Audrey Mae Spencer

Audrey: I just had breakfast. I sit and read and look out the window. Two old ladies walk by every day. I’m reading Huckleberry Finn and The Christmas Carol by Dickens. Nothing stays much in my head.

Audrey: Well, it is raining. Ernie is working on the house. He works all day. Danny, his son, meets him on the roof.

Buddy doesn’t like the rain.

I had a great time–a wonderful week–I did something every day. I’m having a good time.

Audrey: My father’s mother, Anna Maria (pronounced Anna Mar-eye-ah), came to stay with us. I was quite little and they talked about her all the time. I was little but I know what was said. Grandmother died and the coffin was in the front room. I was quite little and couldn’t see up in the casket. I knew it was my grandmother. I was big enough to understand.

My mother’s father,  Charles Vaughn*, was tall and always wore dark boots. His brother Christopher was tall and thin also. They are buried at the Vaughn Historical Cemetery in the Fairground by Barton’s Corners. The Vaughn homestead was there where the Fairground used to be. They had a blacksmith shop on our land. I could always hear banging from the shop. It must have been my grandfather Vaughn. When my mother’s mother died, I remember going over to her house and the casket or bed was behind the door. I never remember seeing my great-grandmother.

*Charles and Lydia Edith Vaughn’s, Audrey’s maternal grandparents’, homestead is by the 95 Freeway and Route 2 and Division Road.

Charles Vaughn

The Vaughn Homestead – Lydia Edith and Charles Vaughn, Martha, Susan, MaryJane, Walter, Ebin

Anna Maria Spencer

Audrey: I never remember seeing it with a Y! All I ever heard was Anna Mirah. The writing on stones was not professional. I don’t ever remember seeing a “y”, I was 1-1/2 years old when she died. I walked around the casket. I couldn’t see in but I walked around it.

*Anna Maria (pronounced Mar-eye-ah) was Audrey Mae’s paternal grandmother. Audrey always referred to her grandmother as Anna Mirah (aka Myriah).  An outside explanation of Maria being pronounced as Mar-eye-ah is in a book, “Play It As It Lays” by Joan Didion.

Audrey: Oh, I can’t remember now, but it is all written down somewhere.

Violet Kettelle

Audrey: Her aunt married Joseph Jason Spencer who was a grandson of Deacon* Richard.  Joseph Jason was an angel, but all the Kettelles thought he was lazy.

* Richard Anthony (“Deacon”) Spencer

Audrey Mae Spencer R.I.S.D. Student

Audrey: I had two black cases to put things in. The smaller pieces went in the smaller case and I slipped both cases under my bed. The big papers that couldn’t be folded were put in the larger black case. The painted fruit on the oil canvas, we hung up.

Oil Painting,Drape,Pitcher Apple and Bowl

Audrey: I went (both ways) on the train.  We would get off the train and walk to school. We would cross over the bridge that was right before the School of Design. We went to the edge and there was a door there to go in the School of Design.  On my way home to the train, I would buy an apple for five cents from a handsome young man standing there selling apples.

I’ll never forget the time, Maisie and I walked home from the School of Design. We did it! We went along. We tried it!^*

*The distance between RISD and 742 Washington Street in Coventry, R.I. where Audrey lived was around 15 miles.

Audrey: It is raining and the leaves are dropping. The trees will be bare pretty soon. I’m getting old. I’m happy I’m here. I have the cat and Buddy (the dog) for friends. Buddy carts a rag baby around in his mouth, and he looks so happy every time he finds it.