A Time In Mom's Life Found In A Photo Album

      

     I've sat down several times to write this blog, but a feeling of sadness washes over me and I abandon the attempt.  It began when I was looking through a photo album I inherited from my late mother.  Actually, it was more like I stumbled upon it on a closet shelf while cleaning out the family home after my father had also passed.  The album was from the 1940's and as I leafed through it, I noticed the pages were beginning to deteriorate.  That couldn't be good for the pictures it held, so I began removing them, careful to keep them in order.

     I should note up front my mother had a more difficult life than most, and my feelings for her are colored by the empathy I feel.  At age seven she witnessed her mother fatally injured while filling the kitchen stove from a can of kerosine.  It exploded in her hands, blowing out a window and burning her terribly.  It's a miracle none of the children waiting for their breakfast were injured.  Their father remarried shortly after, to a younger woman who didn't want his seven children around.  They were sent to live with their grandmother, rarely to see their father who started another family. When my mother was thirteen her favorite sister died after a botched operation, even as Mom donated blood in an attempt to save her.  It seemed fate had finally smiled on her in 1945 when she married Dan, the man of her dreams, only to have that dream devolve into a nightmare when he was killed during the Korean War five years later.  Five years after Dan's death she married my father.  Without going into detail, it was not a happy marriage. 

     As I removed the photos from the album, I noticed writing on the backs of some of them.  One caught my eye; it was a picture of Mom with her brother Ken in full uniform.  On the back was written in part, "113 South 5th St. where our apartment was... on our way to Greenfield Lake".  Where was Greenfield Lake I wondered?  I knew my mother had married Dan, a career Marine, in Wilmington, North Carolina so I started there.  A Google Maps search for Greenfield Lake, NC brought it up, just outside Wilmington!  Another photo was exactly the same as the first one, only instead of Ken, it was Dan standing next to my mother, and this one was dated, 1945.  

Mom and her brother Ken Lash

Mom and Dan Carroll

     What were the odds the house was still there I wondered?  Now I was reasonably sure the city was Wilmington, I returned to Google Maps, where I did a search on the street address from the back of the photo--

     It was the house!  There was no mistaking the brickwork out front.  That spot on the side walk to the right of the steps is the exact spot where my mother had stood seventy-eight years ago.  Could it really be that long?  That's when I teared up a little and left this blog for another day.

     Returning today to hopefully finish the project, I found another photo taken the same day as the others.  It's of Mom and Dan in the bow of a small boat floating on, you guessed it, Greenfield Lake.  I'd bet it was snapped by my Uncle Ken also sitting in the boat.

Sgt. Dan and Mom, the skirt was red!

     I'm not sure why these photos have the effect on me that they do.  The people in them are young, happy, and in love.  The war in Europe is over, they all made it through, life is good and the future is bright.  Maybe it's because I know what lies in store for them, it's like a movie one has seen a dozen times but somehow you desperately want the ending to be different this time.  This time I want that can of kerosene to not explode; I want Mom's sister to have a competent surgeon; this time I want Dan to come home from Korea. What I really want is my dear mother to be happy.

When A Marriage Certificate Contradicts It Own Self

      

     I've spent some time lately researching those less popular subjects in my tree, the ones who never married or had children, so their line comes to an end with not a lot to trace.  You never know though, and that is why I'm sitting here -- that and the sub-freezing temps outside.  This morning I've been looking at my great-great-aunt Lida C. Powers who I had only bare bones information about.  I think I wanted to learn more about her because it annoys me to no end how other family trees insist on using the name Lydia, found in exactly one single census, instead of her correct name of Lida, as recorded in the other censuses.  I know Lida was her name because she was the sister of my grandfather's mother and he spoke of her often.  I even met the lady once myself; only once because she was elderly by then and resided near New York City while I rusticated upstate in the boondocks near Rochester.

     I knew Lida had married later than most, as many Irish ladies did, that she was a nurse and instructor, and her husband, Uncle Leland, was a well to do funeral director.  Getting started, I pulled up Ancestry and commenced a search for her.  One item that came up was a marriage certificate from New Brunswick, Canada.  That could fit, I knew Leland was born in Canada though he wasn't currently living there.  Of course, Ancestry wouldn't allow me look at the certificate when I tried since I don't have a world subscription, so I set about finding another way to view it, which I usually can with a little searching.  Family Search looked promising, but these particular records hadn't been indexed and while I was plodding through them the images stopped loading.  I found another site, The Provincial Archives of New Brunswick, and tried that one successfully!  It also had free images.

     I easily found the certificate which gave the correct birthplace and parent's names for Lida, so I was confident it was her.  The problem was with the certificate itself.  

     It clearly says the marriage took place the 27th of September in 1928, but look closely down in the right hand corner, it apears to say it was registered the 29th of September in 1938, or does it?

     It certainly looks like it says 1938, but what's the deal with that weird little tail on the 3?  I decided the anwer could be found in the 1930 census, and there was Aunt Lida, living at the nursing college where she was the principal, listed as single.  Her future husband was in the same town, living and working as a supervisor at an "insane hospital", he was listed as widowed.  It looked as though they couldn't have married in 1928, and the 1938 date was the right one.  But then I looked at her age on the certificate and it was what it would have been in 1928, not ten years later.  Now I was really confused.  Checking the 1940 census, I saw that Lida and Leland were living in Kings County, New York and said they had been living at the same place in 1935, so they must have been married BEFORE 1938. This called for some serious thought.

     Try as I may, I could not reconcile the facts as given.  I recalled reading that there was a time when female teachers were required to remain single or lose their jobs, but was that still the case in the late 1920's?  From what I could find on the internet, it was.  By 1930 Lida was more than a teacher, she had moved into a principal's position.  Could it be she wasn't ready to end her career and kept her marriage secret for a time?  That would certainly explain why she chose to marry in Canada rather than New York where she had sisters and a father still living.  I did one last search at Ancestry, this one for Leland and I found my answer, at least a partial one in a Massachusetts passenger list--

Leland Macdonald
Departure Place	Yarmouth, Nova Scotia
Arrival Date	27 Sep 1936
Arrival Place	Boston, Massachusetts, USA

     Not just Leland was among the passengers, Lida C. MacDonald was with him on that trip.  In 1936.  I'm not sure I'll ever know with certainty what motivated Lida and Leland to hide their union for at least two years, but I'm ready to add the marriage to my tree, in 1928.

What Sort of House Did You Say That Was?

     Everyone wants to believe their ancestors were upstanding people who worked hard and made sacrifices, paving the way for succeeding generations. Of course, a few black sheep are always appreciated, they add spice to the story.  But an entire family of them is something else.

     My great-great-grandfather, James O'Hora, who emigrated from Ricketstown in County Carlow, Ireland was by all accounts, a man to be proud of. The local newspaper that covered the small hamlet of Littleville, New York where his farm was located, had not a bad word to say about James nor his wife Maria McGarr in all the decades they lived there.  Coincidentally, James' older brother John had married Maria's sister Catherine McGarr in Ireland.  After the birth of their first child, John and Catherine set sail for New York, immediately settling in the Auburn, New York area where they had relatives. 

     James and Maria married in Auburn after arriving in America several years apart, and they too lived in the Auburn area for a time before purchasing their farm in Littleville. That is where all similarities between the two families end. 

     John passed away around 1872 I'm guessing, he doesn't appear with his wife Catherine and their children in New York's1875 census, and that year of 1872 is the first one in which his widow appears on the rolls of the overseer of the poor in Auburn. Things seemed a little off with this family when I found the marriage record of their oldest daughter, Mary, in 1861, only fifteen years after her baptism in Ireland. That was incredibly young for an Irish woman to marry. Her first child came along in 1863, perhaps she miscarried one in 1861? Her sister Anne waited a few years, marrying at age eighteen, but still quite young. Her firstborn came two years later. Something seemed fishy here.

     Then there were the boys. Daniel, Michael, John, Peter and Richard, all of whom were, shall we say, well known in Auburn. Particularly in police circles, and all had lengthy rap sheets.  The following article published in July of 1880 says it all-- "Michael O'Hora, one of the famous O'Hora gang was brought in last night by officer Crosby for public intoxication on Perrine Street".  And that was one of their more innocuous violations. Everything from theft, assault, general mayhem, they did it. Their sister Elizabeth married William Ferris at the more appropriate age of twenty-two and raised a large family in Auburn.  Elizabeth managed to keep herself out of the news unlike her siblings.  That leaves Catherine, who was a year older that Elizabeth.

     Catherine lived with her widowed mother, earning her living as a laundress. For a long time, I viewed her as the dutiful daughter caring for her poor, aging, widowed mother; see, that's me still wanting to believe the best of my relatives. Then while doing some newspaper searches recently, instead of typing in "Catherine O'Hora" I used the search term "Kate O'Hora", and the floodgates opened.

     In 1891-- Kate O'Hora Willis last week pleaded guilty to the charge of stealing $5 from Mrs. Mary Eager of Delevan Street.  Wait one minute...Willis? After a search of the NYS marriage index, I found Catherine did indeed marry Thomas Willis in 1887, at age 30, there in Auburn.  Also, in 1891 I found Kate Willis arrested for intoxication and disorderly conduct with Mark LaDuce, a Salvation Army man no less.

     In 1894 we see Kate O'Hora charged with threatening violence and using profane language to one Ellen Ryan who was attempting, in vain, to drag her intoxicated husband William from the O'Hora residence. In that case, Kate's mother Catherine was charged with keeping a disorderly house.

     In 1901 this headline appeared, "From Jail To Hospital"; Kate O'Hora completed a sentence of 30 days for intoxication and was sent in a carriage to the city hospital on the order of the jail physician.  (Notice she no longer used the surname Willis. They were living on Delevan Street along with Catherine's mother in one city directory, but I have a feeling Mr. Willis made his exit after a few years of life with the "O'Hora Gang".)

     Auburn's 1902 city directory shows Mrs. Kate Willis living in a room over Falconi's Saloon on Clark Street, a rough and tumble sort of place with no shortage of stabbings, slashings, and even a shooting, as I found after doing a newspaper search for the establishment.  In other words, about the last place on earth someone like Kate should call home. 

     The coup de grace came in 1914,

 ...five of the defendants represented a raid made on an alleged disorderly house in Genesee Street a few nights ago. The entire five were arraigned this morning. Sarah Simmons who was charged with maintaining the house was given a flat sentence of 61 days in the Onondaga County Penitentiary. The other four defendants were charged with being inmates. Catherine O'Hora was given the option of paying $5 or spending 30 days in jail... The striking feature of the case was that all of the defendants were well past middle life. When judgment was passed on them, some of the elderly defendants broke down and sobbed... 

      At that time Kate was age 57.

     The term disorderly occurs quite often in these articles. What exactly did that really mean back then I wondered?  The Cornell Law School has the following definition on its website-

     A mostly outdated charge against someone creating a nuisance in the area. The most common use of a disorderly house charge was for using a house as a brothel. Other actions that could give rise to a disorderly house charge include dealing alcohol or hosting gambling in a house.

     I was beginning to have serious doubts about Catherine, aka Kate. Especially after reading that last article referring to her as the inmate of a disorderly house.  I think we all know another word for the inmate of a disorderly house.  At least it seems she pulled herself together in her later years, judging from her obituary--

Auburn Citizen Thursday Aug 25, 1927

     The death of Mrs. Katherine Willis occurred yesterday afternoon shortly after 2 o'clock after a brief illness. While she had been complaining slightly for some time past of a weakened heart, no alarm was felt until she contracted a severe cold which proved fatal yesterday. She had been a resident of this city nearly all of her life and was well known and liked by those who knew her...

    Kate was 70 years of age at her death.  Her obituary said her only survivors were nieces and nephews; she had outlived all eight of her brothers and sisters. Perhaps that last arrest in 1914 was when Kate hit rock bottom and took stock of her life.  Her mother had passed in 1903 and her only surviving sister in 191l, leaving her without any close female relative.  I wish I had a photograph of Catherine, I'm so curious about her.  I plan to keep looking for more information to hopefully get a clearer picture of her life, particularly her final years for which no census or directory records seem to exist.