Fall 2006-Winter 2007

In Memory of

Inez Livermore Albee

1922 - 2006

by

Bill Treichler

Inez was born in Corning, the daughter of Lawrence and Edith Phelps Livermore, and grew up there. She graduated in 1939 from the Painted Post High School. In 1944 she received a Bachelor of Science in Home Economics from Buffalo State Teachers College. On August 10, 1946, Inez Livermore married David M. Albee in Coopers Plains. She taught in Belfast and Addison schools and retired from Haverling Central School in Bath. And in 1969 Inez Albee received her Masters in Education from Elmira College. Mary Paddock remembers teaching with Inez:

It was my great good fortune to teach a classroom next door to Inez when we both taught junior high students at Haverling. She taught what was then called “home economics.” I was a young teacher of jr. high English, and the lessons Inez taught her students were not lost on me! I was always interested in the many classroom projects which were so different from mine.

She captured the interest of those rambunctious young people by having them concoct, serve, and eat carefully planned meals. Sometimes they even invited other teachers to dine with them in order to show off their expertise.

I was always interested in their sewing projects as well. Since I was a sewer (but not terribly accomplished), I often looked over their shoulders as they worked on assigned projects. Inez had them making backpacks before they were popular. She was way ahead of the game!

There was one particular lesson my own daughters brought home from her classes which has stuck with me to this day. Mrs. Albee always admonished her students to plan their meals carefully. She emphasized the importance of having a colorful, attractively arranged plate of food at mealtime. To this day when I look at my dinner plate with a chicken breast, serving of rice, and a helping of cauliflower, I think to myself, “Oh, dear, Mrs. Albee would not approve of this color combination!”

She was an excellent teacher who always kept her students engaged. She was also a good role model for the rest of us, and I feel fortunate to have known her.

Inez was an enthusiastic genealogist who traced the lineage of both her Livermore and Phelps families, and her husband’s family as well. She was a long-time member of the Jo-Ho’s genealogy club and of the Steuben County Historical Society.

The January 1990 Genealogy Issue, of The Crooked Lake Review carried her article, Tracing and Recording My Family History. She described her search for the history of her mother's family through official records, local history books, genealogy sites, and libraries—finally discovering The Phelps Family in America and Their English Ancestry by O. S. Phelps which ran her great-grandfather's Phelps family ancestors back to England in 1520. Inez updated the line to include the youngest children, entering them all into a family book. She detailed in her article how she organized her book, solutions to some of her practical problems, and, ways to avoid offending family members.

In the January 1993 issue she wrote of her Miller and Livermore ancestors and included a photograph of her great-grandfather's family taken in 1862 when he was away in the Civil War. In the January 1994 issue she contributed a story of spinning, weaving, cutting and sewing a woolen suit in seven days for ancestor Peter Graves before he left for the War of 1812. And in the Winter 2000 issue of the Crooked Lake Review she described incidents of her family life in My Father and J. B. Maltby Wholesale Groceries.

David Albee died February 25, 2006; Inez died September 7, 2006. They are survived by two sons, four grandchildren and nieces and nephews.

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