A New Way to Waste Time; In Which I Restore Angeline

   

     This post is a follow-up on a recent blog post containing a photo that may, or may not, be my great-great-great-grandfather Jermiah Garner.  I've written lots about Jeremiah, who led an out of the ordinary life, and since my blog is searchable you can read more about him if you are so inclined.

     

     This is the photograph that started it all.  It was labeled, Jeremiah Garner and his [third] wife Angeline Peck, the couple in the front row. I had my doubts about this photo.  For one thing, the lady seated next to Jeremiah looks older than him to me; Angeline was younger than Jeremiah.  She also seems a tad old to be the mother of the young child standing next to her.  However, it's a sad but true fact that women don't age as well as men.  I've looked this up in my research and it has something to do with hormones, or a lack thereof.  Which we are not going to delve into further in this blog.

     Today I thought I would take another look at this puzzle, so I uploaded a close up of Angeline from the group shot to my favorite photo editing site, BeFunky.com

     It appears poor Angeline may have been suffering from hair loss at the time this picture was taken.  Various illnesses and syndromes could be responsible, it's not the first time I've seen this in my tree.  BeFunky has lots of tools to play with, and I've used them many times, but today I noticed a brand new plaything, Old Photo Restorer!  I had to try that.

     After restoration, this is what Angeline looked like...

     That is remarkable!  And much, much better than the job Ancestry does at restoring photos.  I had one more trick up my sleeve though.  I uploaded Angeline's image to my Paint application, then shaded in more of the bonnet she appeared to be wearing.  Apologies for my clumsy editing, but Paint doesn't really allow for fine detailing.  

    I had noticed BeFunky also offered a colorizing tool, so of couse I tried that too...

     You can see Angeline now looks younger.  No spring chicken, but I could easily believe this lady was around the age of thirty-nine, which she would have been at the time.  After my edits,  Angeline's age in the photo no longer really concerns me.  I'm still going to keep digging though, it's hard to trust that online photos are always who they claim to be.  For instance, there is one circulating on Ancestry right now purporting to be the wedding photo from Angeline's first marriage (see below).  

     Angeline was twenty-six years of age when she married John Dent Collins. I think the lady in this photo looks a good deal older than twenty-six, and the groom looks nothing like other portraits of John Collins online.  Then again- 

    

      Nope, she still is over twenty-six.

Nuns in the Family; How To Find Them

     Tracking down the nuns who grace the branches of my family tree has been a challenge, but a good learning experience. Unlike priests who kept their birth names upon ordination, nuns took a different name when they entered religious life.  With a little determination finding their new name is not terribly difficult, obituaries of parents and siblings are great for that.  Then the fun really begins.

     I've had a fair amount of luck finding photos of my Sisters.  If you can determine the order they belonged to, many of these keep archives dating back to the nineteenth century, some even earlier.  The Sisters of Saint Joseph in Rochester, New York, a teaching order, sent me a trove of information on my cousin Mary Esther Gunn.  Everything from a photo, baptism and confirmation records, next of kin information, and her obituary.  

   Another potential stumbling block, one never knows how a census enumerator may have decided to list your religious ladies.  I've found them under their names in religion, their birth names, and sometimes a combination of the two. Sister Cecilia was enumerated as Cecilia Vincent Gunn in the 1930 census.  In 1940 she was simply Sister Cecilia Vincent; she passed eight years later.  

     Yet another thing about nuns, they traveled around a good deal, you never know where they'll turn up.  One of mine from Owasco, New York, Sister Mary Camillus, surfaced as a Mother Superior in sunny Rio Vista, California.  In 1900 she was enumerated as "McGarr Sister M. Comillus", in 1910 as Mary Camellus.  You have to be persistent and keep an open mind.

Mother Mary Camillus, AKA Elizabeth McGarr

     Mother Stanislaus, born Mary Ann McGarr, was a sibling of Mother Camillus.  The censuses of 1870, 1880, and 1900 all list her as Mary A. McGarr, occupation Sister of Mercy.  She spent her religious career in various spots in northern New York near the Canadian border.  I found her photograph at the site Google Books, in the book titled, The Catholic Church in the United States, Volume II, The Religious Communities of Women, published in 1913.  There are many pictures in this book, it's worth checking out if your nuns were active around the turn of the century.

     Bridget McGarr, younger sister of Mother Stanislaus and Mother Camillus took the name Sister Mary Frances, changing it at some point to Sister Francis DeSales.  Later, she too became a mother superior.  She was also an author, writing a sweet little book called May Devotions for Children.  Of course I made it a top priority to obtain a copy.  Like her siblings, she joined the Sisters of Mercy who couldn't locate a photo of Bridget, neither could I, but they sent instead a lovely photo of a chalice given to her by her sister Mother Mary Stanislaus.  

"Given by her sister Mother Stanislaus on her feast day"

     The next generation seemed easier to trace.  Probably because they weren't being sent to the wilds of northern New York or the far west.  The Quigley sisters, cousins of mine and whose grandmother was a McGarr, are one example.  There were three of them who, like Mary Esther Gunn joined the Sisters of Saint Joseph.  All three of them remained in the area of their birth.  Naturally I wanted pictures of them and I found two out of three, not bad.  The oldest was Catherine Quigley aka Sister John Joseph, born in 1912.  She is the one I couldn't find much about other than she was teaching at St. Mary's in Canandaigua and living at their convent in 1940.  She is "Quigley Catherine Sr. John Joseph" in that census.  And if you don't think the indexers at Ancestry didn't totally mess that one up...

     Next born was Margaret Quigley in 1916.  I got lucky with Margaret; she attended Nazareth Academy in Rochester whose yearbook is online.  I found her graduation photo, but what I really wanted one of her in her nun gear.  I remembered her obituary mentioned one of the schools she had taught at was DeSales in Geneva, New York so I checked Ancestry to see if they had yearbooks for that school.  Indeed, they did.  Although Margaret, (Sister Delphine in religion), wasn't a student there, yearbooks also contain photos of school staff.  I wasn't sure which years she might have been there so taking her age into account I estimated.  The yearbook from 1968 had a lovely photo of her in front of her English class that looked a good deal like her graduation picture. 

Sister Delphine

     The youngest Quigley daughter, Rita, was born in 1918.  Rita too attended Nazareth, their yearbook is where I found her picture.  The 1950 census listed her under her birth name, Rita Quigley; occupation grade school teacher.  I'm still seeking a picture of Sister Rita in her nun's regalia, she lived until 2001 so I have high hopes although by then the habit had been discarded in favor of civilian clothing.

Rita Quigley AKA Sister Anne Paula 

     You might be wondering if it's worth the effort to trace an individual who never married or had children.  I say it is.  For one thing it satisfies my curiosity about them, for another it sheds light on the family life of my ancestors.  Also, their relatives are my relatives and one can never predict what may wind up in print about those family members in relation to the sisters.  For instance, the list of Mary Esther Gunn's next of kin supplied the names of her brothers and where they were living, along with names and addresses of cousins I was previously unaware of.

     I've had my best luck with the aforementioned family obituaries, church histories and news articles online, and the nun's order.  Too, yearbooks are now online at Ancestry.  Census records are helpful, but with so many variables can be very tricky to navigate.  That's where the family obituaries come in handy, they used to give the city of residence for survivors so one had some idea where to start looking.  Good luck!

I Love a Good Scandal; Or, the Strange Tale of Winifred V. Carpenter

     Still working on the unanswered questions in my tree, while waiting for those Irish records. Today, I researched this handsome fellow-

          

     Meet Charles Samuel Price Jr., the son of Charles Sr. and Martha McCallum. Charles Jr. is my second cousin twice removed.  A while ago, I found Charles in the 1930 census living in the village of Shortsville, New York!  That caught my attention as Charles had been born many miles away in Wellsboro, Pennsylvania. What was he doing in Shortsville, New York?  Which just happened to be right next to the village of Manchester, where I grew up.  Then I noticed his profession, railroad detective.  That explained a lot.  Further research showed Charles' employer was the Lehigh Valley RR, founded in Pennsylvania.  At that time, and for many years after, it was the largest employer in the town of Manchester of which the villages of Manchester and Shortsville are a part.  My father, grandfather, and many other relatives all worked for the Lehigh.

     Returning to Charles' story today, I found his marriage in 1915 to Winifred V. Carpenter, the twenty-year -old daughter of Sanford L. Carpenter and Mary Slaght.  Charles was living in Rochester, New York then, working for Kodak.  He registered for the draft in 1917, was drafted, then was sent overseas from May of 1918 to April of 1919.  That may have been when his marriage to Winifred began to fail, for fail it did.  They were still together in 1920, but in October of 1922, it appeared Winifred married George O'Brien.

     That wasn't such an uncommon thing, wars and separations change people, they grow apart.  Charles and Winifred were far from the only couple who lost their way that year.  However, things weren't adding up.  Take a look at Winifred and George O'Brien's marriage record below.

     The first thing I noticed was Winifred's declaration that this was her first marriage.  The second was the name of her father, not Sanford Carpenter, but Sanford Joseph Price.  Her mother? Still Mary, but with the maiden name McConnell.  Sounds a bit like McCallum, the maiden name of Charles' mother, don't you think?  Another thing, the marriage was performed by a Catholic priest, Rev. T. Bernard Kelly.  Winifred's first marriage was performed by a Methodist pastor, she wasn't Catholic.  But George O'Brien was, as were his parents.  And had Father Kelly known of her earlier marriage to Charles Price, he would not have been sanctioning this one.  Mixed marriages were one thing, marrying a divorcee was quite another.  I'm sure his parents too would have been less than thrilled.  Did that account for Winifred's fibs about her first marriage and her parent's names; and for the fact their marriage took place forty miles from Rochester in Batavia?  Or could this have been a different Winifred?  

     I tried for a long time to find anyone named Sanford Joseph Price with no luck.  None of the few I did find were the right age or in the right place.  I also searched for another Winifred but no luck there either.  Then  I came across an obituary for Winifred's mother which settled the question- 

     It was the ex-wife of Charles Price who married George O'Brien alright.

     About ready to call it quits with Winifred, who after all wasn't even related to me, I came across this gem in the Elmira Star-Gazette dated March 16, 1927- "In Court chambers Monday a decree of divorce was granted in the following case: Charles S. Price of Wellsboro against Winifred V. Price".  What the what?  Charles divorced Winifred in 1927?  But she married George in 1922!  Was this part of the reason for the subterfuge in their marriage record?  The divorcee wasn't even divorced?  I suppose Winifred could have divorced Charles in Rochester without his being aware, but it seems like a stretch.

     Winifred was still in Rochester with George O'Brien in 1930, but I had trouble locating her in the 1940 census.  I was beginning to think I should be looking for a divorce, believing George had finally discovered her deceptions and left.  Then I found George, and there was Winifred, both of them living with their employer, J. L. Rosenthal, a Russian immigrant real estate agent, in the Rochester suburb of Brighton, as his housekeeper and butler!  According to that census, the couple were residents of Miami, Florida in 1935.  

     George passed away in 1947 and Winifred in 1974.  Both are buried in Holy Sepulchre in the city though not together.  George is in his family's plot with five others, perhaps they only owned the six graves?  But what an incredible story.  I wondered, did she fool George all those years, or was he in on it?  I'd love to know.

 

     

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It Was Meant To Be; Or How Rockwell and Matilda Found Their Groove

 

     Another year has gone, and I can't say I'm going to miss it.  Between numerous cases of Covid in my family, which I somehow managed to avoid, and my emergency surgery for a strangulated hernia last month, I'm not sorry to bid adieu to 2023.  It was also a disappointing year for genealogy with few new Irish databases appearing online.  The much-promised final group of early Irish death certificates never materialized, and I've all but given up on the Valuation Office posting their digitized records.  Since I'm spending a good deal of time resting while I recover, it seemed like a good time to look into some genealogical mysteries on the non-Irish side of my tree.

     One result was my last blog about what was said to be a  photo of Jeremiah Garner.  Another mystery was the marriage between my 3rd great-grandmother Matilda Taylor and Rockwell Rood.  My line descends from Matilda and her first husband Thomas Vincent.  Thomas and Matilda married in Saratoga County, New York around 1822 and made their home in Halfmoon.  They eventually migrated westward, first to Richmond in Ontario County, NY, then to Victory in Cayuga County where they had relatives living.  Thomas died there in 1842 at the age of thirty-nine, leaving Matilda with six children and a mortgage.  What became of her after that was unknown for quite a while.  All I knew was the mortgage fell into arrears and the land was auctioned.

     Complicating matters was a headstone back in Halfmoon bearing the inscription, "Matilda Vincent wife of Thomas", and one next to it inscribed, "Thomas Vincent"; no dates appear on either stone.  Many, including a published genealogy, attributed these graves to the Thomas and Matilda who moved to Victory, but it didn't make much sense that their burials had been almost 200 miles from that place.

     In 2019 I was able to prove Matilda had not been buried in Halfmoon but had remarried after Thomas' untimely death.  He's not there either by the way, Thomas actually rests in French Cemetery in Victory.  Matilda's new husband, Rockwell Rood, was born in Vermont and by 1820 was living in Reading, NY some eighty miles from Victory.  After that he moved on to Dix, about the same distance away.  How on earth did these two meet and conduct a courtship?  I never would have connected Matilda to the far distant Rockwell, but for the 1850 census of Dix enumerating her daughters, Mary, and Amelia Vincent, living in the same household with Matilda and Rockwell Rood and their two young sons.

1850 Census of Dix, NY

     It seemed the best way to answer this question was to dig deeper into Rockwell's family since I'd found no clues while researching him or Matilda.  I found Rockwell had been born in Sandgate, Vermont to Simeon Rood and Darmarius Munger in 1789.  His father Simeon was a veteran of the Revolutionary War, so he left some military records.  One of them was a document indicating Simeon's pension was transferred from Reading to Cato in Cayuga County in 1820, two years before his death.  That was very interesting, Cato is right next to the town of Victory!  However, 1820 was decades before Thomas and Matilda Vincent arrived there and I had found no indication Rockwell was ever a resident of that area.  Then again, perhaps some of Simeon's other children had been?

     I hit paydirt with Rockwell's younger sister Damaris Rood.  Damaris married William Hagar, and their first child, Esther, was born in 1816.  Two New York state censuses, the 1855 and 1875, gave Esther's birthplace as Cayuga County.  The 1820 through 1860 censuses place Damaris Rood Hagar in the town of Victory, meaning she was living there at the very same time as Matilda and Thomas.  It's entirely conceivable Damaris was occasionally visited by her brother Rockwell who was widowed around the same time as Matilda.

     I think my question is now answered, proving once again, it's not a waste of time to research individuals you're not even related to.

     

     

Photograph of Jeremiah Garner. I Think. I'm Pretty Sure.

 

     This photograph, taken in Canada, was posted to Ancestry a few years ago.  It purports to be of Angeline Peck (seated) and three of her sons by John Dent Collins, an Irishman from County Cork.  The females pictured are said to be Angeline's stepdaughters, the children of John's first marriage to Mary Anne Wright.  The girls were born in County Cork, the boys in Canada.  I have serious doubts about the lady in the back row, however.  She seems too long in the tooth to be Angeline's stepdaughter.  I wonder if she might in fact be Angeline's younger sister Eliza Jane who was living with Angeline and John as late as 1865.  Looking through censuses, it seemed to me the small boy must be Herbert Collins who was born in 1867 and passed away in 1871.  In the photo he looks to be three or four so it was probably taken about 1870.

     That brings us to the adult male seated next to Angeline.  John Dent Collins died the same year his son Herbert was born, so it isn't John.  Marriage records show that in 1870, Angeline became the third wife of my great-great-great-grandfather Jeremiah Garner, who apparently had a mid-life crisis, left his wife back in New York, and ran away to become an inn keeper in Canada.  And marry twice more.  And then leave Angeline in Canada to return to New York after his first wife's death, in time to be buried next to her.  Passing strange.

      Assuming I'm right about the young child being Herbert, and this photo being taken in 1870, Jeremiah would have been fifty-four years of age.  The man in the photo could be that age, but when I first viewed the image, I was somewhat skeptical about this being Jeremiah.  Mostly because there was no real proof or provenance, and I'm just a natural born skeptic.  I contacted the individual who originally posted the photo, who conceded she wasn't positive about her identification of Jeremiah, but seemed to believe the lady was indeed Angeline.

     After spending the last few days studying this family, I have to say I'm beginning to come around.  Who else could this man logically have been?  The gardener?  In 1870, photos were still being taken exclusively by professional photographers.  It wasn't until eighteen years later Kodak would introduce the first camera for home use; a box camera that came preloaded with enough film for one hundred photos.  After one had used all the film, the camera, along with $10, was returned to Kodak for the photos to be developed and printed.  The photos and the reloaded camera were then returned to the customer.  But that was in the future, the picture above would no doubt have been taken by a photographer.

     The question remains, is that Grandpa Jeremiah?  Is it?  I wish I could say I was positive it's him... but I'm not.  I really do think it is, it makes sense that it would be.  I know he married Angline in March of 1870, and looking at the leaves on the small tree in the background it's obviously well past March in Canada. I would think if a photographer was hired to come out and snap a family photo Jeremiah would certainly have been in it.  Judging from the background, that may even be his hotel the family is posed in front of.

     

     

     

Derafada You Say?

     While researching, I tend to get bogged down in details.  I'm aware of this, and it does slow me down, but I enjoy it and when I find what I'm seeking it reassures me I'm on the right track.  Today I was looking at Daniel Welch, (or Walsh), who coincidentally married two cousins of mine who don't appear to be related to each other.   Daniel first married my cousin Catherine Lawler, from Rathdowney in Queen's County, around 1846 in Ireland.  About ten years later they and their two young daughters immigrated, settling in Palmyra, New York where Catherine died in August of 1865 at about the age of fifty.    

     Long ago I visited the parish office of Saint Anne's in Palmyra, and copied all the birth, marriage, and death register entries that seemed relevant to my family. It was in those records I had found Daniel married Ellen Hogan, another cousin of mine, in 1866. Like her husband, Ellen was born in Tipperary, to Darby and Dora Hogan.  There is no indication Ellen and Daniel were acquainted in Ireland.  Indeed, it was unlikely, Ellen was twenty-one years younger than Daniel.

     Today I noticed their marriage record contained the names of Daniel's parents, John Walsh and Mary Quinn.  Having those names enabled me to locate Daniel's baptism along with those of four of his siblings, all in the Parish of Moyne and Templetuohy in Tipperary.  The address his parents gave in each case was Derafada.  That's when my penchant for detail and second-guessing myself kicked in, did I have this right?  How did Daniel and Catherine, living in different counties, get together?  I needed to know.

     I ran a search at Google Maps for Derafada with no results.  A general Google search produced nothing with the exception of a few sites containing histories of unrelated families.  After some thought, I tried the site called SWilson which has tons of Irish genealogy info, the Seanruad townland site, now called "The Core", Tithe Applotments, and Griffith's Valuations.  None of them had anything on Derafada. Lists of Tipperary townlands were of no help, nor was Google Books.  Running out of ideas, I was about to give up when I tried an image search.  No Derafada came up, but something almost as good did.

       This is exactly what I was hoping to find, right above the Walsh's parish, Moyne and Templetuohy, was the Lawler's parish of  Rathdowney.  Being familiar with Rathdowney records, I knew there was a huge gap during the decades surrounding the famine.  Fortunately, the Lawler's lived right on the border of Queen's County and Tipperary.  I'd had some luck finding Rathdowney relatives in Templemore records, (just above Moyne and Templetuohy), and I'd be willing to bet the Walsh family in Tipperary lived near the border as well.

     The above map indicates they were practically neighbors so the mystery of how they met was solved.  It also explains why I was unable to find a marriage record for Daniel and Catherine, they were likely married in the bride's home parish, the one with the missing records. I'm now confident in saying I have Daniel's parents and birthplace correct as well as his marriage to Catherine Lawler.

 

      

Of Naming Patterns and Expectations

 

     At various times I've applauded and cursed the Irish Naming Pattern.  A name like John Ryan in Tipperary renders it practically useless if not a hindrance due to the lack of originality in names, while more uncommon given names can make it a gift.  The thing is, there are times when the pattern falters.  A sickly infant not expected to survive may not be given the typical name, one born soon after the loss of a family member may be given the deceased's name out of respect, a child born on the feast day of a locally favored saint might bear that person's name; there are a number of reasons the pattern may not have been followed to the letter, but most often it was.

     For instance, my great-great-grandmother Anna Ryan, born in Goldengarden, Tipperary in 1831, was the daughter of Cornelius Ryan and Alice O'Dwyer.  Anna immigrated to America as a young woman, followed later by her parents.  In New York she married James White, from Queens County, the son of James White and Margaret Keyes.  Their first child, a son, was born a year after their marriage and predictably was named James, after his paternal grandfather.

     Two years later Alice, named for her maternal grandmother arrived, followed by the births of Margaret named for her paternal grandmother, Mary named for her maternal aunt, and Julia named for her paternal aunt.  Then at last another boy was born and finally, Anna's father, now in New York, would get his namesake. Only he didn't.  That child was not christened Cornelius, but Thomas.  What the what?

     Had I somehow missed a child?  Julia was born in November of 1864 and Thomas on the first of December in 1866.  It's possible a child was born in 1865 and didn't live long I suppose.  The New York census of 1865 for Wayne County is not online, nor is the mortality schedule for that year, and the newspapers were silent on the matter. This puzzled me for quite a while.  It wasn't until 1876 that a son to be named Cornelius White entered the world, after the birth of two brothers before him.  He was born when Anna was forty-five years old, and probably thinking her child-bearing days were behind her.  

    A good deal of time was spent looking for any trace of an earlier Cornelius White, there had to have been one, didn't there?  But none was found.  Then I had the opportunity to visit the Family History Library in Rochester and was able to view the registers of Saint Anne's Catholic Church in Palmyra, New York where the family were parishioners.  There among the baptisms was this--

     Please excuse the orange highlighter, I was pretty excited about this find at the time.  The first baptism was for Cornelius White on December 9, 1866, son of Jacobo White and Anna Ryan.  The second was that of his twin brother Thomas.  Thomas' sponsors were Cornelius Ryan Jr., (Anna's brother), and his wife Anna Hennessey.  So, there had been a baby named Cornelius after all, the pattern had not been broken!  In fact, this family was almost a textbook case.  Their only deviation was in not naming their third daughter Anna after her mother, but that wasn't really uncommon.

     Of course, now I wanted to know what had happened to Cornelius so I began collecting clues.  He would have been three in 1870, but only his twin brother Thomas appeared in the census that year.  Ditto the 1875 NY census.  I scoured the 1870 mortality schedule, but he wasn't listed there.  The burial register from Saint Anne's doesn't commence until 1868, but he's not there either.  We know Cornelius was alive to be baptized in early December of 1866, the last mention I've ever found of him.  All of which leads me to believe Cornelius likely passed in 1867.  The causes of death for young children in the 1870 mortality schedule for the family's location were scarlet fever, lung congestion, and diphtheria, in that order.  Of course, I can't say what illnesses might have been circulating in 1867.

     There is very little I can say.  But I have questions. Were you called Connor like the grandfather whose name you bore?  Were you a happy baby, or were you fretful and not thriving?  What caused you to leave so soon?  With no obituary I'll most likely never know what befell wee Cornelius, but at least I know he was here and lived for a short time in an age when it was ridiculously easy for small ones to slip away...