The weddings and engagements that involved residents of New York City give a glimpse of life in one small, privileged sector of the city. The city's elite Episcopal churches were busy that weekend.
The big wedding was that of Miss Joan Osborn and William Matson Roth of San Francisco in the chancery of St. Thomas. The bride's deceased grandfather had been president of the American Museum of Natural History. Her maternal grandfather was the founder of the Prix de Rome for American sculptors and of the School of Musical Composition at the American Academy in Rome. Her great-great grandfather was the brother of Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry. Her father was president of the New York Zoological Society. The groom was from the Matson shipping family of San Francisco. Miss Osborn wore a family wedding gown of white satin trimmed with rosepoint lace and made with a train, and a tulle veil attached to a coronet of rosepoint lace. She carried a bouquet of white orchids. Her sister, her only attendant, was attired in white moire silk with a headdress of green tulle and carried a bouquet of red camellias. The groom had a full complement of ushers. A reception for relatives and a few friends was given afterward at the Osborn home on E. 61st. The bride was an alumna of the Garrison Forest School, was presented to society in 1943 at the Junior Assembly and had been studying biology at Barnard. The groom graduated from Yale in 1939 and did graduate work at Princeton and the University of California. He spent three years with the overseas branch of the Office of War Information, serving a year and a half with the psychological warfare unit attached to General Stilwell's Northern Burma Command. He was with the editorial department at Prentice-Hall. According to Wikipedia the couple is still alive. Roth was one of the "ultra-liberal" Regents of the University of California whom Ronald Reaganpurged when he became governor.Roth also had served on the board of the ACLU.
Miss Winifred Meredith Boyce married Harold Raymond Bayley Jr. Both were from Forest Hills Gardens, Queens, and were married in the Church in the Gardens there. Miss Boyle graduated from the Cathedral School of St. Mary's in Garden City and the Juilliard School of Music. The groom was an alumnus of Trinity College and had been released a year earlier from a civilian internment camp in Manila. Forest Hills Gardens was a planned community of Tudor homes started in 1908 as part of the garden city movement. The deeds contained restrictive covenants barring sale of the homes to Jews, blacks or working class people. The Church in the Gardens was affiliated with the Congregationalists.
Miss Elizabeth Hand Wadhams of New York City, whose deceased parents had lived in Dongan Hills, Staten Island and Elizabethtown, NJ, was married in the chantry of Grace Episcopal Church to Richard W. Lawrence Jr of Riverdale whose father lived on East 79th St,. A small reception for immediate relatives was given at the home of the bride's aunt and uncle on E. 75th St. The bride was an alumna of Smith and served several years on the faculty of the Brearly School and for 18 months in the Women's Army Corps, seeing duty in India and Burma. Her husband, a widower, graduated from Princeton and Columbia Law School. He had been a captain in the Army Air Forces and was vice president of the trade publication Printers Ink. His first wife had died. The couple would reside in Riverdale.
Mrs Harry E. Lang of Park Avenue announced the engagement of her daughter Helene to Ludwig S. Stern of New York. The bride-to-be attended NYU. The future groom attended Columbia and had served as an officer with the Office of Strategic Services in the Mediterranean.
Mrs Patricia Buehner Talcott of E. 72st St., a widow, married George Campbell Tener of Sewickley, PA, at Central Presbyterian Church. A reception was given at Sherry's. She attended Finch Junior College and was a senior at Barnard. He was an alumnus of the Hotchkiss School and of the Yale Class of '40 and a member of the University Club.
Raymond Lowry Thayer Jr., whose parents lived in New York, was engaged to Jane Owen Byrne of Blacksburg VA. He was an alumnus of Virginia Polytechnic Institute and was recently discharged from the Army.
Holy Trinity Episcopal Church in NYC was the scene of the wedding of Miss Adele Pleasance of Chicago to Lieutenant Malcolm J. Edgerton, USNR, of Stamford. The bride wore a gown of white faille and a veil of white net trimmed with rosepoint lace and orange blossoms. She carried gardenias. She is a Vassar grad and he went to Groton and Yale.
Mr and Mrs Max Sager of the Bronx announced the engagement of their daughter Bernice to Lieutenant Jack S. Eliscu, Army Medical Administrative Corps, whose parents resided in New York, She is an alumna of Hunter College. Her fiance recently returned after serving two years in Africa and Italy.
Mrs Gustave H. Ledermann of New York announced the engagement of her daughter Elfriede to Dr. Charles Swain Hall, whose parents resided in New York and New Canaan, CT. The future bride graduated from the Gymnasium in Berlin and majored in German philology at the Universities of Berlin, Munich and Heidelberg. After the outbreak of the war, she completed her studies at Columbia where she received her Masters in 1942. She taught German at Columbia and Barnard and recently was appointed publishing editor of The Germanic Review. Dr. Hall was a member of the staff at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library at Hyde Park NY. He graduated from Wesleyan University in 1935, received a Masters from Columbia where he also took a Ph D in American history in 1942, During the war he served in the Army Air Forces in the China-Burma-India theater and was now an instructor in history at Marietta College in Ohio. Did he commute between Ohio and Hyde Park?
Miss Dorothy Elizabeth Keyes, whose parents resided in Hollis, Queens and Shelter Island, married Lieutenant Craig Fordyce Haarn, whose parents resided in Allenhurst, NJ, at St. Gabriel's Episcopal Church in Hollis. The reception was at the Garden City Hotel. She graduated from the Junior College of Packer Collegiate Institute and was a member of the Hollis Junior League. The groom was an alumnus of Rutgers University. He had served two years as commanding officer of an LST in the Pacific.
Dr. and Mrs, Maurice Ackerman of Marble Hill Avenue, NYC, announced the engagement of their daughter June E. to Sidney Blatt Weinberg of Albany. She was a senior at the School of Occupational Therapy at NYU. He was an alumnus of the University of North Carolina, recently discharged from the Navy and studying at the Medical School of the University of Buffalo. Marble Hill is politically part of Manhattan but geographically part of the Bronx due to a diversion of the Harlem River during the construction of a ship canal at the end of the 19th century. Like neighboring Washington Heights, the area was largely Jewish in the mid-1940s.
Mr and Mrs Edward Francis O'Brien of Park Avenue announced the engagement of their daughter Dorothy Dean, to William L. Hoge Jr. of Louisville, KY, Miss O'Brien graduated from the Louisville Collegiate School and attended Sarah Lawrence. Mr. Hoge is an alumnus of Phillips Exeter Academy and is a student at Yale.