Lorin Low Dame, circa 1863

Dame Sisters, top Ruth, Olive, bottom  Daisy, Isabel

9 Hastings Lane, Medford, home of Lorinn Low Dame and Isabel Arnold Dame, Richard Coolidge and Ruth Dame

This website is a home for photos, diaries, writings, letters and more of the Dame, Coolidge, Butman and Sackton-Butman family.

The Dames and Coolidge’s saved almost everything and that trait has been passed down to me!

When Richard Coolidge, my grandfather died in 1957 his daughters Olive Butman (my mother) and June Cary (my Aunt) had the unenviable task of cleaning out the family house at 9 Hastings Lane in Medford.

The Dames and Coolidges had lived there since the 1890’s. Brad Coolidge (my Uncle) was in the State Department and at that time was stationed in Thailand so could not assist.

Throughout the house, and in the attic were boxes of papers. My mother tossed some out the attic window into a dumpster but she kept a lot. Because no one could deal with them at the time, all the boxes were transported to the attic of Hinckly farm in Nantucket, and lived there until the early 2000’s.

At that time Brad Coolidige , brought them to his home in Bethesda. By chance he had a friend who was an archivist, , Jessica Kaplan. She was looking for part time work as she had two young children.

She spent the next ten years sorting through the boxes and creating an accessible archive and a narrative of the Dame and Coolidge family. Before all the material went to the Massachusetts Historical Society where it now resides, I went to Bethesda and scanned all that I thought important or interesting with the help of Toby Sackton my husband.

That was the beginning of my interest and passion for our family history.

When Oggy and Bob Butman died in 2008 and 2009, respectively my brothers John and Brad, Nancy Butman, John’s wife, Farley Lewis Brads long time partner and Toby Sackton my husband, spent several months cleaning out their house in Concord where we had grown up and they had lived for 60 years. While not a many boxes there a in Medford, there were many and most I took to our house in Lexington.

Since then I have been organizing and sorting, creating digital books, fielding questions and giving some material to various archives. I have learned so much about our family and there is a LOT of material buried in my computer files.

This website is born out of a desire to make all that fascinating information more accessible to our family and to anyone else who has an interest in our family, Heartfelt thanks to Toby for helping to make this possible and to my nephew Henry before him who whole heartedly supported the creation of a website.