FRED ORDWAY, UNH 1920

New Hampshire College of Agriculture and the Mechanic Arts, the Two Year Class of 1918, in the 1918 yearbook, The Granite. “Freddie” Ordway is in the middle row on the left. Photograph by Clement Moran, November 1917. Moran image no. M91, https://www.library.unh.edu/find/digital/object/moran%3A0037

Frederick Ira Ordway, Jr. (1894-1974) was known as “Freddie” during his student years at what was then still the New Hampshire College of Agriculture and the Mechanic Arts in Durham (renamed University of New Hampshire in 1923). Born to Frederick Ira Ordway, Sr. and Grace Lincoln Shannon Ordway, he attended Pinkerton Academy in Derry and completed his secondary education at Phillips-Exeter Academy before enrolling at the college in 1916 as a member of the “two-year” class of 1918. “Many a noble man has been nursed on Candia’s bosom,” his rather arch 1918 yearbook listing begins, continuing with:

Freddie still maintains that Manchester is a suburb of Candia, and is the originator of the famous “elephant and bag of salt joke.” He is a great golf enthusiast, usually playing with one stick. His specialty is “putting” with Gertie. Our Freddie is a bearcat with the women. “A model man” (model meaning a small imitation of the real thing). Theta Chi. Assistant Business Manager The New Hampshire, Secretary-Treasurer Tennis Association, Captain Tennis Team, Corporal in Band, Cross Country Team, Vice-President Phillips-Exeter Club, Leader Mandolin Club, President Tennis Association

For all that his classmates voted him Class Social Butterfly, Ordway had a more serious side: America entered on April 6, 1917, and that May, as soon as his first year of college was completed, he headed to Plattsburg, New York for officer training at one of the new three-month officer’s training camps established by the War Department. Ordway was one of 341 successful officer candidates of that first class to graduate from such camps across the nation. His real interest, however, was in the nascent field of flight, and on June 15 Cadet Ordway was among twenty-five officer candidates selected for pilot training with the in Canada, completing ground school at the University of Toronto and advanced training at the aerodrome at Camp Borden.

The college shenanigans described in Ordway's yearbook had to have been achieved in the space of the Fall 2017 semester, as he found himself called to active duty on January 12, 1918. The 27th Aero Squadron from Texas, which had also trained at Camp Borden, had been preparing for deployment to Europe when an outbreak of scarlet fever depleted its ranks. By February 26, 1918, First Lieutenant Ordway had been transferred to the 27th and was on board a troop transport departing New York Harbor for Liverpool, England before continuing on to Le Havre, France, on March 18. Two days later the 27th was reclassified as a Pursuit squadron, and its pilots, including Ordway, were trained on the Sopwith F-1 Camels and aircraft they would be flying into combat. On April 24, the squadron moved to the Western Front where it trained with the 94th, 95th, and 147th squadrons, and on June 1 these were formally organized into the 1st Pursuit Group, flying from the Croix de Metz Aerodrome near . Among the pilots Ordway served alongside was American flying ace of the 94th, who would log three hundred combat hours and score twenty-six aerial victories during the war.

Ordway’s squadron flew reconnaissance missions and escort patrols for photographic observation aircraft for several weeks in preparation for a major offensive, which came on July 15th with the Second Battle of the Marne. While the American infantry held the line against the attempted advance of the German troops across the river, Ordway and his fellow fighter pilots provided aerial support and protection. With the success at Marne the front began to shift, and by the end of the summer the 1st Pursuit Group moved deeper into France. On September 12 the squadrons provided support for the American offensive at St. Mihiel, then on September 25 the Meuse-Argonne Offensive in the Verdun area began. Ordway and his fellow fighter pilots were tasked first with shooting down all German observation balloons, then with turning fire on ground troops and enemy aircraft. It was during this battle that another high-ranking flying ace within the 1st Pursuit Group and fellow member of the 27th, the daredevil Lieutenant , performed his greatest feats before being shot down and killed. The Meuse-Argonne Offensive proved to be the last big push of the war, ending on the morning of November 11, 1918, what would come to be known as Armistice Day.

Ordway’s deployment at the Western Front with the 27th Aero Squadron had lasted six months, but once the war ended he remained in France with the Air Service History Board at Tours until August 1919, during which time he helped gather narratives, reports, photographs, and other records documenting the Air Service. In February 1919 The New Hampshire — the student newspaper for which Ordway had once been Assistant Business Manager — cheekily reported that he and classmate Lieut. W.D. Reed had met for a New Year’s dinner, noting that “‘Freddie’ paid for the dinner as a settlement for an old bet made during the cross country season of 1916.”

By the fall semester of 1919, Ordway was back in Durham. A November 19 article in The New Hampshire describes a campus Armistice Day Convocation on the first anniversary of the conclusion of the War to End All Wars. Fallen students were honored, as were returning students and faculty who had taken leaves from academia to serve their country. Ordway shared his experiences as a fighter pilot, regaling the packed hall with stories of Captain Rickenbacker’s exploits but also emotionally discussing the loss of his friend, Lieutenant Frank Luke, whose death behind enemy lines at age 21 he described as a brutal murder. Of all the speakers included in the article, it is Ordway who sounds haunted by his time in France; when he finished his presentation, the audience had to be jollied back into a cheerful mood by the next speaker.

Degree in hand, Ordway left New Hampshire for New York City in 1920, enlisting with the National Guard for two years while pursuing graduate studies in finance at Fordham University. He married Frances Antoinette Wright on June 15,1922 in Forest Hills, New York, and their son Frederick Ira Ordway, III was born in 1927. Between 1929 and 1941 Ordway worked as an investment banker but in June of 1941 he was called to active duty as Executive Officer to Major General Oliver Echols, the Air Force Chief of Staff of the Materiel Division in Washington, D.C. He was promoted to Lieutenant Colonel in 1942 and transferred to the U. S. Ninth Air Force in Cairo, Egypt as liaison officer to the Middle East Command. In 1944, Ordway became Chief of the Traffic Division, Mediterranean Air Transport Services, operating out of Algiers and Naples to move aircraft, supplies, and cargo. After the War ended in 1945, he was promoted to Colonel and continued on active duty in various capacities with the Office of the Foreign Liquidation Commissioner until his retirement from service in 1954. By then his marriage to Frances had ended and Ordway had married his second wife, Mary Dolores Godovin (possibly in Portsmouth, NH, however the records are not clear). He continued work as an economist and financial analyst in the private sector in Washington, D.C., where he died on August 6, 1974.

Throughout his life, Ordway was fascinated by history and genealogy, holding memberships and positions of authority in multiple societies including the Society of the Cincinnati, General Society of the War of 1812, Sons of the American Revolution, Piscataqua Pioneers, Society of Mayflower Descendants, and the Huguenot Society. This should not be surprising given that, on his father’s side his lineage went back at the very least to the 1750s, with several generations in Hooksett and Goffstown. On his mother’s Shannon side, he could trace his family back nine generations to the beginnings of English colonization of New England along at least fourteen lines, with many of his ancestors settling in Dover, Durham, Rochester, and Portsmouth.

• The main Shannon branch originated with Ordway’s sixth great-grandfather, Nathaniel Shannon (1655-1723), who arrived in Boston from Ireland in 1687, where he married Boston-born Elizabeth (1669-1716) before moving to the present-day Portsmouth area.

• The next two generations brought connections to the Vaughan, Cutts, and Aldersey families through marriage: • Sixth great-grandfather Willian Vaughan (1640-1716) emigrated from Wales in 1660, arriving at Portsmouth where he eventually married Margaret Cutts (1650-1690), daughter of seventh-great grandparents Richard Cutts (1615- 1675) and Eleanor Aldersey (1628-1884). • Richard Cutts had arrived at the Isles of Shoals before1645 and owned Star Island for a time. • Eleanor’s parents, eighth-grandparents George Aldersey (1598-?) and Bridgett Robinson (1600-1662), had arrived in Portsmouth some time before Eleanor’s birth, making her the earliest of Ordway’s ancestors to be born in what would become New Hampshire. • William and Margaret Vaughan’s daughter Abigail (1683-1762) married Nathaniel and Elizabeth Shannon’s son Nathaniel (1689-1723). • Nathaniel and Abigail Vaughan Shannon’s son, Cutts Shannon (1717-1763), married his cousin Mary Vaughan (1713-1793), daughter of Abigail’s brother George Vaughan (1676-1724) and Mary Belcher (1680-1700).

• The next Shannon generation introduced Beard, Chesley, Leighton, and Rawlins ties when Thomas Shannon (1749-1800) married Lillias Watson (1750-1814). While the Watson line itself reaches to sixth great-grandfather Jonathan Watson’s 1650 birth in Dover, the identity of the first Watson to arrive in the Colonies is unknown. However, Jonathan’s Dover-born wife, Elizabeth Beard (1655-1721), had emigré parents and a grandfather: • Eighth and seventh great-grandfathers William Beard (?- 1672) and his son Thomas (1608-1679) arrived in Dover, while Thomas’ future wife Marie Heriman (1607-1686) settled in Oyster River (Durham); all three were born in England but their arrival dates are uncertain. • Jonathan and Elizabeth Watson’s son Isaac (1686-1753) married Lillias Chesley, whose own great-grandfather (Ordway’s eighth great-grandfather) Philip Chesley (1606-1674) left Stratford-on-Avon for Oyster River, while his bride Elizabeth Leighton (1622-1661) and her parents, ninth great- grandparents Thomas Leighton (1604-1672) and Joanna Silsby (1606-1703), chose Dover as their destination in 1640. • Philip and Elizabeth Chesley’s son, also named Philip (1646-1695), married Sarah Rawlins (1648-1719), whose parents, eighth great-grandparents James Rawlins (1612-1687) and Hannah Fry (1617-1691) may or may not have made the crossing together, but married in 1639 in Dover.

• The Tebbetts line was added when Thomas and Lillias Watson Shannon’s son, Richard Cutts Shannon (1773-1828), married Mary Tebbetts (1778-1821) in 1801: • Ordway’s seventh great-grandparents, Henry Nicholas Tebbetts (1596-1676) and Elizabeth Austin (1596-1674), married in Stratford-on-Avon in 1631 and brought their four year old son, the future sixth great-grandfather Jeremiah Tebbetts (1631-1676), and his two-year-old brother Samuel with them when they emigrated to the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1635, settling Dover Neck in 1642. • Jeremiah’s future wife, Mary Jane Canney (1637-1706), was born in Dover to seventh great-grandparents Thomas Canney (1610-1681), who arrived in 1630, and Mary Loame (1613-1703), who may have come on her own but who married Thomas in Dover in 1632. • Jeremiah and Mary Jane Tebbets’ son, Henry (1676-1727), married Joyce Otis (1678-1707) at Dover Neck in 1700. Joyce’s grandfather, Ordway’s seventh great-grandfather, Richard Theys Otis (1625-1689), had arrived in the Dover area as a child, emigrating with his parents Stephen John Otis (1278-1636) and Margaret Darcy (1580-1653) by 1631. Rose Lydia Stoughton (1629-1673) had made her own journey in 1643, arriving in Boston before settling in Dover, where she and Richard married in 1648. • Richard and his son Nicholas Otis (1660-1689), Joyce’s father, were among the casualties of the Cocheco Massacre, the June 27–28 raid on Dover by Wabanaki Confederacy warriors that killed a quarter of the settlement’s population.

• Additional family roots in Massachusetts include eighth-great grandparents John and Mary Emery, who arrived in Boston in 1635 then settled in Newbury; seventh-great grandparents Richard Ellis (unclear arrival date) and Elizabeth French, who arrived in 1635, and who married and settled in Dedham; and seventh-great-grandparents Daniel Fisher and Abigail Marriott, who married in Dedham in 1641.

Among these generations preceding him, Ordway could count a Lieutenant Governor, several Revolutionary War heroes, officers in the Civil War, and many more men and women of great worth whose contributions helped build the state. This deep connection to New Hampshire history, Ordway’s ties to the university, and his affection for the home town of his youth provide a context for the items he donated to the Bowen Collection: at least thirty-six bonnets, dresses, accessories, and men’s jackets and coats appear on inventories taken between 1940 and 1969.

Not all of these objects remain in the Bowen Collection today, as some were deaccessioned during the collection’s transition from the Home Economics Department to the University Museum. This transition also resulted in the loss of all original donation records for Ordway’s gifts, and so key questions on provenance can have no verified answers. Given Ordway’s own history, however, educated guesses can be made.

These are probably family items. What is the donor’s connection to the gift? For all his interest in history, there is no evidence Ordway was a textile enthusiast. Most of the donated items are women’s wear and are more everyday in nature than high-end. The likelihood is far stronger that they had been handed down within the family rather than that they had been purchased as part of a collection.

If they are family heirlooms, who might have worn them? The items selected as part of this digitization project all have a date falling between the years 1830 and 1860. This means Ordway’s grandmothers and great-grandmothers could have worn them, putting some of the objects within the range of living memory or association for Ordway’s mother:

• Museum Number 10, a fashionable but somber-toned printed dress from the 1840s, has three possible owners. On the Shannon side these are great- grandmothers Jane Randall Stanwood (1811-1870), who married Charles Tebbetts Shannon (1803-1873) in 1828, and Eunice Emery (1802-1854), who married David Lapham. Jane and Charles’ son, Charles Way Shannon (1837- 1925) married Eunice and David’s daughter, Mary Emery Lapham (1841-1883). On the Ordway side is great-grandmother Eliza Kettridge Ordway (1812-1895), who married Ira Bowen Ordway (1818-1906) in Manchester in 1840. It is tempting to wonder whether the dress was part of Eliza’s trousseau, but any of the three women could have worn it.

• Museum Number 116, a printed cotton mull dress from the 1850s, has two candidates of an appropriate age to wear this style. The first is Ordway’s grandmother on the Shannon side, Mary Emery Lapham, who would have been seventeen by the end of the 1850s. She died when her daughter Grace, Ordway’s mother, was just eighteen; if this had indeed been hers, it could have had significance to Grace as a memento of a mother who died too young. The younger candidate is Anna Foss (1844-1926), who married Frank D. Ordway (1841-1916) in 1861 at seventeen, and for whom this dress would have been a little old-fashioned by the time she was old enough to wear it.

• Museum Number 530, a silk bonnet from about the 1830s-1840s, could have been worn quite appropriately by Eunice, Jane, or Eliza.

• Museum Number 542, a black silk bonnet from about the 1860s, worn by an older woman or for mourning, could have belonged to Jane Randall Stanwood Shannon, Eliza Kettridge Ordway, Mary Emery Lapham or Anna Foss Ordway.

• Museum Number 397, a pair of stockings with delicate red clocks, date from the 1840s-1850s and could have been worn by any of the women mentioned above.