I found a great spot for the restored, circa-1855 ambrotype photo of my third great-grandmother, Mary Graham Arms, who was born in Sunderland on June 28, 1794 and died in South Deerfield on Christmas Day 1887.

As I sit here writing about her, her framed portrait is looking out at me from a bottom pigeonhole shelf of a Chippendale secretary she would have probably known as a desk and bookcase. From her cherry perch, she appears to be peering directly at me, with photos of her daughter and son-in-law behind me on each side of the front door.

Though there is some online disagreement about her birth date, I’ll accept the Greenfield Gazette and Courier’s death notice that gave her age as 93 years, five months, and 27 days. Those numbers square with the birth date above, published in John Montague Smith’s 1899 History of Sunderland.

The third of 10 children born to shoemaker Benjamin and Mary (Smith) Graham, Mary wed Erastus Arms (1785-1830) on January 12, 1814, but would become known as a South Deerfield village widow. She survived her husband by 57 years and resided in different family homes situated within a stone’s throw of the Bloody Brook Monument, erected while she lived there in 1838.

Known as Bloody Brook Corner to residents and motor vehicle operators who learned to negotiate the sharp curve in the road, the neighborhood surrounding the obelisk monument could just as well have been dubbed Arms Corner. At least seven homes clustered along that section of North Main Street, and three additional dwellings abutting on the west, began as properties of the same Arms family in one form or another.

These homesteads surrounded the Arms Manufacturing Company, which stood in my youth as a plastic factory but was still known to older generations as the Arms Pocketbook Shop. Mary Arms had skin in that manufactory as well – it was founded in 1845 by Dennis Arms (1790-1854), the younger brother and former shoemaking partner of her late husband.

Mary’s formal, seated, ambrotype image came to me from a remarkable family collection of old photos protected for decades by her spinster great-granddaughter, my great-aunt Gladys Hayes Sanderson (1895-1989), who never left her five-generation family home on Pleasant Street. The encased photo printed on ruby glass must have been dropped or crushed at some point, and was broken into several vertical pie wedges running through Mary’s face and torso.

Though it is unknown when it was broken, I’m glad it wasn’t discarded with the trash. Nowadays, modern technology makes it possible to salvage such damaged photos.

When I learned that my friend Chris Clawson of Turners Falls had the restoration tools, I allowed him to give it a go. Meticulous and careful, he didn’t disappoint – removing the sherds piece by piece from their case and carefully reassembling and scanning them before going to work on a cloning restoration. The result is a restored, printable photo that is probably the only surviving image of Mary Graham Arms, a member of historically important Sunderland and South Deerfield families, besides being an ancestor of mine.

Mary Graham Arms’s life wasn’t easy. Far from it, in fact. Just 36 at the time of her 45-year-old husband’s untimely death on December 17, 1830, she was left to care for eight children ranging in age from 16 to 1. Included among them was her 12-year-old daughter Angeline, identified by Deerfield historian George Sheldon and some Deerfield records as “simple.” Precisely what that means is unclear. Most likely the child suffered from birthing brain damage or Down syndrome.

I knew little to nothing about my third great-grandmother before researching deeds as a member of the Deerfield 350th Anniversary history committee. I discovered her during a deep dive into the town’s 1688 Long Hill Division, which had established the original proprietary lots that became Muddy Brook, Bloody Brook, and eventually South Deerfield.

Mary Arms spent her entire married and widowed life residing on the eastern border of “Lot 22 West,” dominated by Arms dwellings and located roughly between today’s high school and Pleasant Street.

It appears that husband Erastus died before the completion of his new home, which still stands at 111 North Main Street. Today known as the Yellow Gabled House, it was the creation of South Deerfield joiner Pliny Mann, whose account book survives at Deerfield’s Memorial Libraries. His records place him on the job in 1830, the year Erastus died. Mary probably never got to enjoy a day in her new home before widowhood.

Deeds reveal that her community took care of her after her husband’s passing, and she never remarried. When financial times got tough, family and friends pitched in to keep her afloat with what is today known as refinance mortgages.

Then, as she got older and her youngest child – son David Brainard Arms (1829-1918) – came of age to start a family, he took ownership, likely initially keeping his mother under his roof.

At the time of her death, she resided across Bloody Brook in a family home that still stands on 101 North Main Street. The front end of that building began as a post office, run by mid-19th century stagecoach express agent and nephew William D. Bates, whose mother, Miriam, was Erastus’s sister.

That lot is bordered north by the old W.D. Bates home lot, historically occupied by his grandfather Eliphas Arms, uncle Josiah Arms, and eventually cousin D.B. Arms, who lived across the brook in the Yellow Gabled House and temporarily transformed the so-called “Old Arms Place” into a pocketbook shop in the 1890s.

Today, the home on that lot is occupied by my 96-year-old mother – not an Arms descendant, but the spouse of one.

So, Mary Graham Arms lives on, stoically watching me peck at my keyboard from her cozy perch. Thanks to Chris Clawson’s extraordinary efforts and modern miracles, the South Deerfield grande dame’s portrait and legend are preserved for posterity.