Ancestors

Joan L. Dalrymple

Joan L. Dalrymple was born about 1925 in New York, the second of four daughters of Fitzwilliam Dalrymple Jr. and Beatrice Dassler. Her father had flown with the Naval Reserve in the First World War, and her grandfather was Dr. Fitzwilliam Dalrymple, an Irish-born physician who had practiced in New Rochelle since about 1891. Her sisters were Beatrice Elizabeth, born in 1923, Patricia, born in 1926, and Joy, born in 1928.

In the 1930 census Joan was five. She was living in New Rochelle in the house of her mother's parents, Henry W. Dassler and Emelia Dassler, both seventy. Her mother, Beatrice, was thirty, and her little sister Joy was two. Her father was not in the household. Henry Dassler had been born in New York to German parents.

In 1940 Joan was fifteen and still in New Rochelle, in Ward 2. The household was headed by Lillian Dalrymple, a widow of seventy-seven born in Pennsylvania, who had been in the same house in 1935. Beatrice, now forty, was there with all four girls: Beatrice, sixteen, Joan, fifteen, Patricia, fourteen, and Joy, twelve. Joan's father had died on 2 January of that year, aged forty-six. The census gives Joan the middle initial L.

Joan married Robert B. Hoyt in New Rochelle, probably on 26 April 1946. He was the son of Reynold Barlow Hoyt of Pelham Manor, the next town over. Their first child, Robert Reynold Hoyt, called Bob, was born in April 1947 and carried his Hoyt grandfather's first name as his middle name.

The 1950 census found the young family back under Beatrice's roof, at 59 Meadow Lane in New Rochelle. Joan Hoyt, twenty-five and married, was listed as Beatrice's daughter and as keeping house. Her son Robert R. was two. Her husband, Robert B. Hoyt, twenty-six, was entered as son-in-law, with a note that he was a resident student to be counted at his college. The house was full. Joan's sister Patricia was there with her husband, Jack Massman, and their two baby daughters, and her sister Joy was there with her husband, Max A. Bishop. So was John Dalrymple, forty-eight, an auto mechanic, entered as Beatrice's husband.

Two more children followed in the 1950s. Gary B. Hoyt was born about 1954 or 1955, and a daughter, Susan, about 1956. The family moved from New Rochelle to Pleasantville, New York. On 1 April 1956, by Bob's account, Joan and the children reached St. Petersburg, Florida, at ten at night, twenty-eight hours after leaving New York. They had picked up Joan's husband "in the city" on the way. They stayed first with Joan's mother, Beatrice, now married to David A. Ritacco, in a brand new house with a retention pond behind it. Then they moved to a home of their own.

The family settled on the north side of St. Petersburg. On 22 November 1957 "Robert B. Hoyt and Joan D. Hoyt, his wife," of 6447 34th Terrace North, bought a house lot in the Miles Pines subdivision. The D very probably stood for Dalrymple; she signed with it for the rest of her life.

Within two years the marriage was over. A domestic relations judgment between Joan D. Hoyt and Robert B. Hoyt was recorded in Pinellas County on 22 September 1959, in chancery case 52634, and it dealt with the Miles Pines house. A week earlier, on 15 September 1959, "Joan D. Hoyt, single," of 7549 16th Street North, had bought a house of her own. It was Lot 25 in Block 34 of Meadow Lawn Fifth Addition, and she took over its $10,800 mortgage. Robert B. Hoyt married again, and his 1998 obituary names a later wife, Donna M.

Joan's second husband was Leigh R. Kennedy Jr., the man her son called Lee. On 15 September 1968 she sold the Meadow Lawn house, and the deed was made by "Joan D. Hoyt Kennedy, formerly Joan D. Hoyt, joined by her husband, Leigh R. Kennedy, Jr." They were married by then. Where and when they married is not known.

The couple made their home at 7360 Organdy Drive North, Lot 30 in Block 36 of the same subdivision. In August 1972 they mortgaged it to the First Federal Savings and Loan Association of St. Petersburg, "together with ... Drop-in Range and Oven." In July 1977 they deeded it to themselves together, and both signed.

Lee's father, Leigh R. Kennedy Sr., was dead by then. His widow, Mary C. Kennedy, was probably Lee's mother. She sold Joan's son Bob and his wife Shelley a house in Baybridge Heights in 1974 and deeded it to them in December 1977, describing herself as "unremarried widow and surviving spouse of Leigh R. Kennedy, Sr., deceased." Pinellas County recorded a death certificate for a Leigh R. Kennedy in September 1969 and another in January 1980. The second came with a state tax lien against "Leigh R. Kennedy, deceased." The likeliest reading is that the first was the father and the second was Joan's husband, which would make her a widow at the start of 1980.

Joan worked for her living in St. Petersburg. By Bob's account she sold Stanley Home Products and Avon, ran home shows, became a partner in a locksmith company, and later went into what he called "the Safe Company."

She also ran neighbourhood newspapers. A Florida business trading under any name but the owner's own had to register that name with the clerk of the circuit court and advertise it in a newspaper. On 8 May 1970 Joan D. Kennedy swore that she was "engaged in business in Florida under the fictitious name of MEADOWLAWN NEWS," owning it outright, at 7360 Organdy Drive North. The Clearwater Sun ran the notice four times that May and June. In March 1977 she registered a second paper the same way, the Gateway News, at the same address, with notices in the Pinellas Review. In the winter of 1981 and 1982 notices for the Meadowlawn News and the Gateway News were filed in the name of her daughter-in-law, Shelley M. Hoyt.

On 3 October 1980 Joan D. Kennedy signed a durable power of attorney naming "my son, Robert R. Hoyt" to handle her bank accounts, her property, her tax returns, her Medicare claims and her safe deposit box. It was a "durable family power of attorney," which "shall not be affected by disability of the principal." On 13 August 1982 she sold the Organdy Drive house, Lot 30, Block 36, Meadow Lawn Fifth Addition, to Harvey L. and Grace E. Romanek. She carried the loan herself: their $25,200 mortgage to her was marked "THIS IS A PURCHASE MONEY FIRST MORTGAGE." Three days later she gave her daughter Susan a power of attorney as well. Meadow Lawn was the subdivision where her mother and David Ritacco had kept house in the 1960s.

Joan died between August 1982 and March 1983. Her will was admitted to probate in the Circuit Court for Pinellas County, and her son Robert was her personal representative. On 7 March 1983 he assigned the Romanek mortgage to "ROBERT HOYT, GARY HOYT and SUSAN HOYT, as Tenants in Common," her three children in equal shares. The mortgage was paid off and satisfied in February 1984. Bob later said that when his mother died he and his sister met to divide her things, his sister coming down from Gainesville.

If Joan L. Dalrymple is in your family, start your own tree.

Cite: Heirology, "Joan L. Dalrymple (b. 1925)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/joan-l-dalrymple-1925-ee217e.