March 4 in A.A. History

In 1891, Lois Burnham was born to Dr. Clark and Matilda Spelman Burnham [right: all three] at 182 Clinton Street, in a spacious brownstone located in an affluent section of Brooklyn Heights, New York. At that time, Brooklyn was a separate city; it would become a borough of New York City in 1898.
    Lois was the eldest of six children, followed by Rogers, Barbara, Katherine (or Kitty), Lyman, and Matilda. Matilda, who was sickly after her difficult birth, died before her first birthday. Lois would struggle to understand why an innocent little baby had to die, and all her mother could say was that it was simply “God’s will.”
    Her father was a prominent physician, and a back room in the house served as his medical office. Her grandfather, Rev. Dr. Nathan Burnham, was a physician, lawyer, and minister in the Swedenborgian Church. Lois’s mother came from an old aristocratic family. The household employed a cook, a maid, and a man to tend to the fires, make repairs, and care for the horses and carriage.
    Every spring, the entire household followed Dr. Burnham’s patients to Vermont, living beside Dorset Pond (known now as Emerald Lake). As a youngster there, Lois was quite the tomboy. She loved fishing, swimming, sailing, climbing trees, catching frogs, and picking berries during long morning walks. It was at Emerald Lake that Bill Wilson and Lois first met, and where Bill began to woo her.

    The Burnhams’ summer cottage, which they called “the Camp” was near both Manchester and Manchester Center in Vermont, where many of Dr. Burham’s patients spent the summer. Robert Todd Lincoln, the son of Abraham Lincoln, and his family were social acquaintances of the Burnhams, spending their summers at Hildene, their estate in Manchester. Nearby Manchester Village represented “old” money. Dr. Burnham was a champion golfer and a founder, along with Lincoln, of the exclusive Ekwanok Country Club [left: Lincoln (3rd from left) playing at Ekwanok with William H. Taft (far left)] in Manchester, where he likely played with other notable figures such as former President William Howard Taft and Henry Ford.
    Lois’s father would ensure that all the children received the best education possible. Lois would begin her schooling with a new form of preschool education imported from Germany called “kindergarten.” She attended Friends School and Packer Collegiate (an all-girls school) for grades one through twelve, maturing into a brilliant and artistically talented woman. She would eventually become the wife of Bill Wilson and, along with her friend and neighbor Anne B., a co-founder of Al-Anon.