William Henry and Susan (Johnson) Dudley;

Massachusetts to Michigan

By By Connie Lenzen

Susan Dudley's Autobiography

Will Dudley's Pocket Diary

The Dudley's Golden Anniversary

In 1924, Susan (Johnson) Dudley wrote a biography to commemorate her 95th birthday. At that time, she was living in Portland, Oregon, with her daughter and son-in-law, Susan and William S. Titus. Susan's spelling, grammar, and punctuation have been kept in the transcription.

My Life

To day sitting here I was led to think over the way I have been led all through these 95 yrs and I did want to call to remembrance how God look over and cared for me all the way. I was one of eight children born to inhabit so much that was noble and religious from a godly father and mother.

About the time I was getting my schooling Mary Lyon was making the venture of starting a school for girls for a higher education. My home was not far from Mt. Holyoke. Her school was a success and when her pupils graduated after four years they had a good college education. The expense was only sixty dollars a year. The pupils doing all the work.

My Father sent all his children to Andover and now as the year comes round I always receive a circular and am considered one of the alumni of Abbott Academy.

[Note: Abbott Academy, Andover College is in Andover, Essex County, Massachusetts.]

I taught a country school when I was seventeen and as I was exceedingly fond of music I was sent to Worcester to study both the piano and vocal music. I remained in Worcester 2 years taught in the public school sang in a quartet on Sundays. I sang several times at Edward Hales church while he was pastor in Worcester at the early age of 25 years.

I was married when I was twenty to William Dudley in the year 1850 on the first day of January.

Now after 73 years of married life with a husband who never gave me an unkind word, blessed memory, he went home 20 yrs ago trusting in Jesus while I have lived to be an old woman.

We went housekeeping in Rogersonville. Mr. Dudley kept the village store for five years. Then he went to Boston doing business on Long Wharf. We went to Charles Woods to board, stayed there 1 year, then went to housekeeping at Newton.

In 1857 next year moved to Melrose where we remained several years. In the next year we adopted Charlie when he was four months old. I had been married 9 years. 2 years later we adopted Frankie a sweet lovable boy 2 yrs old. About a year after we adopted Bessie. She was left on the door step of a house in Boston just a baby a few weeks old. Bessie died when she was 3 yrs and five months old. Oh how we did love her. She was a remarkable singer. When only 11 months old she would sing the tune Greenfield to the words papa oh how hard it is to give up these little ones no one knows but those who love had such an experience themselves

Next year we moved to Cambridge. We adopted a little baby girl who only lived a few months. She had some trouble with her lungs when we took her and we laid her beside Bessie at Cambridge.

About this time Mr. Dudley dissolved partnership it was a time of great financial panic and men were failing in business all the time Mr. Dudley never failed although their business suffered in those years.

Next year went West to Kalamazoo in the year 1880 We had been married 30 years. Charlie was 7 yrs old.

We adopted the same year our baby Susie she was four months/weeks old. While we lived in Kalamazoo I became very much interested in the Temperance work was in the praying band that visited every saloon in the village and closed them.

I became an active member of the Woman’s Temperance Union worked with Frances Willard, helped the boys clubs of Murphy Blue and also the red clubs of reformed boys. I had now been married 30 years.

Charles was 22 and Susie was 16 the day we moved to Charlotte. After two years Susie was married to Mr. W.S. Titus. Boarded with us until Dee was two years, went to housekeeping but owning to an accident, Mr. Dudley came back to the house and had part of the house so they kept house by themselves Tzilla was born. Will went to Saranec into business for Brown brothers. Will went into business in Grand Ledge. Mr. Dudley went with him as silent partner. There was terms at financial crisis and many failed Wills among other after all was settled we found our house was saved as Mr. Dudley had turned over to me after paying Miss Titus what we owed her and Mrs. Dann who had a mortgage on the house had about $3,000 left. Bought a house and lived with sister Josie 2 years. After her death went to live with Josie on Henry street in a house I had bought.

After 5 years went to Portland. I was then about 80 yrs old have lived with Will until now a dependent on Mr. Titus who has kindly offered me a home. I am now 95 yrs old. I do want to be willing to live until God calls me home. He knows best and loves me as one of His dear children saved through faith in Jesus and born again by the Holy Sprit just waiting. I have never had a serious illness except having an ovarian tumor removed when I was about 70 yrs old. In all my life I have never known what severe pain is, never even having headache, never had children and never had my monthly sickness after I was 25 yrs old. Am well except as old age creeps on and my inability to walk owing to spinal trouble

Susan Dudley

The Limes

St. Pauls Road

Balsell Heath, Birmingham.

23rd November 1887

My Dear Mother:
Since I last wrote you (except two Post Cards), I have received from you two letters, dated 14th Dec’r ’86 and 6th Feb. ’87. I do not know if you have written me since.
On the very day, possibly, at the very hour, that you, in Charlotte, were penning the first of your unanswered letters, I, Birmingham, was writing one of my long home messages. I was compelled to defer, dispatch, and when, a fortnight later, I received your reply to mine of one year ago to-day, and, with sorrow, learned how different from my intention had been your reception of those lines having reference to father, fearing in consequence, that other portions had been as unhappily construed, and above all, assured by you that you "suffered less" when not hearing from them, can you wonder if I had no heart to give occasion for increased suffering? But write again I must, and I yearn to hear from those whom I love with warmer, truer affection than could have been possible when years ago, my childish qualities excited in you the highest type of earthly affection – Parental love, with all its fond tenderness and passionless purity. It is only in maturity that we can value aright the love of a parent and feel of what grateful affection they are worthy and we are capable. Think you that he who has been forgiven much is less capable or less likely to love much than he who has had less need to be forgiven? (See Luke vii.36-50) On several occasions I have commenced – and have three times completed – home letters which for one or another reason have not been sent. Dar I hope this letter may be read with truer perception of its writer’s intent than the last! If I cannot cheer your hearts with good news, I can at least avoid all that might give pain. Perhaps I deceive myself, but – notwithstanding your letter of last Dec’r – my memory of you, my darling mother, is at fault if my letters are tedious to you, their proclivity if they had no other fault, would I imagine, deprive them of interest to father; of Will’s tastes I am necessarily ignorant; of Susie’s I am but little acquainted; but I love to believe that you and I have much in common in that inner higher life "Less of actual life than the romance, which to eyes that can see and hearts that can feel, glides ever along with the actual life, stream by stream to the Dark Ocean." I have long felt that you though not entering in to every subtle thought and feeling, could sympathize, even when judgment condemned, and heart was riven with shame and sorrow, with the wayward, ardent, variable son, whose feelings were infinitely better than his principles, whose impulses were purer than his deeds, who gave most pain where he gave most love.
Thou canna chuse, but ever will
Be loving to thy puir boy stil.
Whaire-eir he gae, whaire-eir he ryde,
Thye love with him maun still abyde;
In wiel or wae, whaire-eir, he gae,
Thine hart can neir Depart him frae.”
Are not these old Scotch lines true?

I was very grieved to learn that my remarks concerning father’s government of myself had so wounded you and hence, I judge offended him. I have puzzled in vain my poor head – I cannot comprehend how any rational interpretation bearing in mind the subject with relation to which they were written, the age, point of view, circumstance evident intent, and the iterations of the respect and affection of the writer, could have provoked, pain or produced offense. As now, so then I bore witness to my confidence that father had that only done that to him, seemed wise and reasonable: that he had exercised his best judgment. As then I should have been glad – had not my letter by numerous digressions and qualifications already exceeded, I fear even your almost limitless good nature – by amplification to have done, so now I have much pleasure in gratefully acknowledging his live, attentive and fostering care, his anxiety for my true welfare; and though of phlogistic temperament, he was in serious matters extraordinarily patient and longsuffering.
Patient and Longsuffering! I have so often employed these or similar words to express qualities felicitously combined in you, my mother, that I fear (and no man ever suffered more by fear of his language being unfortunately received.) These terms as now applied – to father – will be deprived of their true significance if I do not envision them with qualifications. Again I say; in serious matters, father was extraordinarily patient and long suffering. Father had patience, but not its calm longsuffering without its tranquility (longsuffering without its patience were a more exact though an apparently contradictory expression; not the patience of amiability, but that quality of a strong, hard, stern nature – the power to suffer, to endure; not the longsuffering of charity, or of sympathy, but the forbearance of one who, with wholesome detestation of the Sin, made but little distinction in favor of the Sinner, yet forbore.
Mother forgave when Faith and Hope were fled. Father yet hoped, still trusted, continued to give in hard cash the proofs of a confidence, obstinate and stubborn – and which died hard – at a period when Charity dwells alone, bereft sister in the heart of my only mother. My mother’s patience savoured much of resignation; my father’s of a very different property – persistency; the stubbornness with which the Man of Will – steadfast, resolute; earnest, even in his faults – clings to the object of his hope. I am assured as yourself that no ordinary circumstance could have persuaded him that he was but wasting hard-earned money in his perurated efforts to assist his graceless son.
"That you could cast such reflections as you did upon your father cuts me like a knife!" Pardon me, my mother! But did I cast reflections on my father? The substance of my observations I believe to have teen that I remembered no chastisement suffered from Father which was not inflicted in anger; no one occasion on which I had deserved received, or received deserved bodily punition; though I could recollect many instances when I had not. I also noticed incidentally the expressions of sequent – though Town erratic – impressions. Did these remarks deserve to be regarded but as reflections? At once I grant them to be naught else if deprived – as above – of such connection as might free them from the suspicion of malice or even reproach. Again, in the unoffensive signification of the words, I admit them to be reflections – not a hurling back of the past, to aid an opprobrious attack, but the expression of conclusions arrived at through viewing the reflection of the past by the light of after years. These conclusions were advanced – injudiciously it would appear – in support of a belief which grows upon me every day – the inutility of corporal punishment as an aid to parental government, not to cast reproach or throw censure on one whose position toward me in the past would render him – were his faults multitudinous – sacred from the reprehensions of the Outcast.
The usual – the lazy– way of punishing; by chastisement and the rod, I believe to be the most unfit of any. I believe it to contribute not at all to the mastery of our natural propensity to indulge corporal and present pleasure, but rather, encourages it. What motive but of sensual pleasure or pain does a child act by, who drud at his book against his inclination or abstains from eating unwholesome fruit, that he takes pleasure in, only out of fear of whipping? He in this only prefers the greater corporal pain pleasure, or avoids the greater corporal pain. His conduct is governed by the very principle – pounded or whipped into him by those who have his government – which will in the future prove a Frankenstein both to possessor and creator, if not rooted out and destroyed. If any punishment be useful to a child, it must be of a nature wherein the shame of suffering for having done evil must work upon him more than the pain. "That government is best, that governs least," said Thomas Jefferson epigrammatically, the force of which applies to Parental as well as State government. We are helpful to our children chiefly through affection and example rather than by our discipline and precepts. Their minds are reached by sympathy, their future lives may be influenced by our present. Sympathy is magnetic; Example is contagious. The old adage, "Experience is a dear school, and only fools learn therein," may be as true as many other old saws, but he who invented it must have been one of the "fools" to have felt its truth. In other words, the veriest precept is unreal until substantiated by personal experience. [Letter ends]