Partial transcript of tape recording made 26 July 1990 at 6 Trout Pond Lane, Chatham, Massachusetts; H is Howard DeVoe, K is Frank Kenneth DeVoe. They were looking at family photos that were probably from Marion DeVoe's estate.
H: Well, what about this one-room schoolhouse here?
K: Well, that's where Uncle Harry started out as a school teacher. He went to New Paltz, and that's why I guess Aunt Mary -- Marion went to New Paltz later on. I guess we told you, didn't we, that she had an MA from Columbia?
H: No.
K: She never told us that she was commuting to New York!
H: Aunt Marion?
K: Marion, yeah.
H: When was this?
K: Well, after she finished New Paltz some time, and whether it was before she started teaching in a one-room school house, or she needed something more --
H: When was Marion teaching in a one-room school house?
K: After she finished going to New Paltz -- that's a state normal school. She was somewhere where she had to travel to go there. I don't think she liked it. She ended up by working in Uncle Harry's lumber company. But she got this MA -- and she never said boo!
. . .
H: What about this picture?
K: Well, that's when we lived on the Anderson estate. We were living where, before this? I'm not sure where. But this was a -- right in White Plains, and it had been the estate of a rich person. And the estate was in litigation, and they needed somebody to take care of the place. Live in. And my father got the job. And then we had this big sixteen-room house, with wine cellars, vegetable cellars in the basement, to on the third floor a stage and auditorium, with a porch that was about sixty feet long -- I used to rollerskate on it and wave [?] back.
H: So that's what that picture is of.
K: Ah, this is a picnic grove [?] -- there're a lot of pine trees.
H: Could you identify the people sometime -- write on the back?
K: . . . Uncle Fred's sitting at the end; Millicent probably down here.
H: Uncle Fred!
K: My father's twin brother. My fishing uncle. See, I had fishing uncles, talking uncles -- Uncle Bill was the talking uncle. Uncle Ed was the -- another fishing uncle; but he was the stairbuilder craftsman. Uncle Bill was the sheet metal fellow -- and Uncle Art was -- drove a bakery truck. And that was great fun. Whenever we had a thing -- a picnic like this -- you know, he started work ordinarily at dawn or somewhere early. His route was in Scarsdale among other things - big houses [?] there - but when we were having a lunch thing [?] -- he had ordinarily himself - I would help him -- I would go with him and do the running -- I'd be on the run all morning and delivering these orders to these houses, and it was always impressed by the fact here we had the big houses and three-car garages and everything and in most cases the cars were not in the garages, they were just sitting out there, and everything was sort of wide open; and it was a lark -- I enjoyed doing it, it was fun, and it smelled so good in that bakery truck. It was Cushman's Bakery. The baked . . . weren't great in my mind at all, but they smelled good! And then later on he was also -- he worked for a milk company, delivering milk. Very quiet man. Never said boo. And his wife was as talkative as he was nontalkative.
H: Well, it would be good to get some of those names. And then the other one is this picnic at your father's house. You have a lot of people here, but some I don't recognize.
K: There's Freddy and Millie, Aunt Jessie, Harry and Mary, Marion, Cappie and Ida. Oh, Gladys, probably Elsie here --
H: Who were they?
K: They were Aunt Cappie's daughters. They were living out in Washington . . . I've got some pictures of them at their wedding I'm going to send out to Gladys. . . We're pretty sure that this was them -- Charles Troup -- he was the oldest son.
H: Well it says so here -- it says C. Troup on the back.
K: But his father was Charles Troup too.
H: Twelve years old -- we ought to be able to figure out from the kind of photograph. Let's see, do we have any other pictures for this photographer?
K: Well here's a later picture of Charles Troup. That's the younger -- that's my grandmother's --
H: They look the same to me.
K: I think they're the same.. . . . Now that is Aunt Cappie and Gladys, one of her daughters. . . . She had a wonderful husband, and he died suddenly -- Elsie's husband, and moved out there to Washington and worked with Boeing Company. . .
H: "Gladys and Charles Troup wed" -- I see, brother and sister. "Morgan Stickler and Abigail Armstrong." . . . '41. . . . Oh, slides. Kodachrome. . . . "Troup Wedding." A double wedding.
K: Yeah.
H: Whose house is this?
K: At the wedding? . . . Some member of the family in Chappaqua. I think it was Aunt Cappie's sister. I think that's what it was.
H: Don't you think they'd like to see these pictures?
K: I'm going to send them out.
H: I think you should.
. . .
K: Our car in our family was a used 1916 Buick, and it had a leather clutch which had to be treated with oil -- neatsfoot oil, otherwise it wouldn't grab. When you pressed the pedal in, the parts separated, and then when you released the pedal it was joined, and you were in gear. That's the car I learned to drive on.
H: I remember the black I think Model A?
K: . . . Uncle Fred had a black one. I can't remember what cars we had after that Buick.