Leland McKnight meets Evelyn Clift

Let’s start with Leland and Evelyn. All the cousins in my generation and the older one knew Evelyn, affectionately called Grandma Mac.

Leland McKnight grew up in West Hebron and went to the West Hebron District 11 school. He got his Bachelor of Engineering degree from Union College in June, 1913. In 1920, he was living with his cousins the Stewarts in Manhattan – Thomas and Mary Stewart, and their children Alvin, Isabel, and Helen. By 1930 (according to US census records) he had moved to Westfields, NJ and lived on Scotch Plains Avenue. Also according to the 1930 census he was a physical engineer doing research work.

Evelyn Clift was born in Irvington, New Jersey. In 1900, at age 2, she was living there with her parents in a house on Cummings St. She went to Mount Holyoke College and graduated with an AB degree in 1919. After teaching physics for a year at Newton High School in Massachusetts, she went to MIT for her Masters of Science degree, which she earned (also in Physics) in 1922. Friends tell us that, while at MIT, she attended lectures by such well-known scientists as Albert Einstein and Neils Bohr. She was inducted into the American Physical Society in December 1922. She taught Physics briefly at MIT in 1922, probably as a grad student, and was also a lab assistant there. Following her graduation she taught physics for an additional 4 years back at her alma mater, Mount Holyoke. She took a brief hiatus in the summer of 1925 for a trip to Europe, returning September 3 into New York City (presumably in time to begin the fall semester back at school).

Nobody seems to know how these two smart people, Leland and Evelyn, met each other. At the time of their engagement, which was announced in a South Hadley paper in January 1926, Leland was a civil engineer at Air Reduction Laboratories in Elizabeth, NJ. Evelyn was a member of the Mt Holyoke faculty, in Massachusetts. How and when did they meet?

However it happened, Evelyn left her job at Mount Holyoke, the two married on July 3, 1926, and went to live an apartment in Elizabeth, New Jersey. In late summer 1928, the couple and their baby daughter moved to a house on Scotch Plains Avenue in Westfield, NJ, where they were still living in 1930, by then with two children.

Questions, family, for you all. How did they meet? Does anyone have a wedding photo?

In the next post, I’ll continue with their lives at the farm…