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Going strong at 90
The life and times of Doris Mae Bailey of Port Jefferson
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August 27, 2009 | 12:45 PM
This is the tale of Doris Mae Bailey and seven generations of a Port Jefferson family, and most of them lived in the same house.
Doris' great-great-grandmother was a full-blooded Shinnecock. Her great-grandmother Hannah, born in 1884, married Morris Smith and lived on Sheep Pasture Road in Port Jefferson until she died at the age of 106.
Doris' memories begin with her grandfather Theodore Spencer who was born in 1852. When he was only 14 years old, Spencer, seeing the sailing ships being constructed at the harbor, begged a captain to take him on a voyage. "Bring your bag packed and be here in the morning," he was told, and so he was. On that journey of several months he learned the skills that would serve him his entire career — taking care of the captain, setting his table, serving his meals. Spencer and his friend Elvis Smith went on to work for Captain John T. Mather for the rest of their lives, tending to the family and grounds of his home in Port Jefferson, now the Mather House Museum. "He was a very strong man," said Doris. "He could put his fist through a kitchen door."
Spencer and his wife, Ellen Augustus Elizabeth Spencer, had six children. Doris' mother was the youngest. They lived in a house on Campbell Street that they bought in 1910, one of a row of houses constructed, pre-electricity, by a builder named Ross. It is a beautiful period house with rich moldings and a medallion ceiling like many old houses in Port Jefferson. Doris lives there to this day.
"My grandparents chose this house," Doris said, "because it had a dining room." They certainly used it. All the children and grandchildren were born there. Doris' grandfather Theodore died in 1938, 76 years old. Doris' grandmother, born in 1859, died in this home in 1945, 86 years old. She had a great influence on her extended family.
Doris tells a great love story about her mother, Florence Virginia Spencer, who was born in 1888. Two young men came up from Virginia to make their fortune. They loved to dance, as did Florence. They met dancing. One of them, Richard Webb, won her hand. The other, William Wilkerson Bailey, having lost, went back South. Richard and Florence were married and already had four children when he died suddenly at age 33. Doris was 3 years old.
For the next 10 years her mother worked hard to support her children. First she opened a tea room next to Mrs. Bergen's Hat Store on East Main Street, cooking hot meals for the shipyard workers. That lasted until the shipbuilding industry closed down around 1921. Then she cooked, catered and was the seamstress for the Knapp family who had a home in Belle Terre and another in Manhattan. She later worked for the president of the First National Bank of Port Jefferson, Francis Klein.
It took 10 years for William to hear that his friend was dead. Never married, he returned to look for Florence, hoping she still liked to dance. He found her at last at a dancing class in Smithtown. He asked her to marry him and she agreed. Recognizing the hard work she had done to raise her four girls, he said, "I won't ask you to have more babies. I'll just be a good daddy." "And he was," said Doris. He went to work for the Knapp family with Florence, later becoming a short order chef at "Erickson's" in Upper Port.
Doris has a twin, Helen Marie. Totally unexpected, Doris emerged from the womb four hours after her sister. The attending physician, Dr. Russell, having left, had to be hastily resummoned from the beach. The twins also had an older sister named Evelyn Virginia who still lives in the Bronx. Their fourth, younger sister, Muriel Blanch Webb, lives in Uniondale.
Doris remembers a happy childhood playing in the woods behind her house. The family also played music together for hours: Evelyn on the piano and organ, Helen on the violin, Muriel on the drums and Doris on an E-flat saxophone. Her mother and grandmother, both pianists, would be in the kitchen cooking breakfast, lunch, dinner: "You struck a wrong note," Doris recalled, and her mother with her sharp ear said, "Do it over!" And so the rehearsals would go on all day. All the children took music lessons.
Each generation graduated from Port Jefferson High School, with Doris in 1937. "We weren't always accepted," she said ruefully. Part two next week
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