Descendant: Laura Ryder

By Irene Virag | Staff Writer

Laura Ryder holds great-great-aunt Emma Tuthill's jacket

Laura Ryder holds a jacket that belonged to her great-great-aunt Emma Tuthill (Newsday Photo/Bill Davis)

When they were little girls in Orient, Eloise and Laura Luce played dress-up with the women's clothes that were stored in their grandmother's attic. The clothes not only were from another time but they were almost the right size. They had been made and worn by the girls' ancestors, the tiny Tuthills.

When she had children of her own, Eloise Norklun dressed her 3-year-old son in an outfit belonging to her great-grandfather's brother, the man she calls "Uncle Addie."

"We took a walk up Village Lane in Orient," says Eloise, now an 83-year-old great-grandmother who lives in New Brunswick, Canada. "He was wearing Uncle Addie's high silk hat and carrying the cane from P.T. Barnum. People couldn't believe what they were seeing. Oh, he made a big hit that day."

Eloise and Laura grew up in the house built for Addison's small aunts. They say that Addison, his sister, Emma, and their three aunts were the only little people ever born to the family. "Everyone in Orient knew them," says 81-year-old Laura Ryder, also a great-grandmother, who still lives in the village. "They were cute little people. They were Orient's tiny treasures."