First October 2014 Gloucester Report

As you know, I am spending most of this month in Gloucester.  I'm lucky enough to have all the time in the world to do family history research to my heart's content and still share the weekends with Jim.  Already I have gotten a great deal of cool information to share.  But most of that is going to have to wait until I can access my scanner.

For now, here's a little treat for your eyes:

These were taken at the Cape Ann Marina Fall Fest -- also featured on Good Morning Gloucester for those that follow Joey (Paula!).  It was drizzling but still lots of fun.  This is the "home" marina for Wicked Tuna and we always check out the FV (fishing vessels) when we stop by there.

Our first night we decided to have dinner at Giuseppe's, a restaurant we hadn't been to in a while.  We were having a drink at the bar while we waited for Tim and Emmy to join us.  A woman was celebrating her 94th birthday so Jim offered to buy her a shot to celebrate.  She refused (which is when I knew she wasn't related) but was quite charming and Jim flirted her up pretty good.  We were telling this story to Tim and Emmy after we had been seated when a man approached the table and asked Jim if he was the guy that offered the birthday lady a drink.  He thought it was a cool thing to do, so he left his gift card saying it had a little left on it for us to apply to our dinner.  He said he was paying it forward.

I thought it was a nice turn of events after my recent efforts to do the same until we heard the very next day that Giuseppe's had unexpectedly closed its doors for good!  Makes me wonder if that guy knew something we didn't......and I hope the place we have Jim's birthday dinner will still be open the next day.

Patrick H. Ryan 1935-2009

BAM!  Another door is closed.  Remember John "Jack" Ryan who died of an accidental gunshot wound?  Tim and Peter refer to him as Uncle Jack, so I will follow suit here.  When Jack died, he left a wife Monica and two children, according to his obituary.  I was curious what happened to them so I started researching them.

First of all, I had to find out the names for the children and found them in the 1940 census Monica Ryan and children Patrick and Sheila.  Though I don't have Monica's death fully determined, I did find her son Patrick's obituary.

Handsome guy.  The obituary also contains a valuable clue for his sister Sheila, who apparently married a Morrison.  Sadly, he suffered from Alzheimer's Disease-- a particular insult considering that his childhood was likely difficult after his father's accidental death.  I find it interesting that Patricks are few and far between in our Ryan family. 

On another note, perhaps you've heard that Amy "said Yes to the dress"!  I took a trip to Erie yesterday so that she could show me the dress she'd fallen in love with.  Unfortunately, the shop sample of this dress had been sold so Amy couldn't model it for me.  She had pictures from a previous visit and it is quite beautiful.  But the confirming fact for me was that she loved it so the dress has been ordered.  It was much more emotional than I was expecting.

The emotions were on high alert after we found some evidence in our house that Ron Henry had stopped by for a visit recently.  He had a habit of moving the toilet paper around in the downstairs bathroom, which kind of drove me nuts.  When he died, I thought "Well, at least I won't have to go move the toilet paper back any more."  The night before I went to Erie, the toilet paper roll had been moved to Ron's favorite spot.  We believe it's a message from Ron.  He would have belly laughed himself silly to hear me tell the story of driving out to Erie to find my hung over daughter ready to go to the bridal store to try on a dress that wasn't there.   And then paying for it.  Cue the emotions.

Update from the Homefront

I haven't done much genealogy lately, which has apparently impacted my creativity.  I've been fretting and worrying about the blog so I guess I'll just offer some updates and hope for the best in the near future.


First of all, our little Shea went missing over a month ago and we now believe she's using the Litter Box in the Sky.  She was Jim's cat and was especially fond of him.  She would be very antsy when he was gone and quite contented in his lap every night.  She was a birthday gift to Jim and he named her appropriately.  Now both his favorite Sheas are gone.

I spent some quality time with the Kilmurray children recently, which was a blast for me.  We went over to Austin Lincoln (it's been AGES since I've been there) and explored on foot with our cameras nearby.  I came home with about 700 pictures and videos taken by Delaney and Breyen.  Here are a couple:

We had a great day.  I was also able to get to Breyen's football game this week.  Go B-Man!

 I also had a couple of interesting "Pay it Forward" experiences in the last few weeks.  There's a Facebook initiative to Pay it Forward that I decided to try and it was an interesting exercise.  You promise to send off a little token of remembrance to the Facebook friends that agree to give it a try.  Some of my Facebook friends that agreed are people I know well and see often.  A couple are not and those were the ones I found to be intriguing.  I took the opportunity to stop and think of these people carefully in ways I don't generally.  I found little tokens to send off that I think will appeal to their interests and personalities.  No pressure (like with Christmas) and no timeline (ditto).  I liked taking time to think of those that don't often come right to mind.  Then these friends are supposed to offer the same out to their Facebook friends.  It's a neat way to spread a little kindness.

The other experience took a bit longer to come to fruition.  Quite a while ago, I bought a small bunch of ephemera  at an auction that included personal items like letters and pictures.  I had promised myself that someday I would reunite such memorabilia to remaining family members, and these items seemed to be good candidates.  I carefully reviewed the items, taking note of names and dates then did some research to see if I could find this family online.  It seemed there were 2-3 potential family members with tress on Ancestry.com for whom this might be valuable material.  I wasn't sure how to proceed picking the family to whom I would offer these items first so I responded in the time honored tradition of putting it away to think about later.

Several months later ( and within the time since the last blog post), I renewed these efforts and decided to select the family tree that seemed to be best documented.  I contacted the tree owner to offer to send the items along and apparently picked absolutely the correct person.  The items seem to belong to her grandfather.  This woman believes she is the only living descendant of this man and she was very pleased to agree to accept the items.  So off they went!  I know how happy I would be and was glad to be able to bring that joy to someone else.

Perhaps the good karma will open the creative gates for me in the near future.  Thanks for hanging in here with the blog.

August 1994 was sweet

I'll be taking a break from the recent historical posts about long lost ancestors and related family members.  I can almost hear the collective "whew!".  I thought it would be fun to dive back into the photo albums again and see what was going on 20 years ago this month.  Turns out there was quite a bit going on that month!

All the while that Jim was doing marching band and the kids were young, we'd typically take our own vacation time during the month of August, so I guess it's not too surprising to find so much for August 1994.
It was the summer that we got our new pole barn built after the old one caved in under heavy snow in a previous winter. Harry was still with us (minus a portion of his tail and a large amount of his dignity). I went to Silver Creek for the 20th class reunion.  Amy was 6 and Ryan would turn 3 in a couple of months.  Jim and I took a trip to Chicago that summer and left the kids on Long Island for a few days so they had their own little vacation.

We went to Sesame Place.  Jim got whisked up to the stage by a very large Ernie (which Ryan did not like on little bit) to help them with their schtick.  It's pretty sad when Ernie is laughing at you.

It was Ryan Patrick's first summer.  I think they all look pretty happy

Here's a classic. No further explanation needed.

Mary Jane feeding watermelon to Ryan P on our old patio.

A very pensive little girl at the Syracuse Zoo.  Who knew then what her future held?

So, it was a very busy month but that's what you do when the kids are young.  I often miss the "excuse" to go to some of these places now that the children are older.  I'd feel like a stalker at Sesame Place without a child by my side!

 

 

A reminder (shameless plug) about the new public blog Gathering the Cousins.  I created it specifically as "cousin bait"--that perhaps one day an unknown relative would stumble upon it and recognize either the Irish or the Italian lines as their own.  It would be great if you'd visit the site once in a while--I think the more hits it has, the more likely it will be to show up high enough on someone's search results to be found.  To have a relative find us this way would be a serious affirmation of my efforts with blogging and family history research.

Quite the Character

I have some follow-up to last week's post about Grampie's siblings.  The colorful Uncle Art has gotten a little more colorful for us this week upon my discovery of a couple of very interesting newspaper articles.

The first article I found was called "Five Fugitives Are Freed in New York to Face Trial in Taunton in Hi-Jacking Case" from the Boston Daily Globe in 1927 when Arthur would have been about 34 years old.  This Arthur Ryan gave a New York City address.  This incident stemmed from "transportation a month ago of two motorvan loads of liquor from Taunton to New York".  Rum running.  Actually there are other hints in the newspaper that the Ryan boys were heavily involved in rum running back in the day.  Anyhow, I wasn't sure this was "our" Arthur but I wasn't sure it wasn't either so I kept looking til I came across the articles above.

It seems this Arthur Ryan of Gloucester (of the right age for "our" Arthur) used an assumed identity as Ernest T. Leach and was arrested on grand larceny charges in connection with the theft of almost $100,000 (yes--that's the right number of zeroes) in GOVERNMENT securities from a New York City bank.  The article states that Leach admitted obtaining these bonds through an underworld acquaintance. Bazinga--this matches what Sharen's mother thought she remembered.  It's enough to make me believe this is indeed our Arthur.  An official black sheep.

Jim says, "And there's your sign!"

Time will tell

I've recently been back in touch with a distant cousin, Sharen Ryan Elliott.  She is a twin granddaughter of Grampie's oldest brother Richard.  See, twins on the Ryan side of the family!  In the couple of times I've been in touch with her, she's given some interesting Ryan tidbits that I think help round out the story of Grampie and his siblings. 

Sharen sent me this picture of Grampie's parents William H. Ryan and Catherine Bentley Ryan.  I do not have a date for this picture but he died in 1934 and their last child was born in 1910 so we can assume sometime between those dates.  Catherine's long dress makes me think it's in the 1910s, but this needs further research.   This is the Catherine (Katherine) found dead in her bed by Grampie in 1945.  I feel very fortunate to have this picture.  He certainly appears to be an "old salt", doesn't he?

To briefly review their family, lives seemingly full of misfortune, tragedy and dysfunction:

Richard Sr.  and his wife Ida had 4 children including Richard Jr --Sharen's father.  She says Richard Sr. died in 1948 at the age of 57 of heart trouble and complications of alcoholism.  Ida was the runaway wife I've posted about in an earlier post. 

Richard Sr. is sitting on the dock here int his picture also from Sharen.

Arthur B. was second in line.  He married Gertrude Gordon and they had at least one daughter, Elinor.  There are a number of Eleanors in this family!  Sharen says he left Gloucester at the age of 16 to live with his aunt and uncle Bentley in a nearby town.  She also notes that Uncle Art was "quite the character....seems he had problems with the Mob and ended up down in Mexico for a while hiding!"  I don't have it confirmed but it appears from the local funeral home records that he may have died in 1955 perhaps in Florida.

William H. Ryan Jr. died as a young father in New York City of acute chronic alcoholism.  He worked at Ellis Island Immigration station and had two daughters.  I haven't yet been able to track that family but he was only 38 when he died in June 1933.

Everett B. Ryan died about a year later of a broken neck while attempting to hang himself.  Everett was clearly troubled and was being treated at the State Hospital for some time prior to this.  He also had a wife and children (6).  It was only a month before this incident that his father William Sr. died also at the Danvers State Hospital.  It was a very difficult year or so for the family.

Chester was "mentally deficient" according to his draft registration and Dad's stories.  It appears to me he lived with his family until he couldn't any more.  I don't have his death confirmed either (yet).

Grampie was next in line, the 6th boy in a row in that family.

Aunt Bud, Viola (or Violet) was the 7th child and the first girl!  She never married and was Dad's favorite aunt (the only Ryan aunt!).  She was a dance instructor and beautician before she moved back with her brother Grampie ill with cancer.

Here's Dad with Aunt Bud and his mother.  I think this young man is Peter, probably at Dad's college graduation at St. Bonaventure--so Aunt Bud thought enough of Dad to take that trip.  I love her purse!


John "Jack" Ryan was the youngest boy, shot accidentally by a friend and died of complications several weeks later.  I am working to locate those two children as well.  It's especially sad to note he died only a week or so before Christmas with two young children at home. 

In 1910, an infant girl was born and died on the same day.  She is listed as Dala but I don't know if that's some kind of abbreviation or her name.  Isn't THAT sad?

Overall, it seems a pretty sad tale to me.  But perhaps it only seems so from the distance time creates.  Time will tell our tale as well.

We celebrated our 29th wedding anniversary yesterday with the (now traditional) hot dog and beer at the stadium.  This tradition started out feeling like a sad state of affairs but has now woven its way into our own little culture.  It helps that another couple from Jim's section of season ticket holders shares the very same anniversary with us.  Ed and Patty enjoy having this quirky coincidence in common so we make an effort to share the bounty of the stadium meal with them each year.

Last night, we were able to go to one of the skyboxes to watch the game and stay out of the rain.  This provided us with a better opportunity for real conversation--the kind you can't have in the open air stadium seating shared with others.  Hang on to your hats because this is where we learn that Patty is called Patty Anne -- and only by her family members.  Like me, she doesn't really like to hear it come from a non-blood's mouth.  And the quirky conicidence doesn't stop there--she also has 4 sisters and 1 brother!!!  By the time this information spilled out, the men were getting a little nervous.  As well they should. 

I admit that I do not always look excitedly forward to spending our anniversary at the stadium one more time, but yesterday was a night to remember despite the rain and cancelled fireworks.  Here are some photographic reminders of that day in 1985:

I like this one for the reminder of the blue kitchen, empties on the washing machine, July calendar on the door, Nanny and Mom helping out.  Who's that girl with the glasses next to Nanny? :)

Seeing the fire truck outside the church and realizing he really did get a fire truck!

Dad and his camera!  Happy Birthday Dad.

I think this is before we defiled the Elks Club Elk

Don't we all look young!

We spent our honeymoon in Gloucester.  Jim reminded Emmy this week that he has been in her life for 29 years now!  An anniversary well remembered.