#52 Ancestors 2024 Week 18 Love and Marriage: Lib Dent

 The defining characteristic of my paternal grandmother, Ida Elizabeth Dent Scrivener, was that she was a woman in love, married for nearly sixty years to a man she adored.  

Lib's Father, Papa Dent

Ida Elizabeth Dent, born in 1902 in Oakley, St. Mary's County, MD, was named after her grandmother, Ida Elizabeth Wright.  She didn't like her first name and never used it.  She went by "Lib" among friends and family or Ma Scrivener to her grandchildren. She was the third of four children of John Marshall Dent Jr. (Papa Dent) and Mary Peterson Turner (Mama Dent), growing up on the family farm near her grandparents (Big Papa and Big Mama) and numerous aunts and uncles with her older brother, Jack, and two sisters, Olive and Turner. 

I don't know much about Lib's rural childhood and don't have any pictures of her as a child. However, there is one story about her as a young girl: she won a $1 prize from a local newspaper for her short essay on her greatest mistake: being born a girl instead of a boy. For more on that, see the story here. 

Lib attended the local public schools, but in terms of higher education, she was fortunate to live in St. Mary's County, the home of the St. Mary's Female Seminary, founded in 1839 as a living monument to Maryland's tradition of religious freedom. And even more fortunately, she received the Francis Scott Key Scholarship from the DAR and the Southern Maryland Society in 1917 to cover four years of tuition at the seminary. She graduated in 1921. 

St. Mary's ca. 1890

I am not 100 percent certain, but I think the sorority picture below shows Lib in the front row to the right of the young woman in the dark dress. 

Like most of the young ladies at the Seminary, Lib enjoyed attending the dances at the nearby military academy, Charlotte Hall. At one such event, Lib met the dashing young Navy veteran, Frank Scrivener, and was swept off her feet.

Lib went on to the Normal School at Towson, where she got free tuition in exchange for a promise to teach in the public schools for two years. She graduated in 1922 and began teaching in Prince George's County MD, boarding at a home in Upper Marlboro.

Frank's job as an inspector with the State Roads Commission sent him all over the state, but he seemed to find many excuses to visit at the district office in Prince George's County where he would hang around outside Miss Dent's classroom, whistling to attract attention, and then telling her students that class would be dismissed early that day. Miss Dent's students loved Frank. No word on how Miss Dent's principal felt about this. 

Lib and Frank were married in 1924 at St. Mary's Church in Upper Marlboro MD. Frank's uncle, Monsignor Andrew Keene Gwynn, officiated. Lib's father wasn't able to walk her down the aisle due to his health problems, so her uncle Walter Dent filled that role. According to family lore, Lib's family was not happy about the marriage, and her father refused to give her away at the wedding. Possibly they were unhappy that she was marrying a Catholic. Or, it could have just been his health problems. On the other hand, family lore also says that Frank's mother thought Lib was not good enough for her son and treated Lib in such a way as to leave no doubt of her opinion. (It's entirely possible that she believed no one was good enough for her only child. She definitely doted on him!) So, no telling who insulted whom first. Of course, all this happened long before I arrived on the scene, so family stories are the only source. I'm sorry I never had the chance to ask my grandmother for her version of that story. 

The picture below, one of my all-time favorite photos, shows Frank and Lib as a young courting couple. Handsome, aren’t they? And definitely in love.

Lib w/ Frank III

In any case, the couple lived in Baltimore at first where my father, Frank III, was born in 1925 at Mercy Hospital. They later moved to Leonardtown, St. Mary's County, where four more children were born: Louise (Reds), Jack, Bill (Chick), and Keene. 

While they lived in St. Mary's, Frank was the catcher on the local baseball team and helped to found the Leonardtown Volunteer Fire Department, perhaps inspired by Lib's grandparents' home burning to the ground because there was no local fire department. 

Finally, the young family moved back to Baltimore again where their youngest son, Bobby, was born in 1933. 

In the midst of the Great Depression, of course, Frank was very fortunate to have a steady job with the state. Nevertheless, it can’t have been easy raising five lively sons and a feisty daughter during those years. The boys helped out financially by selling Christmas trees and magazine subscriptions, ushering at the Senator Theater and working at the local Nibble and Clink restaurant. Reds earned money by babysitting and later as salesgirl at Hutzlers. 

By all accounts, Lib was a very frugal manager and a creative cook who was proud that no one ever left her table hungry. She shopped by phone on a daily basis, ordering just enough for the day’s meal from the local grocer, telling Carl at the meat market: "Now, I want something right nice." According to my mother, Lib never set foot in a grocery store until after Frank died. 

Despite the fact that her father, her husband and her oldest son all worked on building roads, Lib never learned to drive, claiming that it made her nervous.  Probably true.  Her "green nerve medicine," was legendary. While some have speculated that there was crème de menthe involved, my uncle swears it was a placebo of water and some vitamins concocted by her doctor. Whatever it was, it worked. “Bring me the green nerve medicine” was the first call to help deal with any nerve-wracking situation. 

When I knew her, Lib was a great bridge player and regularly hosted the local bridge club at her home, at which times any visiting grandchildren were banished to the basement. She and Frank were also avid sports fans, frequently attending Colts and Orioles games at nearby Memorial Stadium. She also liked to visit Pimlico and watch the horse races. 

But the one thing that everyone agrees on about Lib: in her eyes, the sun rose and set on Frank Scrivener. 

I am very fortunate to have inherited several of the loving notes that Lib wrote to Frank during their almost sixty years of marriage. She wrote to him regularly on every occasion--holidays, birthdays, promotions, or no reason at all, except to shower him with her love. The note below was written in 1964. 

The photo below shows Frank and Lib in 1969.  I think the love is obvious. 

Frank died in 1980.  Lib outlived him by seven years, dying in 1987.  I'm sure those seven years were the hardest of her life. 

Frank Scrivener and Lib Dent are buried at New Cathedral Cemetery in Baltimore.