Halloween Tale to Tell

Happy Halloween!  As you know, we have recently returned from a two week trip to Gloucester.  It was a great trip filled with children, whales, research and birthday fun.  The typical "Gloucester Report" will follow in another post.  We did have kind of an interesting experience that seems just right for a Halloween post.

My primary research goal on this trip was to "find" Aunt Bud.  Aunt Bud was Viola Elizabeth Ryan, a sister to Grampie and a favorite aunt of Dad's.  Perhaps you remember the story Peter told us about Aunt Bud giving Dad a ring to give to Mom?

In this picture you see Nanny Ryan, Dad, Aunt Bud and Uncle Peter.  I believe this was taken at his college graduation 1955.  So I knew she was alive at least til the spring of 1955.  For a long time, I've been trying to track down some more details about Aunt Bud's life especially when she died and where she was buried.  Peter told us once that he remembered that she was living on Haskell Street with Nanny and Grampie because she was ill.  He came home from school one day and found her dead.  No one could really remember when that was but I figured 1955-1958 as a range because Peter would probably have graduated by about 1958 when he was 18.  That narrowed it down but that's still a pretty big range to search.  Tim and Peter thought it might be 1956 or 1957 so I started to search day by day through the Gloucester newspapers for an obituary.  This was on a previous visit.

Just before we left for this recent trip, I prepped myself to research Aunt Bud and Uncle Jack, who supposedly had died of an accidental gunshoot wound.  Lo and behold some new digital references had become available so I learned that Aunt Bud died in 1957 and Uncle Jack in 1939 (the year of the accident). So I began searching day by day through "only" 1957 without much luck the first time.  But the second time, I tried the roll of microfilm that held copies of the paper from Oct-Dec 1957 figuring that range might be a good bet because school is in session most of that time since Peter remembered he had some home from school to find her.  (Nancy Drew has nothing on my detecting skills!). And, voila, this is what I found from early December:

Peter was right again!  He's got great information.  I was quite pleased to find her.  You'll notice it says she was buried in the family plot at Calvary.  The only family plot I was aware of at Calvary is this one where Nanny, Grampie and Grampie's mother are buried:

We noticed her arrangements were made by the Greely Funeral Home and I remember Mom saying this is the place always used by the Ryans.  Jim suggested we go there and ask.  I was a little reluctant, but off we went and BOY was it worth the attempt!! A very nice lady was wonderful enough to go up into the attic to locate their books from 1957 and show us the page in their records for Aunt Bud's services:

Perhaps you'll notice that the drawing of the plot seems to indicate the burial of mother Katherine Bentley Ryan AND Arthur 1955 from Florida!  Arthur is another "lost" Ryan so this was huge.  I was tickled to think I'd found Aunt Bud and her brother Arthur so we went back to Calvary to see if we could find Sect 15 Range 15 Lot 13.  No luck. I called the Archdiocese of Boston and they said she was in Sect 17 Range 1 Lot 13.  Back to the cemetery.  Still no luck.  Apparently there is some confusion with Calvary cemetery records prior to 1960.  The Archdiocese "cannot confirm or deny" that Aunt Bud is buried there so we cannot have her name added to the stone--which was my intention at first. 

We feel Aunt Bud and Arthur are buried in this plot.  We don't know why their names do not appear but I can speculate that it was just too expensive.  The monument people told us it would be $410 plus a $20 fee to the Archdiocese to add Aunt Bud to the stone.  That was more than I was expecting so I suppose in 1955 or 1957 if you pro-rate that amount, it would still be kind of expensive for Nanny and Grampie to add those names, even if the other siblings helped out.  And perhaps it should just stay that way. We don't even know who owns the plot so it could be quite a process to get the proper permissions.   I'm not sure.  I'm going to wait til I find Arthur to decide how to proceed. 

But that's our cemetery mystery for Halloween 2013.  I found Aunt Bud and probably Arthur.  The Uncle Jack story and the story of another brother, Everett to follow.  Also very interesting stuff!

There are stranger things in cemeteries than this:) 

Gloucester--Here we come (again)!

We'll be leaving for Gloucester this weekend for a two week stay.  We have been looking forward to the day that we could go and not have to hurry back so we are very excited about this trip.  As you know, we've been visiting Gloucester for a long time now.  Jim and I went there for our honeymoon and, lucky for me, Jim loved it too.  The nature of our trips has changed over the years but it's always based in family. 

I thought you might like to see a little bit of our perspective of Gloucester over the years (well, at least since 1985!):

 Cousin Cathy -- how cute is she?

At the Haskell Street house 1985

The following year we returned to celebrate our anniversary and made that a tradition until children and summer activities kind of interfered a bit.

 This street fair was in progress August 1987.  I think I'm going to take the pictures I have of Gloucester streets in 1987 with me on this trip and try to find the same spots again for comparison.  Stay tuned.

We went back to Rocky Shores Inn and this was the view.  You can see why we liked it there but they did not allow children in the Inn so we haven't been back in a while.  Now they are under new ownership and we have found places much closer to the water we like to listen to while we sleep.

1997 in Tim's front yard

Sometimes others would come along for the ride.  This is 2003.

2010 with Ryan off to school and Amy in Erie.  Just the two of us again. We've been discovering new places and hugging babies on recent visits.

I plan to spend lots of time researching family history on this trip--in fact, I've signed up for a genealogy workshop in Boston while we are there.  It will be so nice not to rush back though we've never been gone for this long, though the Ireland trip kind of warmed us up to being away from the house for a while.  I hope to bring back some cool stuff to share with you all, which is what this has always been about!