Mary (Montura) Soffee Essid

by Joe Essid Jr.

My grandmother lived in Beit Mery, Lebanon, to the east of Beruit and a center of Maronite religious culture. In 2023, during a visit to my Delong relatives in Fredericton, I was told that Montura had also lived in Niha, Lebanon, further east from Beit Mery.

The former mayor of Beit Mery, grandfather to my friend Larry Rasheed, remembered Montura from "the old country" and her emigration to the States. He'd gone on to settle in Georgetown, S.C., another center of the Lebanese diaspora. I met Larry at UVA in 1979 and we've been friends ever since.

Montura was married to Tom Wilby in Lebanon, and they had, according to Mary Ann Ryan, three children there. Only one lived until they came to the United States by way of the Mexican border. they cleared INS legally in the year 1906. Montura's Green Card notes "New York." This may be in error. Beverly Bouzek gave the information to me on 11/26/11, and she did not know the city of entry. An earlier conversation with Bev led me to think it was at Brownsville, Texas. With Tom (likely called Tanus) and Montura was son Charlie Wilby.

Mary Essid’s INS paperwork (registration # 1 623 297) states that she entered the US on May 15, 1906. It also states her date of birth as June 7, 1884. She would meet Sam Essid in Richmond after the death of Tom in 1913. After Tom's death, his and Montura's daughters Rose and Ann were put in The Villa Orpahanage (St. Joseph's Villa, then located in downtown Richmond). With no other means of support, Montura had to take work in a factory. Rose went to Fredericton, Canada to live with family, and she married Les Delong in the late 1930s and became a Canadian citizen. Son Michael Wilby was put in a nursery; Rosemary Fahed had more to say about his life and early death. Charlie went to the factory with Montura but was made to stay at home after being caught smoking---at age 7!

Beverly Bouzek's grandparents, John Lewis (Hanas Soffee) and Mary Soffee Lewis crossed the border with Montura, Tom, and young Charlie. At the time, Mary Lewis was pregnant with Beverly’s father, Thomas John Lewis. He would grow up to become a close friend of Joe Essid Sr. Mary was unable to nurse her son, so as was the custom in Lebanon, Montura nursed Thomas Lewis for his mother. At the time, according to Beverly, they all were living in the upstairs portion of what later became the Edgar Allan Poe Museum, on East Main Street in downtown Richmond, shown here as it appeared in 2011 and in the second image, in a post card from 1920.

The “Old Stone House” is reputed to be Richmond’s oldest surviving building. It has an interesting history and our family played a small part in its final year as a residence.

The Ege family, an immigrant family of German origin, were the first owners, building the house about 1740. Some early postcards identified the house as “Washington’s Headquarters,” and other sources, not verified, state that Washington stayed there (as he reportedly did at a thousand other places). There’s no credible evidence that Washington ever visited the house, though members of the Ege family reported that Thomas Jefferson and James Madison did visit. In the same book where I discovered this rumor, Haunted Richmond, the author notes that US President James Monroe boarded at the house in 1788.

Edgar Allan Poe never lived in the house, though it is possible that he visited it on occasion, aside from one documented incident. From the Wikipedia site on the house:

In 1824, when the Marquis de Lafayette revisited Richmond, a volunteer company of young Richmonders, the Junior Morgan Riflemen, rode in procession along Lafayette's carriage. One of the riflemen, the then 15-year-old Edgar Allan Poe, stood as honor guard outside the Ege house as Lafayette visited its inhabitants.

So these Lebanese immigrants slept under a roof where once a US President (at least) slept and where the father of the short story and master of the macabre tale stood guard.

In December 2011, I talked to my cousin Rosemary Fahed, daughter of Ann, Montura’s and Tom Wilby's daughter. Rosemary provided this information.

When she entered the US, she was Montura (Mary) Soffee Wilby. Her husband, Grandpa Tom Wilby, died about 1913 leaving Sita with 4 young children under 5 or 6: Rose, Ann, Charlie, and Michael Wilby.

Their youngest son, Michael, died at about 14 years old in 1927. I remember their saying that the nurse had dropped him when he was baby leaving him with a broken back and poor health. Sita had no money, but was resourceful. She borrowed enough to fill a bag with pins, needles and other sewing supplies and went door to door peddling to make a living for her young children. People used to say that she had such sweet ways and a beautiful smile that the ladies would buy her goods. For a while she had to place Mother and Aunt Rose in the Villa Orphanage, (downtown at that time) but would come every day to visit them after selling her goods. Some days, she could only wave to them through the fence. Once, when she missed a few days, Mother and Aunt Rose were so scared that she had died, but Sita, as soon as she was able, sent someone to let them know that she was sick and would be there as soon as she recovered. Uncle Charlie being a boy (so the story goes) was able to take care of himself and did what he could to make money to help Sita.