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Belle's Button Box - - June 3, 2002 A few years ago I inherited from my mother a small, brown wooden box about eleven inches wide, eight inches deep and four inches high. It had a hinged cover complete with lock and key, and in it was about 1000 buttons and a hand-written note signed by my great-grandmother, Belle M. (Fisk) Charlton. The note is in a slightly shaky hand indicating it was written when she was old, and says: "This little box was rescued from the Charleston So Carolina during the War for the Negro by M H A Evans & N B Fisk who had charge of the Freedmans Burow. Given to Belle Fisk Charlton at East Boston 1870 by brother Rev M H A Evans 229 Princeton St E Boston" To understand who MHA Evans is, I will explain that Belle's mother, Mary Ann Gorton, was born in Avon, Livingston, New York in 1818 and married first, Miner Harlow Evans by whom she had a child, Miner Harlow Evans, Jr., born in 1842. Miner senior died that same year, so she married, second, Sewell Cotton Fisk, b. 1816. Researching Miner's family tree I found that he had a grandmother named Susanna Fifield. I knew that Belle had a grandmother named Sarah Fifield, and a little probing showed that they were sisters. This means that Mary Ann and Sewell married each other as first cousins, so Miner H A Evans and Belle were second cousins as well as half-brother and sister. Mary Ann died in Abbotsford, Quebec, Canada when Belle was only two. Sewell then appears to have married Angeline Sargent, who was at that time about 55, some 15 years older than Sewell. Angeline's father's name was Erastus, which may explain the penciled note in great-grandfather Emanuel Charlton's papers that say "Uncle Erastus?" Belle's half-brother, Miner, and her older natural brother, Nathan, were working for the Freedman's Bureau, an organization set up after the Civil War (which Belle refers to as the "War for the Negro") to settle newly freed slaves. Their duties took them to Charleston, SC where they "rescued" the "little box." When they gave the box to Belle she was only 19. She was born and baptized as Bellona but the name was changed at an early date to Belle, with an "e," but inside the box she has printed her name with one of those do-it-yourself printing kits and spells it "Bell," without the "e." Seeing these things which Belle owned makes her nearer and dearer to us, but at this gathering she was even more so with us because in the room was her grand-daughter, Ona (Charlton) Fellows who acquired the discarded "ona" from the original Bellona, her grand-son Malcolm Fisk Charlton who was given her maiden name as a middle name, Ona's daughter Donna Belle (Fellows) Estep, and Belle's great-grand-daughter Dorothy Belle (Murdock) Salminen. The box, then, dates to pre-Civil War and the approximately 1,000 buttons in it probably from about 1860 to about 1935. The vast majority of the buttons are black or very dark brown, and only a few have any color to them. There are several metal fasteners that only women would recognize the use of, and a few buttons that are small round decorative things. Two sets of buttons have writing on them, both in French, one translates to "solid garantee" and the other says, in French, "Tresse de Paris." Tresse is a tricky word that usually means "flirt" when applied to a young lady, but becomes almost derogatory when applied to an older woman. I trust Belle acquired this piece of fashion at a very young age. I shall get some books on old buttons and see what they have to say about these gems and report in a later article. At the Charlton family gathering on Memorial Day I showed this box and its contents and told the story. Then I set out one bag of the buttons from which each person was invited to take a souvenir of a button once owned by Belle Fisk Charlton. If you were not at the gathering and are a direct descendant of Belle I would be glad to send you a button along with this story and a picture of the box, its contents, and Belle's note. |
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