Mary Elizabeth “Libbie” Carpenter Stevens Wicks

Biography

Mary Elizabeth Carpenter, known as Libbie, was born at Providence, Rhode Island, on October 18, 1894 to Gilbert Congdon Carpenter and Minnie Mabel Chamberlain. Her adult family life took shape across several American cities and was twice interrupted by the death of a husband in aviation.

She married Henry LeNoble Stevens on June 27, 1917. His wartime service took him to France as an aviator. He died on September 12, 1918, little more than a year after their marriage. The surviving aviation account places his final flight within the work of the 50th Aero Squadron. Libbie's first marriage therefore ended during the war, while she was still in her early twenties.

On February 17, 1920 she married John Doane Wicks, known as Jack. The family chronology follows their children through a series of residences: Marjorie was born at Syracuse, New York, in September 1920; John Doane Jr. at Hartford, Connecticut, in March, with accounts differing between 1922 and 1923; Sylvia Chamberlain at Syracuse in June 1924; Barbara Carpenter at Charlotte, North Carolina, in March 1926; and Wesley Doane at Providence in February 1936. The children's birthplaces connect the household with several states over those years.

Jack died in an aircraft accident on November 1, 1949. Libbie was then fifty-five. The family record also preserves nearly three decades of her second marriage and the raising of five children.