Obituary of Margery L. MacMillan

Margery L. MacMillan, died peacefully on Saturday, December 27, 2014, at the age of 95 in Duxbury, Massachusetts. She was the author of Stopping Places along Duxbury Roads which chronicled over 300 years of Duxbury’s social life. An enthusiastic historian, she identified the town’s historic and now private houses that had once served as taverns, “ordinaries” (where food as well as drink was served), tearooms, inns, hostelries, and restaurants, covering the period from the 1630s, when the first taverns were licensed to sell “strong waters,” to 1960. A firm believer in public service, she was an indefatigable volunteer. A former member of the board of the Duxbury Historical Society and past president of the Duxbury Garden Club, she also served on the Altar Guild of St. John’s Episcopal Church. For more than 20 years, she manned the reception desk at Jordan Hospital in Plymouth and served food to the homeless at the Brockton Soup Kitchen. She was still speeding around town in her late 80s, delivering Meals on Wheels to the housebound. Seldom still, she was also an accomplished athlete, playing tennis and repeatedly winning golf tournaments. She was thrilled finally at the age of 70 to hit a hole-in-one. Margery’s curiosity and love of adventure made her an inveterate traveler from the age of 11, when she made her first ocean crossing to Europe, until she was in her 80s and survived a shipwreck in the Red Sea. With her husband Ladd MacMillan, she explored the world, from Brazil, Peru, and Central America to Scandinavia to China, Japan, Tahiti, New Zealand, and Australia. Born Margery Lester Jones in South Orange, New Jersey, she was a graduate of Miss Porter’s School in Farmington, Connecticut. In 1942, she became the devoted wife of Ladd MacMillan with whom she settled in Milton, Massachusetts, and subsequently in Hebron, Maine, and Southborough, Massachusetts. They retired to their summer home in Duxbury in 1973. She is survived by her daughters, Margery MacMillan Hamlen and Susan MacMillan Arensberg; her grandchildren, Loring Hamlen Kilmon, Devens MacMillan Hamlen, Eliza Hamlen Parker, Chloe Ladd Arensberg, and Alexander MacMillan Arensberg, and her great-grandchildren, Nathaniel and Schuyler Kilmon, Jackson Parker, and Noor Jahan Hamlen. Services will be held at Saint John’s Episcopal Church, 410 Washington Street, Duxbury on Friday, January 9, 2015, at 11:00 AM. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the Duxbury Rural and Historical Society.