BELLE HAVEN II
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A memorial to the author's mother-in-law which begins in
Connecticut in 1917, when Marjorie Prescott takes six homeless
boys into her heart and creates a loving family. This new edition
answers many of the questions unknown during the writing of the first. Illustrated.
Belle Haven II: The End of an Era by Joan Askew de Garmo
Audenreed Press
A Division of Biddle Publishing
ISBN: 1-879418-64-9
©1999
$14.00 US
Softcover
To order this book...
Marjorie Wiggin was born on July 9, 1893, in Dorchester, Massachusetts. She came from New England stock, in her words "a breed unsurpassed in stubborn idiosyncrasies by any other breed, in any other region of the United States!" The son of a minister, her father Albert Henry Wiggin, was a struggling banker in Boston. Her mother, Jessie Duncan Hayden, was a beauty with auburn hair and brown eyes. One year after Albert and Jessie were married at All Souls Unitarian Church in Roxbury, and just before Marjorie was born, Mrs. Wiggin's doctor told her that he would not be able to deliver her baby because he would be at the World's Fair in Chicago. Mrs. Wiggin was stunned by the news. She wasn't feeling at all well and went home to wait for her husband. Most women had their babies at home in those days, and she didn't know what to do. A neighbor told Mr. Wiggin about a young doctor by the name of Damon who lived nearby. Doctor Damon called on Mrs. Wiggin, but after he examined her was reluctant to take the case because he recognized possible complications. On that day, Doctor Damon's wife was waiting for him in a horse-drawn carriage. When she heard about Mrs. Wiggin's difficulties, she begged her husband to help the expectant mother. After several minutes' hesitation, he agreed. A few nights later, after a very difficult delivery complicated by convulsions, Doctor Damon brought Marjorie safely into the world. Two years later a second and last daughter whom they named Muriel was born into the Wiggin Family.
In my first book, Belle Haven, The End of An Era, I wrote a letter to my grandchildren describing to them the way their grandfather, Stanley de Garmo, was raised.
Author Robert Chute reviewed the book and asked so many
intriguing questions that I felt impelled to respond. Belle Haven II is the result.