May Loretta Palmer Salmon

Born April 11, 1877. Died April 10, 1971.

May was born in Canaan Four Corners, and educated in the public schools of Canaan, Chatham High School, and Northfield Seminary, Northfield, Massachusetts. After her marriage to Louis Krafft Salmon at Canaan (on October 3, 1900), they moved to Albany, where they purchased a home in Schodack Center. They lived there until her husband’s death, on February 5, 1907. She then moved to East Chatham to care for her grandmother (Lucinda Leavenworth, Mrs. Edwin Waldo Leavenworth) and her aunt, Emily Palmer. She came to Hollywood with her children, Dorothy and Marion, Mrs. Leavenworth, and her sisters, Clara and Florence, in 1913.

While her children were attending high school, she took a course at the Los Angeles Normal Teachers School (now U.C.L.A.), specializing in Physical Culture, and received her Bachelor of Arts in 1917.

Her home at 6407 Dix Street originally had a dirt road in front of it. The upstairs bedrooms each had a sink in the corner of the room, and on a table were lovely old china bowls and pitchers used to wash with. The light fixtures were built for electricity, but just in case, there was also a gas lantern installed nearby. May lived in this house until her death. At that time, freeways surrounded the home.