A room in St. Paul’s Parish House on Jay street contained a portrait gallery of prominent men and women from the parish: rectors, wardens and vestry members, curates, and significant donors. You can just make out some of these portraits in these 1947 photographs of the Parish Aid Society.

Parish Aid Society Ladies January 1947

Parish Aid Society January 1947

Because this collection was completed in the first half of the 20^th century, the clergy, warden and vestry portraits were entirely of men. It is only among the donors that we find a few women, including three of whom I have already written: Flora Myers Brady Gavit, Pauline Hewson Wilson and Caroline Gallup Reed.

But the photo gallery also included portraits of two much younger women, both of whom were honored by the establishment of memorial funds in St. Paul’s Church School one hundred years ago this year. Both had attended St. Paul’s Sunday School, and their parents commemorated their young lives by establishing funds in their memories.

On the centennial of the creation of those memorials, let us also remember Beatrice and Marian, and the many unnamed young people who have been  touched by St. Paul’s Sunday School.

Beatrice Pinney Butler

Beatrice Pinney Butler was born in 1906 in New York City, and during her first 10 years lived with her parents and maternal grandparents in Brooklyn. In November 1915, her father (then a captain in the New York State National Guard) was posted to the Adjutant General’s Office in Albany, and the family moved here.

Beatrice developed appendicitis in March 1918, and despite surgery, she died on April 15, 1918.

Marian Sparrow Blanchard

Marian Sparrow Blanchard was born in 1898 in Albany, and lived here with her parents. She contracted influenza during the epidemic of 1918, and died on October 18 of that year.