The Adams - Perry Connection: The Hubbell Sisters

Over a year ago I was researching Georgiana Adams Mills and Mason Tyler Adams, brother and sister. I discovered that Mason's wife Juliette later married a Lewis Perry who has a principal at Exeter Academy - an interesting note that I would want to research further. It caught my eye because Phillips Exeter has the highest of reputations among schools, and here it was, a woman connected to our family had married the principal, a man who held the position for over three decades, and, I would read yesterday, who was responsible for bringing in the Harkness investment that resulted in the Harkness method and seminar tables. (My most brilliant teacher in high school at the Forum School of Rome, and probably college and graduate school too, was an Exeter graduate, Edward Steinberg. He put the school on the map for me.) I didn't know if Mason and Juliette had divorced, or what the circumstances were, but I was very intrigued to see a connection with Exeter.

On a side note, until yesterday, I had not discovered a picture I could identify as Mason. I have photos of his sister Georgiana, including a young one of her in a Persian Lamb duster and muffs from perhaps the 1890s. Yesterday I noticed I had a photo connected with Mason's wife's sister, Margaret Lawrie Hubbell. Turns out she Dr. Lewis Perry's first wife. The photo was taken on their wedding day, 11 Nov 1911. I studied the photo, and triple checked the family tree that was taking shape on MyHeritage.com, then I found it.

I discovered that it was a number of years after Mason's death in 1933 that Juliette married Dr. Perry. Then that Mason had died first, so Juliette was a widow. I wondered how she met Dr. Perry.

Then I saw the photo, this photo. (I don't recall its provenance, but in the interest of family history, if it is not one in my possession, I trust I shall be forgiven.)

Left to right:

Mason Tyler Adams and his wife Juliette Emily Hubbell (b. 1880), and one of their daughters. Ruth Rositer Hubbell (b. 1886), Margaret Lawrie Hubbell (b. 1881) with her husband Dr. Lewis Perry.

First I identified Dr. Perry on the far right, on his wedding day, his bride I knew to be Margaret Lawrie, who I discovered was Juliette's sister. Since there are three young women standing side-by-side in a wedding photo, they might be sisters. The woman holding a baby, would likely be the older sister Juliette, who had two daughters about the age of 1 (tho only one in the photo). The girl in the middle might be the youngest sister, and the man next to Juliette, Mason, her first husband.

Does that sound about right? Reasonable? Perhaps it only became clear after studying dates and histories and the family tree.

A little more research online and I found that a Bishop Perry both married the Perry couple, and baptized Juliette Emily Adams, daughter of Mason and Juliette on the same day, November 11, 1911. (The bishop might have been James De Wolf Perry III. Though he shares Lewis' last name I could not find a ready connection.)

Finding the same day baptism and wedding with Bishop Perry would seem to fully confirm the photo's subjects are as identified.

Dr. Perry and Margaret would have two children together. Mason Adams and Juliette had two girls. So in 1938, when widow ed Juliette marries her sister's widower, the family became a family of six.