The Sayward-Robbins Line
William Henry Sayward, Jr. was born in Dorchester, MA. He had a brother, Percival, and a sister, Margaret Elise. He went to M.I.T. and then to Harvard Medical School. After graduation, he practiced first in Dorchester and then in Wayland MA. He met his future wife, Mary Parkman Robbins, on a train going to New York for the house party of family friends Mr. And Mrs. Barnard. They were married in 1900 in Hingham, MA where Mary had been living with her uncle, Dr. And Mrs. James H. Robbins. After 1911 he was unable to practice because of severe depression, and was in and out of psychiatric hospitals for the rest of his life. He showed an artistic bent through his photography and writing, which would have been a more satisfying career for him.
Mary Parkman Robbins was born in Calais, ME. She had one sister, Alice Mayhew Robbins, who died at the age of 34. Mary, or “Molly” as she was known to her friends, studied art and culture at the Mary C. Wheeler School, in Providence RI, where she met life-long friends Alice Philippa Chase and Maude Bemis. Molly and Will had four children. As it became increasingly difficult to live with Will’s illness in Wayland, she moved with her two youngest children, Mary and John, to Cambridge in 1923. She took several trips to Europe with Philippa, and taught art to children in several Boston area communities. She became a member of the education Department of the Museum of Fine Arts where she led tours until her move to Lexington to live with her daughter Mary and son-in-law Charlie.
Charles Parkman Robbins was born in Calais, ME. He had two brothers, John Augustus and James Henry, and a sister, Annie Eliza. Another sister, Jane, died at the age of 5. He worked with his father at the Tremble Shoe Store in Calais. His brother Gus never married and was a world traveler until he was swept away by an avalanche in Grinelwald, Switzerland in 1892. During Gus’s many travels he brought back lovely art pieces from Egypt, Japan and Europe, which reside in the Treasure box that his daughters Mary and Alice put together. It was because of Gus’s untimely death that his sister Annie connected with a second cousin, Mary C. Wheeler, opening the door for Mary Robbins to go to school at the Wheeler School.
Carrie Augusta Sewall was a school teacher originally from Farmington, ME. She married Charles Parkman Robbins in 1872 and died at the age of 34 when her daughters Mary and Alice were 10 and 8. The girls were cared for by their Aunt Annie Eliza until they were old enough to go away to school.
James Robbins and Mary Augusta Parkman lived in Concord and Waltham respectively, until they moved by sea-going packet from Boston to Calais, ME. James found work at the Tremble Shoe Store, where his son Charles P. later joined him. Mary Augusta was the daughter of Mary “Polly” Dix, and grew up on the old Paine Estate which later became the Lyman Estate we know today. In her later years Polly lived with James and Mary Augusta. (See “The Rose Garden - Mary Augusta” from A Moment Stilled.) She stiched the sampler dated 1795 which hung on the wall of Mary P. Sayward’s apartment and then in the home of Charlie and Polly Cole for many years. The sewing box that served as my grandmother’s Treasure Box first belonged to either Mary Augusta or her mother, Polly Dix.
William Henry Sayward lived with his wife Caroline Barnard in Dorchester, MA until his death in 1934. During their last years together Caroline became blind. (See the poem “My Grandparents- the Last Photograph” from A Moment Stilled.) The accompanying photograph was taken in their Dorchester home. William was a decendent of the brother of Jonathan Sayward, owner of the Sayward House in York, ME.
