Nettie Sarah (Dyment) Wood (1901 - 1933)

Born 17 Nov 1901 in Northam, Lot 13, Prince Edward Island

Ancestors

Died 1 Sep 1933 at age 31 in New York, USA

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Biography

Nettie grew up in Northam, Lot 13, the daughter of Watson and Elizabeth Dyment ^[1] In 1911 she and her older sister Winnie were going to school. ^[2]She was working for the Richards family in Ellerslie in 1921, and later that year went to the United States to find work, giving her aunt Mrs. McKinnon as her US contact. ^[3]She was later joined by her sister Gladys, who was a hairdresser. Their sister Winnie, a nurse, was already working in New York.

On her declaration of intention form for US citizenship dated 1923, Nettie said she was a cook. She was 5'4" tall, 112 lbs., with brown hair and brown eyes.

Nettie married Gordon or George Wood, and had one son. She was living in Brooklyn, and not working outside the home, at the time of the 1930 US census. In that census, her husband was called "George W. Wood" and said he was a Canadian. It is possible that one of the names, George or Gordon, was a nick-name. The couple had married 5 years earlier.^[4]

Nettie was visiting her parents on Prince Edward Island in August 1933. She was killed in a car accident on the way back to New York, just outside of Buffalo, New York, on September 1.

This was the same accident that killed J. Edgar Milligan and his partner George Morrison, two successful silver fox farmers from Prince Edward Island. Milligan grew up in Northam, not far from where Nettie lived. He and his partner were on their way to a Fox Show in the States, and it looks like they offered to give Nettie a drive back to New York. The accident was widely reported, in local PEI papers as well as the Maple Leaf, Oakland Ca., September 1933 page 142, but Nettie remained an unknown female victim in the articles.

Dyment Victim Of Fatal Motor Accident ...The remains of Miss Nettie Dyment daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Watson Dyment, are expected home from New York on Thursday by the evening train and will be taken to her home in Northam. Miss Dyment, who lives in New York and conducts a beauty parlour there had just returned from her vacation, when word came that she had been killed in an automobile accident. ^[5]. Nettie had been a cook, so the newspaper mixed her up with her sister Gladys, who was single and a hairdresser.

There were also court cases after the fatal accident. "The facts of the case are briefly as follows: the automobile accident which gave rise to this suit happened on about the 1st day of September, 1933, at a place about 10 miles south of Buffalo in the State of New York."^[6]

Gladys Dyment, a hairdresser from Brooklyn, who was administering the estate of her sister, Nettie S. Wood, charged her lawyer with taking money from the estate. Gladys was probably overwhelmed with keeping her business going, taking care of her sister's estate, and becoming the guardian of her nephew. The lawyer, unfortunately, didn't have a good lawyer himself, and initially lost the case.^[7] At a second trial in 1948, Gladys admitted that the signature on the estate papers was hers, not the lawyers.

Nettie was buried on the Island, under her maiden name.^[8]

Sources

1. ↑ PEI Baptismal Index; Bideford Church Records.
2. ↑ 1911 Census of Canada Publication: Library and Archives Canada, images also on Ancestry
3. ↑ "United States Border Crossings from Canada to United States, 1895-1956," database, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:X2P5-JPP : 27 November 2014), Nettie Dyment, Apr 1922; from "Border Crossings: From Canada to U.S., 1895-1954," database and images, Ancestry (http://www.ancestry.com : 2010); citing Ship , arrival port Vanceboro, Maine,, line 20, NARA microfilm publication M1464, Records of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, RG 85, (Washington D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, n.d.), roll 437.
4. ↑ "United States Census, 1930," database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:X4VN-JLQ : accessed 21 March 2019), Nettie Wood in household of George W Wood, Brooklyn (Districts 0251-0500), Kings, New York, United States; citing enumeration district (ED) ED 417, sheet 17A, line 2, family 386, NARA microfilm publication T626 (Washington D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, 2002), roll 1535; FHL microfilm 2,341,270.
5. ↑ Charlottetown Guardian September 6
6. ↑ Maritime Provinces Reports: Cases Decided in the Supreme Courts of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island, Volume 13
7. ↑ The case has been written up in books and articles - see, for instance, the book The Innocents by Edward Radin: "In the 1930s Raymond J. Riley was a young practicing attorney in Brooklyn and had been employed by Gladys Dyment, administratrix of the estate of Nettie S. Woods, who had been killed in an automobile accident in Buffalo."
8. ↑ "Find A Grave Index," database, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:QVLX-Q98K : 13 December 2015), Nettie S. Dyment, ; Burial, Tyne Valley, Prince, Prince Edward Island, Canada, Tyne Valley Presbyterian Cemetery; citing record ID 100826022, Find a Grave, http://www.findagrave.com.