Mary Ophelia Nugent Armstrong (Jr.)--An Old Woman is a Young Woman in Disguise

When I met my then-boyfriend's great-aunt in 1975 or so, I was impressed by this small-of-stature woman's gentility. Mary Ophelia Nugent Armstrong had never married. White-haired, kind, very Southern, with a mischievous and childlike sense of humor, she seemed to represent my idea of a Southern gentlewoman from an earlier era. I remember Mimi's always being impeccably dressed in a jacket and a skirt, often with a hat, the epitome of a certain class of Southern woman from the 1940s or so. Only after she died and we inherited letters written to her by old boyfriends and by a male first cousin who lived in New Orleans, only after we inherited all the photographs and the newspaper clippings, did I realize that this seemingly very proper Southern woman had lived a rich and full life. An old, unmarried woman she might have been, but a stereotypical old maid she wasn't. Because I knew her only in old age, I didn't realize how active "Mimi" had been as a younger woman--hiking in the mountains of Colorado, going on trips around the world with her teacher friends.

Mary Ophelia Nugent Armstrong was named after her mother. If she had been a man, "Jr.," would have followed her name. Her father, Baker White Armstrong, had left Virginia in the 1880s for Texas. Not long thereafter, he married a young woman from the state he had left behind: Mary Ophelia Nugent, daughter of Perry Nugent and Amanda Mariah Keep Cook. Mary Ophelia Nugent Armstrong was the couple's second child and second daughter. The first child and daughter was my husband's grandmother, Katherine Armstrong. The third child was another daughter: Helen Armstrong. (Helen was epileptic, and from letters that I've read, the family spent much time and effort providing the best care they could for their beautiful third daughter.) The fourth and final child was a son: Baker White Armstrong, Jr. Of the four children of Baker and Mary Armstrong, only Katherine had offspring.

If you click on the images for a larger view, you will be able to read the text of the newspaper clippings. The photograph at the top of the page of "Mimi" in graduation regalia has a note on the original, written in my mother-in-law's hand: "Mary Ophelia Nugent Armstrong 1916. Grad. Liggett School, Detroit, Michigan."