Puzzles to Ponder

I received a great gift via Facebook recently when Monica Moore sent me to a link from a Forestville group.  The group was discussing having Dad as an English teacher.  As a child, I was completely aware that Dad taught English to upper level high school students.  About the only specific thing I recall about that was his making kind of a big deal about baking a cake (with peanut butter frosting?) to take in and share with his students to prove that he could.  Sounds just like the Dad we all knew, right?  But, other than that, I really didn't know much about Dad in his professional role. 

Monica lived on Dennison Road heading toward Forestville.  I can't really remember how we became friends but I imagine it was through Brenda Hazelton who was also a Forestville student.  It was a minor mystery in my mind how we went to Silver Creek but Brenda and Monica went to Forestville when we lived between them, on the other side of the road.  Monica's dad was a farmer as I recall.  There was a landing strip on their farm and he took us for a ride in a plane one time.  That seemed like a big deal--and it was!  After we moved to Buffalo Street, I lost track of both Brenda and Monica but we've been reunited through Facebook.

Anyhow, perhaps you saw the FB conversation but just in case you didn't, here you go (in part):


One of the few things I remember about Mr. Ryan was his way of pronouncing the word "extraordinary". He always said it with 5 syllables "ex-tra-ord-in-ary", but with his accent it sounded like a very polished way to pronounce it versus the more typical 3 syllables "extraod-in-ary" or 2 syllables "extraord-nary".


I remember one time when he got ticked atthe students in his class - he climbed up on his desk and threw erasers at the students . . .  Now THAT sounds like Dad


I remember having him for both 11th and 12th grade English. He's the reason I studied English in college.


We were one of his first classes at FCS....he did that "New England thing" of adding "er" to the end of words, therefore he always called me "Linder"...I remember he was dramatic in the classroom, but I do not remember what he said about swearing


A great deal of drama when we were reading Macbeth! I also babysat when their first was only a month old. One of my favorite teachers.  Long, long time ago

 Anyhow, I really enjoyed reading these comments and they touched me deeply.  As a teacher, you always hope your legacy will look like this.  Jim certainly has that for himself and it's very heartwarming.  This conversation was also shared with cousin Cathy who shared it with Uncle Tim.  She said he literally had a tear in his eye which chokes me up even writing this.

So, naturally, I went seeking some more information about Dad's time in Forestville and discovered that I could sketch out an interesting family timeline related to our homes.  Until recently I never knew Mom and Dad lived in Forestville.  I always thought we lived in Olean when I was born but perhaps this was similar to when he worked in Ellicottville and lived there during the week.

I'm having a grand time reviewing old Lake Shore News papers.  I had completely forgotten about this publication and it's just full of newsy-news.  In this quest, I learned something else about Dad that I never ever knew--that he ran for the Silver Creek Board of Education.  This page might be hard to read but there are two big articles on it related to this.  Buried in here we learn that our Dennison Road house was the last house in the Silver Creek district (perhaps explaining a bit about how Monica and Brenda went to Forestville).  From 1963:

Naturally he was embroiled in some kind of controversy and apparently he lost the election or I am quite sure we would have known that he had been on the Board.

Another article I found verified what I thought I knew about moving to Dennison Road --that we moved shortly after Paula was born. From Aug 1960:

There was a Bob Stoll in my class that I dated for a bit.  Coincidence???????

So, Monica gave me quite a gift with this link she shared as it led to these discoveries.  How interesting to get to know a different side of Dad.  It helps to complete some of the puzzle.  And to think it's likely that I've only scratched the surface here.  And what clues will be found about ourselves 50 or 60 years from now??
Puzzles to ponder during a snow storm. 

Back in the Day 1987

I recently saw that 2013 is a year in which none of the numerals repeat themselves.  This has not been so since 1987.  (Good evidence right here that I spend way too much time surfing the web.)  So I thought it would be fun to take a little walk down memory lane to 1987 and compare it to 2013.

Ronald Reagan was president and the New York Giants beat Denver in the Super Bowl back in the day when the Super Bowl was held in January :)  Les Miserables and Married with Children debuted speaking to the social conscience of the day.  Mark McGwire is a rookie and Jessica McClure falls down a well which captivates the media for the next several days as we all watched anxiously.


Jim and I had been married for two years or so when we learned that Amy was on the way. First time pregnancies fill your brain in ways few other things are able to so most of the remaining part of that year was focused on our new status as parents.

This was taken on a camping trip in June that we took with Glenn and Cheryl to Sandy Pond.  Shortly later, we learned I was pregnant and I remember thinking we'd spent this weekend not knowing this important news.  Cheryl told us that weekend that she was expecting Kaitlyn.  Little did I know.

This is where we lived until 1991.  I liked that car.  I'd almost forgotten it.

We returned to Rocky Shores Inn in Gloucester to celebrate our anniversary.  This place did not allow children so it was our last visit for a while.  Jim's really rocking those shorts, right?

Jim helping Mary Jane with her Christmas tree that year.

 We spent Thanksgiving with Nanny.  Swore never ever to fly again on Thanksgiving weekend.

 We chaperoned the senior trip to Disney that year.  I think it was their 15th birthday and my first visit.

Awww.  Harry

2013.  Barack Obama is POTUS -- something I wonder if Reagan ever considered might happen.  The Baltimore Ravens won the Super Bowl in New Orleans and they weren't even a team yet in 1987.  Cinderella debuted on Broadway and we went to see it.  It did surprisingly well even garnering some Tony nominations and winning one for costume design.  The Goldbergs debuted on network TV--a show ABOUT the 80s.  Yikes.  And the media event of the year was probably the Baby Watch for young Prince George.  Nothing like royal weddings and babies to capture media attention.

We welcomed Birdie, Grace and Lori to the family tree!  How lucky are we?  I got to honor Mom's long standing wish by taking a trip to Ireland AND spending extended time in Gloucester.  Retirement is truly a blessing.  

This is a 2013 version of a sunset picture after I've been working on some photography skills.

On that 1987 Disney trip, I suffered from some pointed remarks from my companions regarding the number of pictures I took of flowers.  I like to think I have refined those skills also.  Pictures now are decidedly more scenic harking back to the days (1987) when there weren't children's sweet faces and antics filling the viewfinder.  We now have 3 cats rather than good ole Harry.  You'll notice he still had his full tail back then.

And a pretty cool 1987 photo sprinkled with some 2013 style magic!

And, last but not least (even though it took place early in 2013), there was the famous Ryan Christmas celebration at Judy's.

Hope to see you all Jan 5 here at noon!

It will be 2014, another year in which the numerals do not repeat but a post like this will not repeat :)

Happy Franksgiving anyone?

Everyone is probably preparing themselves for their Thanksgiving and hoping the impending storm doesn't screw up plans.  Boreas.  How do they come up with this stuff?  I'm on the fence about whether I think naming winter storms is a good idea but giving them names no one recognizes or can pronounce seems counterproductive to their supposed purpose.  There.  I'm done with that.

Did you realize this blog is 7 years old this month?  Wow.  I'm pretty proud that I've been able to keep this up for that length of time.  Sometimes it's hard to come up with ideas, sometimes it's hard to just sit down and write but something keeps me moving forward with it.  I think I hope that someday this will be interesting or valuable to our children.  Who knows?  In the meantime, it gives me an outlet for sharing family history and my views on life in general. 

I got my Christmas angel tag today and it's for a 7 year old boy--his whole lifetime could be measured in this blog.  Anyway, he likes John Deere tractors, motorcycles and Monsters Inc.  This is going to be a fun shopping expedition!

This year's shopping season is a little shorter than usual because Thanksgiving is so late in the month.  I admit that the late Thanksgiving date has made it difficult for me to properly navigate events in the November calendar, but when some smarta** on Facebook noted that there are only 4 Saturdays between Thanksgiving and Christmas, I sat up and took note.

When I was researching information for this blog post, I came across an interesting little Thanksgiving factoid.  Apparently in 1939, the fourth Thursday in November (the traditional date to celebrate Thanksgiving) was late in the month, as it is this year.  At the time, it wasn't considered  proper to begin Christmas prior to Thanksgiving (imagine such a world!) and retailers were worried about the bottom line in a shortened shopping season especially as the Depression effects lingered.  President Franklin D. Roosevelt moved Thanksgiving back a week in order to allow the extra shopping week.  Did you know this?  Derisively, it was known as Franksgiving and resulted in certain and rapid response from our US Congress.  It's an interesting story. Check it out here.

In the meantime, here are some Thanksgiving Past memories:

 Cutie pies at 42 Bruce St before Mom declared a moratorium on holiday dinners.

 2012 our house. Cheers!

 1984 in Fort Myers

 Also 1957 I believe.

 Probably 1992. Classic Kids Table

Also probably 1992

Hey Pilgrim!

First of all, Happy Birthday John and Chris!  I had to steal this great picture of Chris and Lori that appeared on Facebook this week

Wow! For a minute, I had to double check who was the guy with all the grey hair but you're both looking really good here.  I'm so glad your friend shared! And John gets to have a birthday with his new sister.  Pretty sweet place we're at right now. 

With Thanksgiving approaching, I thought this would be a good time to introduce the Pilgrims in our line.  I knew it was possible/likely that we had Mayflower connections, but my recent trip to the New England Historic Genealogical Society in Boston confirmed it to the extent that I think I can share the details with you.  And you have to pay attention because it's almost Thanksgiving and it would be nearly un-American not to pay attention to Pilgrim stories at this time of year.

First of all, part of my hesitation in sharing this with you was kind of stuck in my lack of confirming documentation that we actually descend from Mayflower passengers.  Part of what I learned in Boston was that there's a certain point in family history research at which you can accept what you are given since it's been very well documented by others with much more knowledge, experience and history than you. I don't need to find Richard Warren's birth certificate--that fact is already well researched and accepted knowledge.  The very fact of its presence at this library proves its worthiness.  I don't need to re-prove what's already well proven.  I guess I hadn't really come to that realization yet, though I've had this Mayflower information for nearly 20 years now.

It appears we have (at least) three Mayflower passengers through whom we can claim this honor: Richard Warren, Stephen Hopkins and William Brewster.  This is 14 generations ago.

These are documents Ann Gleason possessed and shared with me.  She was working with a couple of other researchers who (I now see) did their work very well.  The outlines above were done by one of them. At number/generation 12 we would have Catherine Pierce (Nanny Ryan) and Paul Ryan Sr.  Generation 13 would be Paul Ryan Jr and Anne Flynn.  Pretty cool, right?  I already had things pretty well sketched out back to generation 8 or so and my time in Boston opened the gates from generation 7 back to the passengers themselves.

There are many many stories about these passengers, their first brutal winter at Plymouth and the first Thanksgiving celebration and it's pretty awesome to think we carry those stories in our very genes.  If you are curious, a really neat Mayflower site is Caleb Johnson's site www.mayflowerhistory.com . 

There you will find brief biographies of these people and one of the most intriguing is Stephen Hopkins, who apparently had previously traveled to this new land and spent time in Jamestown VA before coming to Plymouth.  He was quite the rogue it seems, so that fits in pretty nicely with the rest of our story. We actually have 2 connections through him. 

Another nice summary can be found at the New England Historic Genealogical website: http://www.americanancestors.org/who-came-on-the-mayflower-pt2/ . I strongly encourage you to check these out.

It's the Pierce family that is our "Yankee" connection.  Who knew? It's interesting to note that our beginnings in Plymouth MA wind their way back through our own ancestry from Gloucester  to Nova Scotia (Nickersons) to Cape Cod and finally back to Plymouth. 

I hope you keep these Pilgrims in mind as you feast this year.  Special Thanksgiving wishes to you all.

The Ryan boys

As you have heard, I made it my mission to "find" Aunt Bud, which I was able to accomplish on our recent trip to Gloucester.  Although there is still some mystery as to exactly where she rests, I feel settled that I have closed a chapter for her by adding a death date in our family tree.  There remained another unfinished story in Uncle Jack.  It was my secondary mission in Gloucester and I found him as well.  It's an interesting story.

Grampie Ryan was one of 9 children.  One baby girl died at birth so Aunt Bud was the only girl among seven boys.  John "Jack" Ryan was the youngest and was the victim of an accidental shooting in November 1939.  I think I've shared that story before.  Tim told me he thought that Jack had died as a result of his wounds, but I didn't find an obituary in the days immediately following the accident.  So I felt I needed to "find" him as well so that I could close his story also. 

I had discovered he died sometime in 1939 so it was a tad easier to go day by day through the newspapers from the November shooting date to the end of the year to find his death.

More than 7 weeks elapsed between the accident and his death, and Tim was absolutely correct that his uncle had died as a result of the shooting.  I noted that Jack had a wife and two children but haven't located them. Yet.

Since I was on a hot streak, I decided to pick up the thread left behind by this gravestone:

John J. Bentley is Captain Bentley who was lost at sea, Mary Costello Bentley was his wife.  Catherine Bentley was their daughter, our ancestor who married this William H. Ryan.  They are buried in separate cemeteries.  Everett Sr. is one of Grampie's brothers and Everett Jr. obviously his son.  As tempted as I was to locate Everett Jr. who apparently died as a teenager, I began looking for Everett Sr. in 1934. 

I did find a funeral notice for Everett Sr. in August of that year but couldn't find the traditional death notice so I looked in the main portion of the paper and stopped cold when I found this very sad story:

This left me feeling very melancholy at how sad and lonely it must have been for Everett and his family and I couldn't go any further that day.  I was able to close the door on 3 of the siblings and have 2 remaining (Chester and Arthur).  There was a great deal of tragedy in that Ryan household which provides insight for Grampie and for Dad.

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!