Charlie and Pauline Maxfield, 1940
CHARLES ALBERT9 MAXFIELD, Junior (Charles8-7, Warren6-5, Timothy4-3-2, John1) was born at Fairhaven, Bristol County, Massachusetts, on 10 January 1913,[1] son of Charles Albert Maxfield, Senior and his wife Bertha Harriet Tirrell. He died at New Bedford, Bristol County, on 24 June 1994.[2] He married at New Bedford on 3 June 1939 PAULINE HATHAWAY KRUMBHOLZ.[3] She was born at New Bedford on 20 December 1918, the daughter of George B. Krumbholz and his wife Harriet Marie Hathaway.[4] She died at Cortland, Cortland County, New York on 31 July 2007.[5]
Charles was called Junior as a boy, and Charlie as an adult. He graduated from Fairhaven High School in 1930. Beginning in 1931 he received private lessons in boat design drafting for about five years.[6]
Charlie met Pauline Krumbholz at a dance at the Fairhaven Grange. They were marreid at Trinity Methodist Church, New Bedford, by Rev. Spurrier. Before they were married, Pauline and Charlie had an experience in the 1938 hurricane, the memories of which remained vivid all of their lives. For a description of that hurricane experience, see below.[7]
Pauline grew up in New Bedford, the second of two children. She was baptized and received into membership of Trinity Methodist Church, New Bedford, in 1933.[8] She graduated from New Bedford High School in January, 1937.[9] She studied hairdressing at Wilfred Academy, Boston, in 1938.[10]
Charlie held a number of jobs through the years. After the Second World War, he changed jobs often, as veterans had preference in hiring. He finally settled down as a boat builder in boat yards in Mattapoisett, Plymouth County, Massachusetts. His jobs included:[11]
Pauline worked for her mother at Harriet's Beauty Shop, New Bedford, 1938 to 1940. From 1961 to 1982 she worked part time as church secretary at First Congregational Church, United Church of Christ, Fairhaven.[12]
Charlie and Pauline were active in Fairhaven Grange #363. Charlie served as Master in 1943 and 1944, Pauline was master in 1957, 1958, and 1964. They were charter members of East Fairhaven Parent Teachers' Association, Charlie serving as its second President. Pauline was a charter member and President of League of Women Voters, Fairhaven Chapter, in 1954. She was frequently active in Republican Party politics, and vice-chairman of the Republican Town Committee. As she could not serve as an officer of the League of Women Voters and a member of a party's town committee at the same time, she occasionally alternated between those organizations. She was vice-chairman of the town committee in 1956, president of the League again in 1957. Charlie was a volunteer fireman in Fairhaven for 26 years. Pauline was regent of Fort Phoenix Chapter, D. A. R. Charlie was brought up in First Congregational Church, Fairhaven, but did not become a member until the rest of the family joined, on 25 March 1956. On that date he and Pauline, their two children, and Pauline's parents all joined.[13]
Charles Maxfield, Jr., held the office of Sewer and Water Commissioner in the Town of Fairhaven from 1962 to 1971.[14]
The last few years of her life, Pauline lived with her son at Cortland, New York. Charlie and Pauline are both buried at Naskatucket Cemetery, Fairhaven.[15]
Polly Ann graduated from Fairhaven High School in 1959 and received a B.S. in Fashion and Design from the New Bedford Institute of Technology (now University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth) in 1963. She later took courses from the University of Delaware and the University of Hartford (Connecticut) to qualify her to teach school. In 1980 she received a Masters Degree in Art Education from the University of Hartford. Polly Ann taught Art in the Westbrook (Middlesex County, Connecticut) school system from 1974 to 1998.[16]
Polly Ann Maxfield married Paul John Jarusik at the First Congregational Church, Fairhaven, in 1963. The couple followed Paul's work, living at New Milford, Bergen County, New Jersey, for a year, and in the Wilmington, New Castle County, Delaware, area for eight years. Their two children were born in Delaware. Polly Ann then moved to Old Saybrook, Middlesex County, where she remained for several decades and where her children grew up.[17]
Polly Ann and Paul separated in 1977 and were divorced in September 1978. She married Joseph Nanfito in 1979. Polly Ann and Joe met through their common interest in barbershop singing. Polly Ann has sung in Sweet Adeline choruses and quartets and has directed choruses in both Connecticut and Florida, where they now live.[18]
Charles Albert Maxfield, Jr., and his wife Pauline Hathaway Krumbholz had the following children:
Charlie and Pauline Maxfield remember September 21, 1938:
Charlie: We were gonna go to the Springfield Fair--and we just got part way--and it was a rainy day--gloomy--and we came across these rivers that were running over--and finally we had to turn back--and the wind was blowing. Signs were shaking along the road.
Pauline: And he said, 'Let's go down to Marion. My mother and father are there, and it's great down there when the wind is blowing through the pines.' So we went to Marion. And when we got there . . . We had to leave the car 'cause the water was over the road. We left the car and we walked down--we walked around the water and came down--and the water was around the house. So he said, 'My mother and father are in that house.' So he went into the bathhouse and put on his bathing suit. And me--I had suede shoes with the gilley top--a little flap that hangs over--and I had a woolen skirt.
Charlie: I got a big life ring and a hundred feet of rope. I had already tried to dump the boat--remember the skiff--every time I went to dump it and set it back in--up would come a wave and it'd go right in! It was way up on the lawn beyond the cottage.
Pauline: So he said, 'I'll go down and you stand here.'
Charlie: The driveway was about 150 feet long. We had to go in the water because the rope wasn't long enough.
Pauline: But I wasn't standing in the water at the time. And he says, 'I'll put one of them on the life ring, and you pull.' Well, I stood there, and I stood there. Of course he had a job getting in the house and everything.
Charlie: And when I went in it was about three and a half to four feet in the house. My father--he was an invalid. And my mother had gotten him up onto the table, sitting in a chair on the kitchen table, before we got there. I don't know how she had gotten him there. She had just made jam and she put that in the closet, and the new jam was there on the table. And she had put a rug down at the door to keep the water from coming in through the crack. But of course that didn't hold a thing. It was coming in the stove. When it finally hit the red hot stove, it turned to steam, and that room was full of steam and water! That's when I got my mother [he means father] to get on the life ring. She hated the water, would never go near it.
Pauline: You brought your mother up, I brought your father. He put the life ring around his father, and then he brought his mother.
Charlie: He could swim pretty good, but he was not well.
Pauline: He could walk, but he was in that state where--today he would be in today--and tomorrow he'd say, 'Did you put the horses away?' He would go back and forth into the past and into the present.
Charlie: He had heart trouble, varicose veins, and diabetes.
Pauline: The water didn't come up gradually. It sort of came up in a big wash. And before I knew it, I was treading water where I had been standing.
Charlie: And the next cottage to that floated over--it was built so well it floated.
Pauline: And the waves started going out--took me up over trees--I never felt those trees--and so I was sort of even--in stead of being up here, I was even--and there was oil cans and kerosene cans floating by--and furniture--and I was still hanging on to this rope. And this house--it was just beyond the house his parents were staying in--started to move. And there was a big row of poplar trees on the driveway. And this house--I remember it so distinctly--I kept my eyes on it--and I said: I gotta dodge that house. This house would go this way; so I would swim this way. The house would turn in my direction; so I would swim in the other direction. And I got so tired that I said: The heck with it. If I go, this is my time to go. I go, I'm not going to fight it anymore. And I didn't go, so it wasn't my time.
Anyway, he finally got the life ring around his father--and he yelled out the window I guess.
Charlie: Ya, he was up above the door by that time, swimming. When I came out the door I had to pull him under to get out all right.
Pauline: And he said, 'Drop the rope; take my father.' So I grabbed the life ring. I swam. It was discouraging--because the minute you got to a dry place, the water came. I got up to the back steps of the big house, on higher land.
Charlie: Water was breaking over the cement porch.
Pauline: I couldn't lift the man--he was a big man.
Charlie: We just waited a few minutes, and up came the water!
Pauline: And so I just stood there, and just held his head up--like that--out of the water. I straddled him and held his head up, so that as the water came, the water would lift him. Then Charlie came along with his mother, and he said, 'What a job with those long skirts and petticoats!' His mother dressed old-fashioned.
Charlie: She got tangled in the trees. There was a row of apple trees that we came through. We usually, normally walked under the trees! But the water level was up right in the branches!
Pauline: We got them up. We went into the kitchen. We got into the dining room. They had made an inn out of this big house and they served meals and everything--and we got them into the dining room. And bang!! The double doors flew open and the water came in! So we--we wanted to take them home--but the father wouldn't move.
Charlie: He was not going to leave--neither one of them.
Pauline: He was not going to leave that place.
Charlie: He didn't want to leave the cabin either, until I got him out.
Pauline: It was a big fieldstone base and it was a big place. So we took them upstairs.
Charlie: There were two flights they could go up if they wanted.
Pauline: Then we went to get back to the car, and of course there was more water there. I had taken off my shoes and put them on the porch so I wouldn't get them wet--so I lost my shoes.
Charlie: Plus a camera and a few other things.
Pauline: We ran through the woods to get to the car. And to drive to the house we had to go all the way up through Rochester. But I will say one thing about country people--wherever there was a tree across the road--there was a man with a lantern, saying, 'Drive over the lawn'--showing you the way to drive.
Charlie: We went everywhere with that car.
Pauline: And we got to his house--in Fairhaven--and he got his brothers and went back down. And I stayed there--his sister gave me some clothes. And they went back to get them--of course by the time they got back and got them the water was back--
Charlie: It was midnight then.
Pauline: --to normal.
Charlie: In places.
Chuck: So they were in a cottage right next to the water and you had to swim out there and bring them up to the big house on higher ground, and you had to swim over trees.
Pauline: See they went down after the summer season, and spent a couple of weeks at one of the little cottages. One time I was down there, and I always happened to be there at low tide, and his father was sitting out on the lawn, and I said, 'How high does the water come? I always see it at low tide.' So he said, 'About here.' Well a couple of days after the hurricane, he says, 'Ya otta seen how high the water came!'
Charlie: He remembered those things.
Pauline: But he didn't remember that I was there, and that I pulled him out of it--but I knew that--so I didn't make a fuss about it.
Charlie: And that house--cabin we called it--they were in--after we left--it went out, and came in on the other side of the cedar trees--and maybe that's where it collapsed--it was all a bundle of wood.
Pauline: All a heap.
Charlie: I checked the height of the water--it came in eighteen feet over normal high tide. But in that big house it only went about four or five feet on the kitchen floor. They were upstairs and they were--I guess--kinda scared and cold. But we had to get outta that place somehow, and we got back about midnight to pick 'em up and took them to Fairhaven.
Pauline: By then the water had gone down. They were safe there thank God!
Charlie: We'd never heard of such a thing as a hurricane before, never! But after that we knew--when one was coming--we could expect most anything then.
Pauline: On the way up to Springfield we were listening to the radio and they were talking about the hurricane down South and I said, 'Boy! We live in the best area. We don't have tornadoes. We don't have hurricanes. We don't have earthquakes.' Boy did I live to regret that statement!
Charlie: I had a convertible Pontiac sedan. About the best car I ever had! It was practically new--a '37--light convertible top. But when we left it--so we could go to the cottage--we left it in a big pine grove--'cause I said I better get it off the street--somebody might want to come by. When we got back, some woman hollered out of one of the cottages, 'You were lucky, those trees went down all around that car, and never hit it.' And I was lucky to be able to get it out of there. I was just lucky that way. They had a boat right up on the road, so I backed down and went up to that woods.
Pauline: About six months later, I was at home and I felt these sharp things in my heal--and they were thorns that I had picked up--and they were working their way out-- and I didn't feel them.
Charlie: When we went back to get the car, there was a place in the road that went way down and probably--we'd have to swim it. So I said, 'I know a short-cut anyway. Go right up this lane in back of Amos Delano's barn, and,' I said, 'it goes through; it'll come out right where the car was.' And it did. But we went running through those woods and trees were coming down! and things were happening! We were lucky! Just plain lucky!
Pauline: I said, 'This is a Mac Sennet movie'--'cause you drive the road, and there'd be a tree, you find a way around it, a space in the woods where you can drive. For years, whenever the wind blew, I got very, very nervous.
1Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Registry of Vital Records and Statistics, Massachusetts Vital Records, 1911-1915, Fairhaven Births 1913, v. 614, p. 205, e. 3, Charles Maxfield, ; digital images, American Ancestors (americanancestors.org : accessed 1 March 2018).
2Standard Certificate of Death, Charles Albert Maxfield, Jr., 24 June 1994, New Bedford, Massachusetts, Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Department of Public Health, Registry of Vital Records and Statistics, no. 38460, issued 4 December 2015, privately held by Charles A. Maxfield, Lansdale, Pennsylvania.
3Copy of Certificate of Marriage, Charles Albert Maxfield, Jr., and Pauline Hathaway Krumbholz, 3 June 1939, New Bedford, Massachusetts, Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Department of Public Health, Registry of Vital Records and Statistics, Fairhaven record no. 522, issued 4 December 2015, privately held by Charles A. Maxfield, Lansdale, Pa.
4Certificate of Birth Record, Pauline Hathaway Krumbholz, 20 December 1918, New Bedford, Massachusetts, City Clerk, vol. 21, p. 90, no. 4018, issued 3 December 2015, privately held by Charles A. Maxfield, Lansdale, Pa.
5Certificate of Death, Pauline Maxfield, 31 July 2007, Cortland, Cortland County, New York; Registrar of Vital Records, City of Cortland, New York; Cortland record no. 190; issued 1 August 2007; privately held by Charles A. Maxfield, Lansdale, Pennsylvania.
6Charles A. Maxfield Jr., and Pauline Krumbholz Maxfield, Fairhaven, Bristol County, Massachusetts, interview by Charles A. Maxfield III, 1984; notes, privately held by Charles A. Maxfield III, Lansdale, Pennsylvania.
7Charles A. Maxfield Jr., and Pauline Krumbholz Maxfield, interview, 1984.
8Ibid.
9Krumholz, Pauline Hathaway; Diploma, 1937, New Bedford High School, New Bedford, Massachusetts, privately held by Charles A. Maxfield, Lansdale, Pennsylvania.
10Charles A. Maxfield Jr., and Pauline Krumbholz Maxfield, interview, 1984.
11Ibid.
12Ibid.
13Ibid.
14Notice of Election, Charles A. Maxfield, Jr., 6 February 1968, Sewer and Water Commissioner, Fairhaven, Bristol County, Massachusetts, privately held by Charles A. Maxfield, Lansdale, Pennsylvania; Charles A. Maxfield Jr., and Pauline Krumbholz Maxfield, interview, 1984.
15Personal knowledge of the author, Charles A. Maxfield.
16Polly Ann Nanfito, interview by Charles A. Maxfield, about 1986; notes, privately held by Charles A. Maxfield, Lansdale, Pennsylvania; Personal knowledge of the author, Charles A. Maxfield.
17Polly Ann Nanfito, interview, about 1986; Personal knowledge of the author, Charles A. Maxfield.
18Polly Ann Nanfito, interview, about 1986; Personal knowledge of the author, Charles A. Maxfield.
19Charles A. Maxfield Jr., and Pauline Krumbholz Maxfield, interview, 1984.
20Personal knowledge of the author, Charles A. Maxfield.
21Polly Ann Nanfito, interview, about 1986.
22Personal knowledge of the author.
23Polly Ann Nanfito, interview, about 1986.
24Ibid.
25Ibid.
26Personal knowledge of the author.
Massachusetts, Commonwealth of, Registry of Vital Records and Statistics. Massachusetts Vital Records, 1911-1915. Digital images. American Ancestors. americanancestors.org : 2018.
Maxfield, Charles A., Genealogical Collection, Lansdale, Pennsylvania.
Maxfield, Charles A. Personal knowledge.
Maxfield, Charles A. Jr., and Pauline Krumbholz Maxfield. Fairhaven, Bristol County, Massachusetts. Interview by Charles A. Maxfield III, 1984. notes. Privately held by Charles A. Maxfield III, Lansdale, Pennsylvania.
Nanfito, Polly Ann. Interview by Charles A. Maxfield, about 1986. notes. Privately held by Charles A. Maxfield III, Lansdale, Pennsylvania.
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