Alice Watson
Status: looking for family
Just like all of our last few features, the back of Alice’s photo is labeled ‘CWC Album’, marking her relation, somehow, to the family of Charles Wesley Cable. Though difficult, it wasn’t impossible to deduce what this relation might be.
While we can’t be certain, it seems fairly likely that Alice Watson is the niece of Charles Wesley Cable, making her Harry’s first cousin! Born Alice Feaster in 1858, she married Herbert Watson in 1875 when she was just 16 years old.
Alice had her first son, Walter, when she was about 17, and a second son, Herbert, came along 4 years later. Three years later, their third and final child - a daughter, with Alice’s namesake - was born.
Herbert, Alice, and their three children lived in Wilmington, DE where Herbert worked as a prominent druggist in his pharmacy at 803 Market Street. His pharmacy was featured in hundreds of newspaper reports and ads throughout the late 19th century, and his successful business seemed to propel the family into community limelight. Daughter Alice, for example, was the chosen child in 1890 to christen a schooner, and in 1892, when the fourth annual Chrysanthemum show came to Delaware, one of the yellow blooms was named the Alice Watson.
As the three children aged, they went on to start families of their own. the oldest son, Walter, married Nellie Marchant in 1898. They welcomed their first and only daughter, Alice (appropriately named), in 1900. It seems the couple split before 1910, though - in 1910, Nellie and Alice were found living with Nellie’s parents, and Walter with his parents. Walter eventually remarried to Mary Beatty, with whom he had no children.
Herbert married Florence Rasin, and welcomed their first and only child, Herbert (also appropriately named) in 1907.
Finally, also in 1907, youngest daughter Alice, chrysanthemum queen, married George Fritz and they went on to have two children of their own. Any guesses on the names?
Herbert, born 1907, and Alicia, born 1916.
For all the life that the early 20th century brought the family, tragedy struck in the 1920s.
In early 1924, Walter came down with an illness that consumed him for a month, and on March 3, 1924, the unknown ailment finally took over. Walter, who had served in both the Spanish American War and WWI, and volunteered as a fireman in Wilmington, was dead. He was 47. A few months later, the Wilmington Fire Department held a service in Saint Paul’s Roman Catholic Church in Wilmington to honor Walter and three other firemen that died that year, inviting Rev. John Dolan to say a few words in their remembrance:
“All heroes are not dead; many times there are braver hearts among the living than there were among the dead.”
Interestingly, Walter’s first wife and only child were not mentioned as survivors in his obituary. The family chose to have a private funeral procession, choosing to forego the Fire Department’s offer to participate.
Just five months later, tragedy struck the family again.
Herbert and Alice’s second child, Herbert, died at 45 after being confined to bed for two weeks. He suffered from peritonitis, after being in a car accident months earlier during which his stomach was punctured by the steering wheel. Herbert, or Dr. H. J. Watson as he was officially known, was a bacteriologist for the state of Delaware and had been doing contracted work for the Attorney General’s office at the time of his death. He was survived by his wife and only child, his namesake, Herbert.
As the notice of his death states, Alice and Herbert Watson lost two of their children within the same year.
The last of their children, Alice, married a man by the name of George Fritz who worked as a furniture merchant. Together, they had two children - Herbert and Alicia - who grew up and had families of their own to whom we will attempt to return Alice Watson’s photo.
Alice Watson died in 1941 at the old age of 83, preceded in death by her husband Herbert. She is buried at Riverview Cemetery.
If you’re lucky, and digging through an antique store in Delaware or excavating an old building downtown, you may just come across a glass pharmacy bottle with the inscription “H. K. Watson, Pharmacist, Wilmington, Delaware”. Alice Watson surely saw many of these glass bottles in her lifetime.
Do you think you may be related to Alice Watson? Leave a comment below!