• Skip to secondary menu
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to secondary sidebar

New York Almanack

History, Natural History & the Arts

  • Email
  • RSS
  • Adirondacks & NNY
  • Capital-Saratoga
  • Mohawk Valley
  • Hudson Valley & Catskills
  • NYC & Long Island
  • Western NY
  • History
  • Nature & Environment
  • Arts & Culture
  • Outdoor Recreation
  • Food & Farms
  • Subscribe
  • Support
  • Submit
  • About
  • New Books
  • Events
  • Podcasts

Army War Brides At Sackets Harbor

January 24, 2018 by Jeannie Brennan - Constance Brennan Barone 1 Comment

ww1 ambulanceSackets Harbor’s military story spans two centuries. After the War of 1812, the Army set up their post Madison Barracks, so since then, US military conflicts through World War II had some connection to Sackets Harbor.

Thousands of soldiers called Madison Barracks home during its 130-year history. But what do we know of the soldier’s spouses?

One of the most well-known brides, Julia Dent Grant, joined her young husband Ulysses S., taking up residence in the Stone Row quarters shortly after their marriage in 1848. She wrote fondly of her time at the Northern New York army post.

When World War I ended in 1918, the war department formed regiments of married men returning with European wives, called “Father of Families Veterans.” The federal government transported brides on the ship George Washington, nicknamed the “honeymoon transport.” Army officials were baffled on how to accommodate the estimated 20,000 couples, stating: “never before have its officers been called on to adjust the domestic affairs of the enlisted men.”

Sackets Harbor’s Madison Barracks became the destination for many of these couples. Brides from France, Germany, England, Belgium, and Luxembourg began married life in former wooden training buildings at Madison Barracks. These quarters allowed two rooms for a kitchen and a bedroom or sitting area. Many brides found employment with officer’s families or as maids in village homes.

Who were these young brides Beatrice, Ottille, Francine, Olga, Anna, and Yvonne, whose ages ranged from 15 to 23 years of age? Some were sisters, another the daughter of a French Colonel. As war brides arrived, by September 1919, twenty-five couples lived at the Barracks.

wooden barracksTransitioning into American life challenged these young immigrants. In France, a Watertown woman Barbara Gamble, volunteered as a Y.M.C.A canteen worker. After the war, her familiarity with French culture and the language became an asset for her to “Americanize” foreign brides at Madison Barracks. In 1920, she worked in cooperation with the Americanization Bureau, American Red Cross, and Madison Barracks Chaplain, teaching the English language and American customs to more than 40 brides. Eventually, the European war brides with their American soldier husbands fanned out across the country to start a new life together.

We do know more about World War II war brides who married Sackets Harbor soldiers. In summer 1945, Capt. Albert Neville, of the 82nd Airborne, married Eva Hughes Fairbough of Cheshire, England. The bride had served in the Auxiliary Territorial Service women’s branch of the British Army. It took a year before she was transported by ship, to arrive just in time to see the Watertown V-J Day (Victory over Japan) one year anniversary parade.

Another war bride, Kate Deuschle of Copenhagen, Denmark, reunited with her fiancé Harry “Pete” Krake, Jr. in winter 1947. The couple met in 1945 when he was stationed with the First Army Armored Ordinance. They married at the groom’s home on Monroe Street a year after her arrival. Today, Kate lives in California, one of the estimated 70,000 war brides who came to the United States from Europe after World War II.

We would like to hear from readers about these war brides who passed through Sackets Harbor after the World Wars. These stories of soldier’s spouses are another part of Sackets Harbor’s rich history.

Photos: A WW1 Ambulance and Madison Barracks.

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

Filed Under: History Tagged With: Military History, Sackets Harbor, womens history, World War One

Please Support The New York Almanack

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Michael Neville says

    July 19, 2023 at 6:15 PM

    Albert Neville, mentioned here is my grandfather.

    Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Primary Sidebar

Help Support The Almanack

Subscribe to New York Almanack

Subscribe! Follow the New York Almanack each day via E-mail, RSS, Twitter or Facebook updates.

Recent Comments

  • Edna Teperman Rosen on The 1962 Catskills High View House Fire
  • Lorraine Duvall on Avoiding A Repeat of 2020 Election Attacks
  • Robert C Conner on Anna Elizabeth Dickinson: ‘America’s Civil War Joan of Arc’
  • Olivia Twine on New Backstretch Housing Planned For Saratoga, Belmont
  • Charles Yaple on Acts of Faith: Religion and the American West at the New York Historical Society
  • Edythe Ann Quinn on Avoiding A Repeat of 2020 Election Attacks
  • Miroslav Kačmarský on The Burden Iron Works of Troy: A Short History
  • Bob Meyer on Avoiding A Repeat of 2020 Election Attacks
  • Pat Boomhower on Avoiding A Repeat of 2020 Election Attacks
  • Editorial Staff on Indigenous Peoples of the Adirondacks

Recent New York Books

James Wilson: The Anxious Founder
Flatiron Legacy National Football League History NFL
Henry David Thoreau Thinking Disobediently
Prints of a New Kind: Political Caricature in the United States, 1789–1828
The Confidante - The Untold Story of the Anna Rosenberg Who Helped Win WWII and Shape Modern America
Expelling the Poor by Hidetaka Hirota
African Americans of St Lawrence County by Bryan S Thompson
America's First Plague - 1793 Yellow Fever Epidemic Robert P Watson
Witness to the Revolution
My View of the Mountains

Secondary Sidebar