Adelia D. Everson was born on June 3, 1849 in the town of Hanson, MA. Her parents, Barnabas Everson and Deborah Bates, had married the previous August of 1848. Adelia was Barnabas’s first child, but the second for Deborah. 1846 had been a terrible year for Deborah, in which she first lost her husband Warren in January of consumption, and then lost her 9 month old son, also named Warren, of “cholera infantum”. The widowed Deborah lived next to Maquan Pond, and she remarried Barnabas Everson, a neighbor who owned a large property across the street from her that extended back to Wampatuck Pond.

Adelia grew up in the house along Hanson Street (what is now Indian Head Street and Route 58). Her father Barnabas was a talented man: a farmer, a mason, a town selectman, a road surveyor, and eventually a saw-mill factory owner and worker in South Hanson, he was a well-known man and accumulated a substantial amount of real estate in South Hanson. Adelia was soon joined by her brother Richard in 1850, her sister Imogene in 1852, and two siblings that died extremely young – Lucia, born Dec 30, 1853, died 5 days later on January 4, 1854, and Lucius, born ten years later on July 17, 1863, died on the same day.

The Everson kids probably attended school on Maquan Street, which was the closest school building, located today near where the St. Joseph the Worker church is. The school was across the street from the almshouse, which today would be located near where the old Hanson middle school was. The Everson’s home was slightly below where the intersection of School Street and Indian Head Streets are today, on the left-hand side. They would have been well-acquainted with their neighbors: Beals, Howlands, and Whites, who all had property along the road and extended back towards Maquan Pond.

The Everson’s neighbors below them, closer to Indian Head Pond, was the family of Asa and Cynthia Howland. (Their home is on the bottom of the map above) Adelia and her siblings knew the Howland kids (George, Nathaniel, Albert, Cynthia, and Lydia) well: they would have attended the same school together, and played together.

Perhaps Adelia and Imogene played with Cynthia and Lydia, who were just about their ages, and ignored the older Howland boys while Richard Everson ran off to play with them. But as they grew older, Adelia soon had her eyes on one of those Howland boys: Albert Howland, born on November 15, 1847 and two years older than Adelia. Albert, like so many men in the area, began working as a shoemaker. In October of 1867, when Albert was 20 and Adelia was 18 years old, they were married in the Congregational Church on High Street by the Reverend Benjamin Southworth.

Their happiness was to be short-lived. Just one month later, on November 30 1867, Adelia suddenly became sick and died unexpectedly. Both Albert and her family were shocked and filled with grief. Albert, still very young at 20, turned to the Eversons to arrange for her burial. Adelia was laid to rest alongside her two baby siblings, Lucia and Lucius at Fern Hill Cemetery, across the road from the church in which she had been married in such recent memory. Later, her parents, her sister Imogene, and Imogene’s children George and Lillian would join them in a large family plot.

Albert remarried in 1872, five years after Adelia’s death, a woman named Cordelia Gray, and they went on to have a family. That year Adelia’s younger sister Imogene was also married: to George McClellan, who had been helping Barnabas Everson build a large brick chimney near Everson’s newly acquired-saw-mill along the railroad tracks in South Hanson. Although life moved on, Adelia’s memory was continuously honored by the preservation of several of Adelia’s possessions. Adelia’s mother Deborah owned a bible, which had been produced in 1833. Deborah, 14 years old at the time the bible was published, was probably given this bible from her parents, Moses and Deborah Bates.

On one of the first pages is written in a lovely cursive:
Deborah ______
East Bridgewater

The last name is torn away, but it most likely read “Deborah Bates”, who was born and raised in East Bridgewater. Deborah carried this bible through her two marriages, and when Adelia was married, Deborah gave Adelia her treasured bible. Adelia had been working on some needlework, and decided to try her hand at creating some bookmarks. She created one for her father Barnabas. It is a floral wreath and reads:

Adelia
To Father

The second is a lyre, a classical musical instrument:

The final bookmark reveals the tragedy of Adelia’s young death. The book mark is of a floral arrangement set in a large urn. But the stitching is only half-completed, for Adelia never had to chance to finish the bookmark.

At the very bottom of the bookmark reads : To my husband.

Albert returned the bible to the Eversons, along with Adelia’s bookmarks. Placed inside of the bible, the bookmarks remained there as they were passed down from woman to woman through the generations, a tribute to Adelia Everson Howland, whose short life is remembered in part by three small hand-crafted tokens of affection for her loved ones.