The story of another veteran teacher at Wakefield Public Schools receives our Women’s History Month profile today. This one is particularly dear to our hearts, as you will see in her profile. The Wakefield Daily Item ran a page one story upon her retirement: “Miss Mabel Adelaide Kernan, of 20 Gould Street, principal of the…
Born just two years after the town officially changed its name to Wakefield, Eva Gowing was the daughter of Horace and Louisa (Day) Gowing, who had moved here from Wilmington, where the Gowing family name was well known to historians as one of the region’s pioneer families. She grew up in Wakefield and graduated from…
Today’s Women’s History Month profile looks to a woman devoted to the Town of Wakefield. Described as “one of the most active women since World War II,” Catherine E. Simpson was a native and life-long resident of Wakefield. For more than two decades, she played a vital role in Wakefield’s civic and social life. A…
For today’s Wakefield’s Women profile, the Wakefield Historical Society will salute one of its own in the person of Miss Ruth A. Woodbury. Born of ancient Yankee stock in 1902, Ruth was the daughter of Dr. Frank Woodbury (who descended from Mayflower settlers) and Mary H. Whittle Woodbury, who traced her own lineage to the…
Today’s “Women in Wakefield” profile is one that was only recently discovered. It focuses on Miss Sophia Knight. Sophia Knight was born in 1820 and by the 1860 Census, she was living with her family in South Reading. When the war broke out, she determined to devote herself to help the “freedmen.” Remarkable among women…
Wakefield Historical Society 