A new century

Frances Giles Boucher Frances Giles Boucher

My review of almost sixty years’ worth of Baltimore city directories has yielded much information on my great-great-great-grandfather E. W. Boucher; my great-great-grandfather William Boucher Jr. (1822–1899) and his two wives; and many of William Jr.’s children and -in-laws. In the 1904 city directory, we find Mrs. Frances Boucher[1] at 1718 Linden Avenue with her sons Louis A. and Carlos H. Boucher, clerks. Thomas J. Wentworth, “Proprietor of Saturday Review” and husband of the younger Frances Boucher, is nearby at 1731 Linden Avenue; his temporary office in the year of the Great Baltimore Fire is at 17 East Saratoga Street. Pauline Boucher's husband Edward H. Glidden, architect, has a temporary office at 419 North Charles Street, and he resides in a building of his own design, the Cecil Apartments[2] at 1123 North Eutaw Street.

At this point, Frances Giles Boucher’s younger children are nearly grown: Emile Gabriel Boucher (1886–1950) will turn 18 in 1904, while Constance Marie Boucher (1887–1977) will be 17. Mrs. Boucher’s only surviving stepchild, Francis Xavier Boucher (1854–1927), was long-since established in the District of Columbia, with children old enough to marry.

In the 1905 city directory, Gertrude Boucher’s husband David Donovan is perhaps the salesman living at 1110 Bolton Avenue. Edward H. Glidden, still at The Cecil, has an office at 301 North Charles Street.[3] A year later, Mrs. Frances Boucher and her youngest sons – Carlos and Emile – are listed at 1718 Linden Avenue; Thomas J. Wentworth is still at 1731 Linden Avenue, with an office at 217 North Calvert Street.[4]

In 1908, Carlos H. and Emile G. Boucher, clerks, are listed with their mother at the house on Linden Avenue; Henry P. S. Stone, clerk, is living at 320 West Biddle Street; Thomas J. Wentworth is at The Walbert Apartments; and my great-grandfather Edward H. Glidden has two listings, as an architect with an office at 4 Glenn Building (16 St. Paul Street) and a residence in The Cecil, and as treasurer of the Maryland Apartment House Company (care of The Cecil). L. Claude Burch, who would marry Constance Boucher in 1912, is a solicitor with an office at 441 Equitable Building and a residence at 1005 North Charles Street.[5]

There is no electronic version of the 1910 Baltimore city directory handy, but as a year of the Federal Census I have quite a lot of information available to me. Sixty years after the 1850 census, which listed two Boucher households in Baltimore with fewer than ten family members split between them, in 1910 the family has grown quite large:

  • William Boucher Jr.’s widow Frances, 67, lives at 1718 Linden Avenue with her children Josephine Stone, 42 (and her children); Carlos H., 32, security agent; Florence E., 30; Emile G., 23, plumbing supply salesman; and Constance M., 22.[6]
  • Frank X. Boucher, 56, music store manager, is shown at 1324 Columbia Road in the District of Columbia with his wife (of 35 years) Margaret H., 53, mother of eight children, five of whom were living; their children Edward L., 21, automobile clerk at a hotel, and Dorothy E., 12; and their son-in-law James A. Stoutenburgh, 24, clerk in a railroad office, and daughter Adele B., 24, married for one year.[7] Joseph H. Pilling, 31, automobile engineer and native of the District of Columbia, is in Mount Vernon, Fairfax County, Virginia, with his wife (of 9 years) Mary I. [Boucher], 28, a native of Maryland,[8] and Mary’s brother Milton J. Boucher, 22, piano salesman, lodges at 459 West 151st Street in Manhattan in the household of Thomas F. Collar, 32.[9]
  • Frank Reed, 41, meats salesman, is at 857 Highland Avenue in Philadelphia with his wife (of 7 years) Blanch, 31 [sic], and her son Gordon C. Reed [the former William Viers Cumming Boucher], 13.[10]
  • Thomas J. Wentworth, 61, writer of stories, lives at 1800 Charles Street in Baltimore with his wife (of 7 years) Frances M., 31.[11]
  • Charles W. Hogan, 40, construction superintendent, is shown at 28 Third Street in Lawton, Comanche County, Oklahoma, with his wife (of 13 years) Marie B., 38, and their son Charles B., 7.[12]
  • Edward H. Glidden, 37, architect, lives in the Cecil Apartments with his wife Pauline B., 35, and their children Edward H., 9, Pauline, 7, and Minerva [sic for Miriam], 6.[13]
  • Louis C. Burch, 29, solicitor for weather stripping, lodges at 804 North Calvert Street in Baltimore.[14]

I make that thirty people connected to William Boucher Jr. in 1910! and, of course, the absence of the Donovans – and William M.[15] and Louis A. Boucher – understates the total.

Continued here.

Notes

[1] Mary Frances Giles (1843–1923) was married to William Boucher Jr. 1865–99.

[2] B. R. Sheriff, comp., R. L. Polk & Co.’s Baltimore City Directory for 1904, pp. 246, 1758, 648. I find no reference to Harry P./Henry P. S. Stone and Josephine B. Stone (p. 1600); David P. Donovan and Gertrude B. Donovan (p. 478); or Charles W. Hogan and Marie B. Hogan (p. 802).

[3] R. L. Polk & Co., Baltimore City Directory… (1905), pp. 493, 665. In the 1905 edition, Frances, Louis, and Carlos Boucher appear as before (p. 254), as do the Wentworths (p. 1805); again, there is no reference to the Stone family (p. 1650) or the Hogans (p. 825).

[4] R. L. Polk & Co., Baltimore City Directory… (1906), pp. 263–64, 2082. The Gliddens are at the same addresses as in 1905 (p. 703), and I find no mention of the Stones (pp. 1925, 1926), the Donovans (p. 515), or the Hogans (p. 871). In 1907, Mrs. Frances Boucher and her sons Carlos H. and Emile are at 1718 Linden Avenue (p. 277), Thomas J. Wentworth is at The Walbert Apartments (corner Charles Street and Lafayette Avenue) (p. 372), and Edward H. Glidden’s office is in the Glenn Building at 16 St. Paul Street (p. 768), another building he designed.

[5] R. L. Polk & Co., Baltimore City Directory… (1908), pp. 364, 1880, 2042, 821, 422. In 1909, Emile G. Boucher is a commercial traveler living with his brother Carlos H., clerk, and mother Frances on Linden Avenue (p. 368). T. Stanley and Thomas J. Wentworth of the Saturday Review have offices at 214 North Calvert Street; Thomas’s residence is still at the Walbert Apartments (p. 2061). Interestingly, listed between Stanley and Thomas in the directory are the Wentworth Apartments, also designed by Edward H. Glidden, at the corner of Cathedral and Mulberry Streets. Glidden’s appearance in the 1909 edition is more modest, with reference to his office in the Glenn Building and continuing residence at the Cecil Apartments (p. 826).

[6] 1910 Federal Census, T624_557, pp. 243A-243B.  Josephine Stone’s children were Josephine M., 20; Marie, 18, listed as an automobile “mechanician” [in error for her brother?]; and Harry S., 17.

[7] 1910 Federal Census, T624_155, p. 154A.

[8] 1910 Federal Census, T624_1628, p. 134B.

[9] 1910 Federal Census, T624_1025, p. 131B.

[10] 1910 Federal Census, T624_1406, p. 4A.

[11] 1910 Federal Census, T624_556, p. 64A.

[12] 1910 Federal Census, T624_1248, p. 214B.

[13] 1910 Federal Census, T624_556, p. 149B.

[14] 1910 Federal Census, T624_556, p. 24B.

[15] He is perhaps the William Boucher, 42, who in 1910 is listed as an inmate at Springfield State Hospital in Carroll Co., Maryland. 1910 Federal Census, T624_562, p. 134A.

Scott C. Steward

About Scott C. Steward

Scott C. Steward has been NEHGS’ Editor-in-Chief since 2013. He is the author, co-author, or editor of genealogies of the Ayer, Le Roy, Lowell, Saltonstall, Thorndike, and Winthrop families. His articles have appeared in The New England Historical and Genealogical Register, NEXUS, New England Ancestors, American Ancestors, and The Pennsylvania Genealogical Magazine, and he has written book reviews for the Register, The New York Genealogical and Biographical Record, and the National Genealogical Society Quarterly.View all posts by Scott C. Steward