Two Mauds

Our family has a particular interest in Maud Paine Dale because our wire-haired black and tan dachshund shares her name. When we introduced Nat/Munner/Deda to our Maud as a puppy, her first declaration was that her grandmother was "a holy terror." Almost two years later, we say the same about our Maud.

1870, two years old

Maud Paine was born in 1868 in Lockport, New York. I can find no evidence of a middle name. Her mother was Martha Maria Milby and her father Nathaniel Tompkins Paine. Family history suggests Nathaniel Paine was descended from author Thomas Paine but my research has proven that not to be true. Our ancestor is Nathaniel Tompkins Paine rather than Nathaniel Thomas Paine. Maud had two brothers: Frank, and Charles, who drowned at age 18 in Buffalo, New York.

Maud (sitting, at right), age 20

One of my favorite stories about Maud, an Episcopalian, was her strong desire for an education. She and a friend, a Catholic, rode their horses 19 miles away to Graceville, Minnesota every Monday morning, lived in a Catholic Convent, and returned home to Brown's Valley on Friday.

Later in life, Maud was generous with her children with money for educational supplies but otherwise was known as "close with money for frivolity."

Nat remembers her grandmother's distinctive and beautiful penmanship on recipe cards at Lake Summit.

 Maud Paine married Fred Dale in 1889 in Brown's Valley, Minnesota. He was a farmer, and in 1892 he founded a farm implement business. He also sold Rio Cars and was an Indian Agent with the Sioux Indians on the Sissleton Indian Reservation. Maud and Fred had three children: Florence Letitia Dale (Walker), Charles Milby Dale, and Lloyd Benjamin Dale.

In 1895, at the time of the Klondike Gold Strike in Alaska, Maud Paine Dale loaned a horse and buggy to a friend for transportation to the train station. The payment she requested for her kindness was that the friend bring back a gold nugget from the Klondike. The request was honored and the nugget was made into a man's stickpin, which was given to Natalie by her uncle Charles Dale.

Maud and Fred were divorced in the 1920s and Maud came south, where she worked as a dietician in Aiken, South Carolina before moving to Spartanburg. Her son Charles purchased Cabin's Cabin for his mother in 1934, and she spent every summer there until 1953 when she was 85. Many of Natalie Watters fondest childhood memories involve spending time with her grandmother at Lake Summit.

Maud Paine Dale died in 1957 and is buried in the middle of three burial plots in Greenlawn Cemetery in Spartanburg because "she'd grown up in the prairie and wanted plenty of space."

Maud Walker Watters, great, great, great granddog of Maud Paine Dale