Henry D. Block marries Grace Boynton Leonard, April 1925.

The text of the marriage certificate, dated April 26, 1925. Grace Leonard and Henry Block were my maternal grandparents.

CERTIFICATE OF MARRIAGE

This Certifies That

Henry D. Block
of Jersey City, N.J.

and

Grace Boynton Leonard
of Bath, Maine

were united by me in
Holy Matrimony
on the Twenty-Six day of April in the Year of Our Lord One Thousand Nine Hundred and Twenty-Five
at First Baptist Church Bath Maine

Rev. John A. Swetnam
Baptist Minister

Stella's First Marriage

Before she met my father, my mother was married for almost eight years to one James J. Cousins, Jr. Their Thanksgiving, 1948 marriage in Bath, Maine is the subject of a clipping in the family scrapbook; and my mother's name appears as "Stella Cousins" in a number of books from her collection. (As far as I know, she kept her name as Stella Cousins, rather than going back to her maiden name Stella Block, until her marriage in 1958 to Ken McLintock.) James Cousins appears to have been from Norway, Maine. A notation in my mother's hand records that they resided in Norway, Maine; Brockton and Havehill, Massachusetts; Hartford, Connecticut; Boston; and Hartford again, between 1948 and 1951. Another clipping states that their divorce (on the grounds of "desertion") was granted on the week ending September 29, 1956, in Hartford. I don't know what became of James J. Cousins after that.

When Henry Met Grace

My maternal grandparents met in the early 1920s and were married on April 26, 1925.

A family scrapbook preserves a pamphlet from a campground called The Firs in Rockwood, Maine. In the margins, the following notes are written in Grace Block's hand:

I first met my husband at this place while I was teaching at Rockford and he was on a vacation.

[Under a photograph of a cabin] I shared one of these little houses with a woman from Mass., but we [ate] all meals at the Main Camp.

The pamphlet and an accompanying valentine card are dated 1922.

Popular Bath Teacher Married on Sunday

[Undated newspaper clipping on the marriage of Grace Boynton Leonard. The wedding occurred on April 26, 1925.]

Sunday afternoon, about 50 friends witnessed a very pretty wedding, solemnized at Elm Street church by Rev. J. E. Swetnam, when Grace B. Leonard became the wife of Henry M. Block.

At 1.30, Osgood McBean accompanied Mr. Block to the altar, when he awaited his bride who becomingly gowned in a white crepe-de-chine dress, and carrying a bouquet of white pinks, swinsona, and maidenhair fern, and a dainty white Prayer Book, entered on the arm of W. D. Coombs, as Miss Martha Bates, supervisor of public school music, of Bath, played Wagner's Wedding March from Lohengrin.

After a very impressive ceremony, Mr. and Mrs. Block marched out as Miss Bates played Mendelssohn's wedding march.

After the wedding, Mr. and Mrs. Block were taken to the home of Mr. McBean, where they were guests of Mrs. William Dow and Mrs. Osgood McBean at a wedding supper with a few friends. Those present were Mr. and Mrs. John Tyler, Mr. and Mrs. William Dow, Mr. and Mrs. McBean and Miss Sadie Coombs.

Mrs. Block is a graduate of Machias State Normal school and for the last three years has been a much beloved and efficient teacher in the Mitchell school, and she will be a loss to the teaching profession in Bath.

She has the good wishes of a host of friends in Bath as she and her husband go to their house in Jersey City, where Mr. Block is well known as a pharmacist.