Betsey Anna Wiggin Bailey Fairbanks Smith (1864-1939)
Betsey Anna Wiggin, known primarily as Anna, was born on August 10, 1864. Her parents were Thomas Wiggin, Jr. and Charlotte Sumner (1823-1900). Charlotte Sumner was the daughter of Joseph Sumner (1797-1877) (lot 52) and his first wife, Charlotte Rhoads Sumner (1800-1823). Charlotte Rhoads Sumner died following the birth of her daughter, Charlotte Sumner.
Charlotte Sumner, Anna’s mother, married three times. She married Moses S. Fairbanks in 1841 and they had two children: Joseph Lyman Fairbanks (1842-1890) and Mary F. Fairbanks (1844-1845). Moses F. Fairbanks died on July 20, 1845 of inflammation. Charlotte Sumner Fairbanks married Lorenzo J. Davis in 1846. The had one child, Susan Sumner Davis (1850-1907). Although the death of Lorenzo Davis has not been found, Charlotte Sumner Fairbanks Davis married Thomas Wiggin, Jr. in December of 1853. They had five children: a stillborn infant, Frederick, Morton, Russell, and Betsey Anna. Thomas Wiggin died in 1879; Charlotte passed away on April 26, 1900.
On January 21, 1882, Betsey Anna Wiggin married Fred M. Bailey. Born in 1860, he was the son of Charles and Julia Bailey (lot 30). On January 8, 1896, Fred Bailey died. The Norwood Advertiser and Review reported that Bailey had died in his home on Washington Street after an illness of three weeks. One source reported the cause as pneumonia, another attributed his death to typhoid fever. He was 35 years old. Fred was an oil cloth painter and was employed in the carpenter’s shop at the railroad Car Shops. He was very popular among his fellow employees and “was mourned by a large circle of friends.” The obituary makes no mention of his wife. Fred Bailey was buried in his father’s lot 30 in Old Parish.
On December 13, 1898, Anna Wiggin Bailey married Daniel C. Fairbanks. It was the second marriage for each. Fairbanks had been born in Newton, and, like Fred Bailey, was a painter at the New York & New Haven Railroad Car Shops. The couple had one child, Sumner Fairbanks, in 1902 and lived at 16 Talbot Street in Norwood. On August 6, 1916, Daniel C. Fairbanks died of Bright’s disease, a disease of the kidney. He was interred in Anna’s grandfather Joseph Sumner’s lot (lot 52) in Old Parish.
On June 4, 1917, Anna Wiggin Bailey Fairbanks married Hugh Gray Smith. Smith had been born in Scotland in 1873 and was a conductor on the New York & New Haven Railroad. It was his first marriage, her third. The couple were residing at 16 Philbrick Street in Norwood when Hugh Gray Smith completed his draft card in 1918.
They were still residing there when Anna (Wiggin Bailey Fairbanks) Smith died on September 1, 1939 at the age of 76. Anna was buried in her grandfather Joseph Sumner’s family lot 52 in Old Parish. Neither she nor her first two husbands, Fred M. Bailey (lot 30) and Daniel C. Fairbanks (lot 52) have their names engraved on the Bailey or Sumner family tombstones.
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