Since we started creating and selling our annual Tiverton, R.I. calendars five years ago, thanks to THS Board member Caroline Wordell’s vision and MANY hours of effort each year, we have had several women grace the calendar since 2018. Among those highlighted have been: Nina Sunderland, Florence Gray Brow, Hazel Evelyn Carr, Helene Carr Riley, Lydia B. Essex, Emily Raposa Faris, Ferol Peckham, Edna Cory Snell, Calista Church Cottrell, Esther J. Manchester, and Myrtha M. Humphrey.
The last two named are featured in the 2020 calendar, which is only available now at Gray’s Ice Cream in Tiverton Four Corners, over the wall from our headquarters at Chace-Cory House. Their stories are recreated here, but if you want to read them again along with those of the ten men gracing the calendar, you’ll have to go buy one of your own to peruse at your leisure!
Esther Jane Manchester was born in Tiverton on October 17, 1864. The 1870 census finds her, at age five, living in the home of 72-year-old Fobes Manchester and 42-year-old Sybil Manchester, whose occupation was listed as “keeping house”. By the age of ten and through the 1880 census, she was listed as a sister-in-law living in the home of A.P. White.
In 1925, she went to board in the home of Hubert Cook and remained there until her death in 1943. Esther completed one year of college before accepting the position of librarian at the Union Public Library in 1891, where she fostered her love of books and her desire to help others find pleasure and knowledge in good literature. Esther retired in 1941 after serving nearly fifty years as a librarian.
Esther was an avid stamp collector and worked diligently to acquire stamps from the United States and countries all over the world. She was a lover of animals and stated that she thought anyone who abandoned a cat or dog should be “tarred and feathered.”
She was baptized and became a member of Amicable Congregational Church in 1887. In 1946, the Communion service was given in her memory by Mr. and Mrs. Hubert Cook.
Myrtha M. (Gear) Humphrey was born in Clay Center, Clay County, Kansas on June 6, 1878, the only daughter of John Clay Gear and Mary Jane (Hathaway) Gear. Myrtha had two brothers, William and John. She graduated from the University of Indiana in 1900 and the Rhode Island Normal School. She taught school in Tiverton until her marriage in 1904 to Ira Winsor Humphrey. They had two daughters, Lorene and Dorothy. Dorothy passed away when she was six years of age.
Myrtha and Ira were very active in Amicable Congregational Church. They donated one of the stained glass windows in memory of Ira’s father, Peleg Humphrey. Stained glass windows in both of their names were subsequently donated. The bibles in the pews were donated in Myrtha’s memory in 1970, and the parking lot and pathway to the front door were paved in memory of both Ira and Myrtha.
Myrtha served on the Tiverton School Committee for thirty-nine years, twenty-five of those as its president. She was a member of the Women’s Club of Fall River, the Newport County Women’s Club, the Tiverton Garden Club, the women’s board of Truesdale Hospital, the National Federation of Republican Women, the Gaspee Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution, and the Tiverton Historical Society. To say she was active in the community would be an understatement! Myrtha passed away on August 12, 1967.