 1927, and was one of four children of Raymond Royce Willoughby (a psychologist and amateur genealogist; he was of an old New England family that's been "poor but noble" for generations; he and my grandmother collaborated on some books on their families' history and received, posthumously for him, the Donald Lines Jacobus Award for Distinguished Contribution to American Genealogy)  and Miranda Goodrie Willoughby (who was a teacher,  half Norwegian and half French-Canadian with some Native American thrown in for good measure.)   My parents met because mum had written a letter to the university newspaper after the 1948 presidential election and dad read it and said to himself, "This gal's bright, but she's a flaming radical!  Someone's got to straighten her out!"  He got in touch with her to "straighten her out," but instead they fell in love, and he spent the next 55 years trying to "de-radicalize" her.  It never worked, but he was still sure he was the luckiest man on Earth to have her.  She got her BA the same time he got his Masters.'  They both moved to New York upon graduation, him to work in banking and business, and her to get her masters' at Colombia University as a social worker.  He told her "I think we ought to get married one of these days" and she said, "How about next weekend?"  She wanted a registry office wedding, but to humour her mother, they had a small wedding at her mother's house on November 26, 1949.  They lived in New York City; mum worked as a social worker, my dad was assistant to the Chairman of the Board of the Morgan Guaranty Trust bank, among other jobs.  When they decided to have children, they moved to Connecticut.  When I was 3, my father lost his job.  This was a blessing in disguise--he'd always wanted to go into business for himself and they had a lot of savings, so he was able to.  We all (my little brother had been born by this time) moved to California, which both my parents had liked when they were at Stanford University, and my father bought a laundromat in San Francisco and a restaurant and icecream factory in San Jose.  He sold the laundromat after a few years, but he ran the ice cream factory until he retired.  My mom went back to work as a social worker when I was almost 5.
    From Susan Sharpe