South Woodstock, Vermont

Margaret Humpstone, 79, died at Dartmouth Hitchcock Hospital on February 6th.

Born in 1931, the daughter of Isabella and Rockwell Stephens, she grew up in Cambridge, Massachusetts where she attended Shady Hill School. She graduated from Putney School in Putney, Vermont and from Harvard University's Radcliffe College. In 1953 she married John Gardner with whom she had four children and lived in Philadelphia, Barrington, Rhode Island and Washington, D.C. Their marriage ended in divorce in 1968 after which she moved to Woodstock, Vermont.

In 1975 she married Charles Humpstone. The Humpstones lived in Chevy Chase, Maryland, and Sudbury, Massachusetts, before moving to South Woodstock in 1990.

Marty had a lifelong interest in elementary education. Her family were educators. Her aunt, Constance Green, and grandfather, Andrew Cunningham McLaughlin, were Pulitzer Prize-winning historians. Her mother had been a professor at Wellesley College before retiring to live in South Woodstock. Marty worked variously as a classroom and special education aide in McLean, Virginia, Concord, Massachusetts and Woodstock public schools and took care of infants at the Mt. Tom Day Care Center. After retiring, she served as a volunteer classroom aide in Barbara Leonard's Second Grade classroom in the Pomfret School for nearly a decade. She was a long-time trustee of the Green Mountain Perkins Academy in South Woodstock.

She is survived by her husband, by her children, Constance Jones of Rochester, New York, David Gardner of East Montpelier, Vermont, Thomas Gardner of Burlington, Vermont and Alexander Gardner of West Concord, Massachusetts, and by six grandchildren.

A funeral service is planned for mid-May. Contributions in her name may be made to the Green Mountain Perkins Academy, the South Woodstock Volunteer Fire Department or the Vermont Alzheimer's Association.

Condolences may be expressed at the Cabot Funeral Home website; cabotfh.com