Our grandparents / The Kennedy and Wainwright families
EVELYN MELICK.
She grew up on a New Jersey dairy farm, made a home for generations of family, and traveled far beyond the country roads where her story began.
Begin her story ↓
A childhood on a dairy farm.
Before the cruises, before the long journeys across the world, Evelyn Lorraine Kennedy's story began along a country road in New Jersey. In 1930, she was five years old, living in a dairy-farming household on Old York Road in Mansfield Township.
Her father, Charles Frederick Kennedy, was fifty-one and working as a dairy farmer. The census listed him as an employer, the family's home as owned, and their household as living on a farm. Seven people lived under that roof. The Kennedys even had a radio—a small sign of a changing world reaching into a rural home.
There was little room for a day off in dairy farming. Animals had to be cared for and milked in every season, and family life followed the routines of the farm. We cannot know precisely how young Evelyn spent her days, but we can know the kind of working household in which she was raised.
Years later, Evelyn would marry Donald Melick, who had also grown up in a New Jersey dairy-farming family, on Homestead Road in Oldwick. Their childhoods began on different farms, but with a surprisingly similar rhythm.
The family around her.
Evelyn was born on July 8, 1924, to Charles Frederick Kennedy and Hannah Wainwright. Both of her parents were New Jersey natives, and their family was part of the network of farms, towns, churches, and relatives that linked the state's countryside.
Charles had been born in 1879; Hannah in 1896. They raised their family through the Depression and into the Second World War. The surviving records place the Kennedys on Old York Road in 1930 and, by Evelyn's teenage years, in the family circles around Flemington.
The work of Evelyn's father did not remain unchanged. The 1940 census still described Charles—entered as Frederick Kennedy—as a farmer. By 1950, he and Hannah were enumerated in Flemington, and his occupation was watchman in the chemical industry. He was about seventy. The records do not tell us when he left farming or why he took this later job, but they offer a more complete picture of the working life behind Evelyn's childhood household. Compare the census entries ↗
Three years before Evelyn's birth, Charles's older brother Francis Timothy Kennedy Jr., his wife Olga and two of their children were killed when a train struck their automobile near Roebling on April 20, 1921. Six children survived. The tragedy remained part of the Kennedy family history, and a 1930 census shows several of the surviving siblings living together in Hillside.
Family Stories / April 1921Four lives lost. Six children left behind. ↗The original newspaper, a family photograph and the story of Evelyn's surviving cousins.One especially vivid glimpse comes from September 1942. Evelyn's sister Dorothy married Corporal Roger Snyder at Flemington Baptist Church. Eighteen-year-old Evelyn stood beside her as maid of honor. The wedding notice named the church, the attendants, and the reception at the bride's parents' home—a family celebration unfolding while the country was at war.
Charles died in 1957, Hannah in 1976. Their story begins with a working dairy farm, but the family that surrounded Evelyn also connected her to a much older New Jersey history through her mother's Wainwright relatives.
Seventy-five flowers.
On February 23, 1937, Evelyn's grandfather William Henry Wainwright turned seventy-five. His children sent him a basket containing one flower for every year of his life.
The local newspaper reported that William had been unwell but was feeling somewhat better. Ten days later, on March 5, he died. Evelyn was twelve. A birthday announcement and an obituary, published barely two weeks apart, preserved both the family's gesture of affection and its sudden proximity to loss.
William's daughter Hannah Kennedy—Evelyn's mother—was named among his survivors. Hannah's mother, Mary Margaret “Maggie” Chumard, belonged to William's earlier household. The date of Maggie's death remains unresolved; by 1937 William's obituary identified Josephine Wainwright as his surviving wife.
What the 1937 notices do preserve is a moment of family closeness: William's children remembered his birthday with seventy-five flowers, and Hannah was among the family named when he died shortly afterward.
Another family record takes us further back, to the Chumards of Burlington County. An 1855 estate petition names ten children of James Chumard Sr. The William in that list is probably the father of Hannah's mother, Maggie, though the identification still needs one more original link. Meet the family named in the estate record ↗
Names from another century.
On the Wainwright side, Evelyn's ancestry reaches beyond the nineteenth century to the Carty and Shreve families of colonial New Jersey.
William Wainwright's mother was Hannah Ann Carty. Her mother, Jane Shreve, connected the family to a line whose names appear in Burlington County records. Among them was Caleb Shreve, born in 1721 and dead by 1786, before there was a nineteenth-century New Jersey—or a United States a modern reader would recognize.
An old handwritten family register preserved names and dates across generations. A published abstract of Caleb's will adds another trace of the household. These were practical records made to remember births, relationships, property, and obligations. Centuries later, they allow Evelyn's descendants to recognize their own family's names.
Another branch of her Wainwright ancestry leads through Charity Antrim, born in Burlington County in 1776. The Antrim family's roots in early West Jersey are remembered in an 1899 history of Quaker brothers John and James Antram, including a 1680 land-rights transaction and a small log house preserved on an old homestead. The exact identity of the John named in that early document still needs to be reconciled with the family tree.
Explore the compiled Antrim family history ↗
The distance between these colonial households and Evelyn's childhood in the 1920s is immense. Yet within her family history, one thread runs through Shreve and Carty, another through Antrim and Wainwright, before reaching the Kennedys.
Caleb Shreve → Isaac Shreve → Jane Shreve Carty → Hannah Ann Carty Wainwright → William Wainwright → Hannah Kennedy → Evelyn Melick
A family of her own.
Evelyn carried the experience of her New Jersey childhood into the next chapter of her life: becoming a wife, a mother, and eventually the center of an ever-growing family.
In 1944, Evelyn married Frank Lentini. They had two children together. This was an important part of her life, and those children went on to have families of their own, adding grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and great-great-grandchildren to Evelyn's story.
On September 26, 1953, Evelyn married Donald Walter Melick, a young man from Oldwick who knew farm life firsthand. Together they had two children, Warren and Betsy. Over the years, Don's work in agriculture and the family's life took them to the Bethlehem area of Pennsylvania.
There is a lovely symmetry in their beginnings: both Evelyn and Don grew up in dairy-farming households in New Jersey. But the life they shared would carry them far from those first country roads.
A world beyond the farm.
If her childhood was rooted in one corner of New Jersey, Evelyn's later years were marked by a love of seeing the world—and by making people feel at home wherever she was.
Evelyn and Don traveled together to Japan, the Philippines, England, and South America. They especially enjoyed ocean cruises, returning in their affections to Bermuda, their favorite destination. For a girl who had grown up on a dairy farm, it was a life that stretched across oceans and continents.
Yet the pleasures closest to home mattered just as much. Evelyn loved to cook for her family, play golf with friends, and volunteer. Those who remembered her spoke of her zest for life and the warm welcome she extended to the people she met. Her kitchen, her friendships, and the time spent together were as much a part of her story as the places she visited.
Above all, Evelyn cherished being a wife, mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother. The details of that life are not all preserved in newspapers or official records. They live in the meals she made, the holidays and visits people remember, and the family connections she kept alive.
Ninety-eight years of life.
Evelyn lived nearly a century. She was born into the world of New Jersey farm roads in 1924 and died on October 26, 2022, at ninety-eight, in Southlake, Texas.
Don died on March 20, 1992. Evelyn lived for another thirty years, watching the family expand through new generations and across the country. Her children Warren and Betsy had families of their own; by the time of her death, her obituary named five grandchildren and five great-grandchildren through their branch of the family, as well as many descendants through her earlier marriage.
Across that long life, she was many things: a dairy farmer's daughter, a sister, a traveler, a cook, a golfer, a volunteer, a mother and a grandmother. Those roles cannot be reduced to a family tree or a list of dates. They tell us why the people who knew her remember not only where she came from, but how she made them feel.
Her story also reaches backward. Through Hannah Wainwright, it touches the Shreve, Carty and Antrim families of early New Jersey. Through Charles Kennedy, it returns to the family dairy farm on Old York Road. And through her children, grandchildren, and generations still to come, it carries forward in directions she could never have imagined as a five-year-old girl in 1930.
From the family archive
The traces she left us.
The surviving newspaper notices and family documents connect Evelyn’s childhood, her marriages, and her earlier New Jersey family lines. Open a record to read it in the shared family archive.
A sister's wedding1942 · Evelyn named as maid of honorView the newspaper ↗
Evelyn's marriage announcement1944 · The Courier-NewsView the newspaper ↗
Her father, Charles1957 · The Courier-NewsView the obituary ↗
Her mother, Hannah1976 · The Courier-NewsView the obituary ↗
The birthday flowers1937 · William WainwrightView the notice ↗
The Shreve family registerEarlier generations · Burlington CountyView the document ↗
About the sources behind Evelyn's story
The farm details come from the 1930 United States census entries for Charles F. Kennedy and Evelyn L. Kennedy, at Old York Road, Mansfield Township, Burlington County, New Jersey: home owned, on a farm, Charles's occupation dairy farmer (employer), seven household members, and a radio. The later work descriptions come from the 1940 farmer entry and 1950 Flemington census, in which he was recorded as a watchman in the chemical industry; neither document establishes his reasons for changing work. “Grew up on a dairy farm” describes the household; the census does not by itself establish ownership of all the farm acreage. Evelyn's dates, travel, interests, and surviving family come from her obituary; the two marriages are also documented in the family genealogy and a 1944 newspaper notice. A reference to seven household members comes from the census record, not an independently verified list of names.
The older Wainwright–Carty–Shreve descent follows compiled family genealogy and warrants checking against original records. The paternal Kennedy line beyond Charles Frederick Kennedy remains provisional. The 1937 notices name Josephine Wainwright as William's surviving wife; Hannah's mother in the family tree is William's earlier wife Mary Margaret Chumard. Earlier family accounts give 1898 and 1900 as different dates for Maggie's death, but neither is established by a verified original death record.
Explore Evelyn's ancestor profiles, the full Evelyn archive, and Caleb Shreve's 1786 will abstract.
Keep exploring
Every life connects to another.
Follow Don’s story from his own dairy-farm childhood, meet Evelyn’s earlier New Jersey ancestors, or discover the small but extraordinary moments preserved in the family archive.