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This is a strange diary. I've re-written it several times trying to distill the emotions evoked by what I learned about my Great great aunt Lucretia. It's still a bit of a jumble.
I'd learned that Lucretia owned her own home, was single and apparently sufficiently well-off to
be a lady of leisure, having "None" boldly written in the "Occupation" column of the census pages. It also revealed she had a chauffer and a maid living in.
Remember when I wrote about "Grandpa, the cow and the farm that wasn't"? Well, I eventually realized that Lucretia was the owner of the farm -not her father as I'd always surmised. One day, one of those "go for it moments" on the Google told me that Lucretia had attended a specially designed 2 year agricultural course for ladies at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst in 1892.
This picture of an independent, inquisitive woman began to evolve in my mind. Surely she was as headstrong as I knew her sister to be - but with a much more outward focus. I was fascinated!
And then, I opened the 1930 census. Lucretia was confined to the Worcester Hospital for the Insane.