“Way down in Maine there is a family of nine motherless grandchildren ”

___Mellie Dunham, letter to Norway Advertiser, 1926

Ethna Pearl Dunham Noble died in 1918, immediately after her ninth child, a daughter named Pearl after her mother, was born. Ethna Noble’s death left Nate and the Dunhams with nine children to raise, ranging in age from newborn to 19 years old. Nate and his family were living next door to Mellie and Emma on Crockett Ridge; and the Dunhams assumed a major role in raising the children. Money was never plentiful. When Mellie decided to perform in vaudeville in January 1926, he was unapologetic about taking advantage of the commercial opportunity. The Norway Advertiser reprinted comments from the Baltimore Sun lamenting the idea of promoters and the media taking advantage of an old man and his wife, allowing them to be turned into a public spectacle. Mellie replied:

“I see the ‘Baltimore Sun’ thinks it a pity that the old man’s head got ‘turned.’ I don’t think Sun man quite understands. Little old white haired Mellie is foolish, just like a fox. He started out to earn a little money. He has earned a little - not so much perhaps, but some, and if his health holds out, hopes to earn more for a purpose. Way down in Maine he has a family of nine motherless grandchildren. The youngest, 7 years old. He is not wealthy, worth perhaps a little. He has lived his ‘three score and ten.’ The rest of his life belongs to someone else. Who? To those nine grandchildren, and the one great grandson. Now, I have a chance to help those kids more than ever before and if I do not do it, the “Sun” man should call me the lowest kind of a cuss.”

Nate and the children, early 1920's: Rear, L to R, Ethna, Floretta, Alanson, Rose; Front, Orrin, Cherry, Mellie, Pearl, Amos, Lona.

Most of the children were musical in some way; but it was Cherry, born in 1905, who took her mother’s place in the orchestra, by 1920 or so playing the piano for dances at the Heywood Club and elsewhere, having learned on the pump organ at home. She also performed alone, playing and singing in programs at the Norway Grange and elsewhere.

Cherry had a tale of overcoming physical handicaps that rivals Uncle Harrison Noble’s. In 1924 she fell down the cellar stairs carrying an armload of firewood, and smashed an elbow so badly that it had to be removed. Doctors constructed a new joint, from celluloid, which made it possible for her to use the arm, and to continue playing the piano.

The local programs Cherry and her neighbors participated in could become quite elaborate. When the Dunhams’ 50th wedding anniversary came along on October 3, 1925, the Heywood Club found out late, and had only four days to plan a celebration. In this time they arranged to have invitations printed in the newspapers, planned an elaborate ceremony, and baked and decorated two cakes. Club member Mrs. S.I. Jackson wrote a poem for the occasion, which she read during the ceremony. The club house was decorated with streamers and autumn leaves. The Dunhams were marched in by two grandchildren, to songs and music by Cherry and others, and seated in a kind of bower decorated with leaves. Then, says the Norway Advertiser account of the affair, “the entire company of over a hundred formed in line and showered them with autumn leaves. It proved to be a veritable shower of greens and gold to the amount of at least one dollar for every year they had been married.”

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