Brookline Historical Society
Photo Collection

Murita Odette Bonner
1899 – 1971. Parents: Joseph Andrew Bonner and Mary Ann Noel; married William Almy Occomy; lived at 221 Harvard St.

Her family moved to Brookline around the time of her birth in 1899. Her father then spent two decades as a live-in superintendent for Brookline apartment buildings - at 1369 Beacon from 1899 until circa 1911, then at 217-221 Harvard St. (still standing) until circa 1918 when the family purchased a home in Boston and Marita started college.

Marita Bonner was an accomplished author of short stories, essays, plays, and magazine articles and was prominent in the Harlem Renaissance. Her Wikipedia entry writes:

”She attended Brookline High School, where she contributed to the school magazine, The Sagamore. She excelled in German and Music, and was a very talented pianist. In 1917, she graduated from Brookline High School and in 1918 enrolled in Radcliffe College, commuting to campus because many African-American students were denied dormitory accommodation. In college, she majored in English and Comparative Literature, while continuing to study German and musical composition. At Radcliffe, African-American students were not permitted to board, and many either lived in houses off-campus set aside for black students, or commuted, as Bonner did. Bonner was an accomplished student at Radcliffe, founding the Radcliffe chapter of Delta Sigma Theta, a black sorority, and participating in many musical clubs (she twice won the Radcliffe song competition). She was also accepted to a competitive writing class that was open to 16 students, where her professor, Charles Townsend Copeland, encouraged her not to be "bitter" when writing, a descriptor often used for authors of color.[2] In addition to her studies, she taught at a high school in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

After finishing her schooling in 1922,[3] she continued to teach at Bluefield Colored Institute in West Virginia. Two years later, she took on a position at Armstrong High School in Washington, D.C., until 1930, during which time her mother and father both died suddenly. While in Washington, Bonner became closely associated with poet, playwright and composer Georgia Douglas Johnson. Johnson's "S Street salon" was an important meeting place for many of the writers and artists involved in the New Negro Renaissance.

While living in Washington D.C., Bonner met William Almy Occomy. They married and moved to Chicago, where Bonner's writing career took off. After marrying Occomy, she began to write under her married name. After 1941, Bonner gave up publishing her works and devoted her time to her family, including three children.[4] She began teaching again in the 1940s and finally retired in 1963.”
Norman Hill White
He owned a bookbinding firm and a publishing company, served as state representative from Brookline for five years, was a director of the Brookline National Bank, and was a director of the Brookline Friendly Society.

In 1896, he married Gertrude Steese. The wedding was held in the house of her parents at 105 Gardner Rd. and was considered to be a major event on the social calendar. The couple lived at several nearby locations until the death of Gertrude’s father, in 1902, when they moved in with her mother at the Gardner Road house. They continued to live at 105 Gardner Rd. unit his imprisonment in 1927.

He was an ally of Louis Brandeis, later the first Jewish justice of the United Supreme Court, in several policy battles and was a vigorous defender of Brandeis when the latter faced opposition to his appointment to the high court. Oddly, just four years after Brandeis’ accession to the court, White’s company published the first American edition of the anti-Semitic forgery The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. It is unclear what role White had in its publication; he worked in military intelligence during the First World War and may have been exposed to anti-Bolshevik, anti-Jewish propaganda. He later ran into financial difficulties and served two-and-a-half years in prison for larceny for securing bank loans based on false statements.
Helen Reed Jones, Brookline High School Class of 1897(?)
1878 - 1956; father: Jerome Jones; married, Philip Richardson Whitney, 17-Apr-1906, at her parent's house at 101 Summit Ave.

She is the only classmate to appear in more than one of the photos saved by Grace Mason Young. That’s most likely because they were the closest of friends, growing up across the street from one another on Summit Avenue. (Helen’s home at 101 Summit still stands, although much altered.) Helen studied painting at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. In 1906 she married MIT graduate Philip R. Whitney, an artist and an instructor of architecture at the University of Pennsylvania. Her work was exhibited in and around Philadelphia, as well as in New York, Chicago, and other cities. She and her husband summered on Nantucket for many years, and were active in the artist's colony there.
Helen Reed Jones, Brookline High School Class of 1897(?)
Photo #2
Helen Reed Jones, Brookline High School Class of 1897(?)
Photo #3; identity not confirmed
Marion Louise Sharp, Brookline High School Class of 1897; Historical Society Essay Winner, 1897
1878 - 1967; parents: Edward Sharp and Sophia Louise Robinson; lived at 12 Fairbanks St.

Her grandfather was Samuel A. Robinson who owned a tannery on Washington Street and lived in a house nearby where Marion was most likely born. He built a house in 1892 at 12 Fairbanks Street where three generations of the family lived. Marion was a winner of the J. Murray Kay Prize that year for her essay "Three Glimpses of Brookline: In 1700, 1800, and 1900. " She graduated from Smith College in 1901 and later taught school in Gloucester, Woburn, Brookline, and other towns.
John Reginald Marvin, Brookline High School Class of 1898; Historical Society Essay Winner, 1898
1879 - 1967; Essay: "Brookline's Relation to Norfolk County"; lived at 88 Perry St.

First cousin of Martha Frothingham Ritchie. Their grandfather Edward S. Ritchie was an inventor and the founder of E.S. Ritchie & Son, a manufacturer of nautical compasses and scientific instruments in Brookline Village. He was a co-winner with Grace Mason of the 1898 J. Murray Kay Prize for his essay "The Relation of Brookline to Norfolk County. " He earned a mechanical engineering degree from MIT and had a career as an engineer in the Boston area, the Midwest and, finally, Pennsylvania where settled with his wife Grace Field Marvin.
Thomas Irving Taylor, Brookline High School Class of 1898
1880 - 1977; Parents: Washington Irving Taylor and Ann Maria Bellamy; lived at 294 Walnut St.

His father was in the hat and fur business, worked for a railroad supply company and for Sprague Electric before managing Taylor Machinery, a metalworking firm in Boston. He was awarded a patent in 1921 for an automobile water gauge "so that---the driver may be informed at all times by visible means from his position when driving, whether or not the radiator water supply is in need of replenishment. " Tom, who was married twice and lived in Newton, later worked as a vault attendant for the Newton-Waltham Bank & Trust Co.
Marian Dudley Richards, Brookline High School Class of 1898
1879 - 1949; 1917: married, 1917, Bispham Homer Emerson; lived at 44 Linden St., later at 247 Fisher Ave.;

Graduated from the Tuckerman School on Beacon Hill. She became prominent in the Unitarian Universalist movement as a Sunday school teacher, superintendent, public speaker, and social worker. She was also active in support of peace movements and the welfare of Native Americans. She married fellow Unitarian activist B. Homer Emerson in in 1917 and continued to live in Brookline until her death.
Martha Frothingham Ritchie, Brookline High School Class of 1898
1881 - 1945; married Austin D Jenkins; lived at 268 Walnut Terrace

First cousin of John Reginold Marvin. Their grandfather Edward S. Ritchie was an inventor and the founder of E.S. Ritchie & Son, a manufacturer of nautical compasses and scientific instruments in Brookline Village. She worked for a time as a teacher. She married the architect Austin Jenkins in 1911 and moved to the Chicago area.
Ethel Ward Towle, Brookline High School Class of 1898
1880 - 1949; married George Haslet; born in Stafford Springs, CT; Father: Edward David Towle; lived at 31 Kent Sq.;

Her father was pastor of Brookline’s Second Unitarian Church, which was formed in 1896 and moved into its new building (now Temple Sinai) on Sewall Avenue in 1901. He was later pastor in Hillsborough, NH where, in 1921, he presided at Ethel’s marriage to widower George Haslet, president of the Hillsborough Woolen Mills. George died in 1928. Ethel moved to Boston where she died 21 years later.
Isabel McCleary, Brookline High School Class of 1898
1878 - 1915; born in Somerville; father: William C. McCleery;

Daughter of William C. McCleery, a button manufacturer, and his wife Ada. She lived at various times in Boston and Newton and appears only to have been Brookline for a short time. She married Stephen G. Doig, a lawyer, and died in 1915 at the age of 38, the shortest life by far of this generally long-lived group.
Beulah Duncklee, Brookline High School Class of 1898
1879 - 1969; daughter of Charles Tilton Duncklee and Sadie J. Brown; married Edward Bugbee; lived at 24 Williams St.

Daughter of Charles T. Duncklee, an attorney, and Sarah J. Duncklee. In 1901 she married Edward Bugbee , a Brookline native and a teacher of mining engineering and metallurgy at MIT . They lived in Brighton, though Beulah moved back to Brookline after her husband’s death.
Grace Bartlett Farquhar, Brookline High School Class of 1898
1880 - 1982; married Frederick Levitt; buried in Walnut Hills Cemetery; lived at 26 Gorham Ave.

Daughter of Joseph Farquhar, owner of a roofing company, she married at a younger age (21) than the other BHS grads in the photos. Her husband, Frederick Leavitt, was in the real estate and insurance business in Brookline and also served in town and country government. They lived in Brookline and later in Arlington. Grace died in Barnstable in 1982, having outlived all of the others in this group of BHS students.
Ella C. Fenno, Brookline High School Class of 1897(?)
1878 - 1936; married, 1904, married Charles Clough; lived at 3 Kilsyth Rd.

She is the only student not to appear in her own, formal, photo. Instead, she appears here with her arm around Helen Jones, one of four pictures of Helen in the Grace Mason set. Ella married Charles Clough, an insurance executive, in 1904. (They are mentioned together in Boston Globe social columns in 1900 (at a dance) and 1901 (at a Clough family home in Maine). Charles survived Ella by more than 30 years.
Maude Barrows Dutton, Brookline High School Class of 1898 (photo inscribed "1894".)
1880 - 1959; father: Samuel Train Dutton; attended Smith College; married: Frederick Lynch in N.Y in 1909; lived at 33 Colburne crescent;

Daughter of Samuel Train Dutton, the superintendent of schools in Brookline from 1890 to 1900. She moved to New York with her father when he became superintendent of the Horace Mann Schools run by Teachers College, Columbia University. Maud also followed her father in the education field, authoring a series of children’s books on "The World of Work" and on different countries and cultures. She married the Congregational minister, editor, and peace activist Frederick Lynch in 1909.
Sabina Marshall [speculative], Brookline High School Class of 1898
This is probably Sabina Marshall who lived at 69 Summit Ave.
Wilder Dwight, Lieutenant Colonel in the Civil War
Wilder Dwight, Lieutenant Colonel in the Civil War
Civil War Meeting
Far right: Captain George M. Barnard, born 1835 in Brookline
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