The Doyle / Connaughtons of Kiltulla, The Great Famine and the Land War

At the beginning of the Great Famine in Ireland, around 1845, Ireland had a population of about 8 Million people, of whom two-thirds depended on agriculture to make a living.  Almost all the land was owned by English aristocracy who were absentee landlords, relying on agents to collect annual rents from mostly poor Catholic tenants.  Most of these tenant farmers could only afford small farms, hoping to grow enough crops to survive.  65% of these farms were less than 15 acres with more than a third of those being less than five acres.  At the time, the only available crop that could possibly be grown profitably on such small farms was the potato.  In good years, the potato was a staple food but was also used as fodder for farm animals, either sold to ranchers or to fatten the family pigs.  When the potato blight hit for several years in a row, farmers didn’t have enough food to feed their family, much less to sell any potatoes to ranchers or to pay their rents.  Landlords had their agents enforce the payment of rents as best they could but demanded eviction for those who could not pay in full.  It is estimated that a half million people were evicted between 1845 and 1854 with many more “voluntarily” giving up their farms.  With no income or roof over their heads they starved or were sent to workhouses which were basically prisons for poor people who had to earn their keep.  If they could raise enough money for passage, they emigrated from Ireland with England, Scotland, Wales, America, Canada and Australia taking in almost a quarter of Ireland’s population.  It should also be noted, with sadness, that despite the famine, Ireland was still a net exporter of foodstuff during most the famine years, primarily to meet English demands.

For those farmers that stayed and managed to survive, there wasn’t suddenly any cheap land on the market.  The aristocracy just consolidated these recovered lands into large grazing ranches and brought in people to manage new herds.  The tenants were still stuck on their tiny, unsustainable, rented farms.  Between 1854 and the next time a blight hit the potato crops in 1879, many farmers were agitating for land reform. In the late 1870’s, the Irish National Land League was formed to try to abolish the tenant system and allow farmers to own their land.  In the late 1890’s the United Irish League (UIL) was formed as a political party with the principal aim to compel large grazier farmers to surrender their lands for redistribution to the small Irish farmers, particularly in the fertile areas they exclusively held in west central Ireland around Galway and Roscommon.

Although the UIL was a political party, they also fought for farmers’ rights through agitation, boycotts and demonstrations.  Throughout the UIL’s existence, until a younger, more militant splinter group, Sinn Féin, overtook it, the UIL had a strong following in the small parish of Kiltulla, Galway.  That is where the Galvins, Connors, Connaughtons and Doyles lived… and sometimes “agitated”. 

Michael Doyle, a second cousin of my great-grandmother Mary Ann Galvin [Michael (1852-1937) was the grandson of William Connaughton and son of Mary Connaughton (1819-1891) and Patrick Doyle (1808-1879)] had a price put on his head by the English and was eventually caught and imprisoned in Wales.  Newspaper reports also mention Kiltulla residents William Connaughton, T. Connor and J. Galvin having attended their massive rallies.

Even though Uncle Larry was on our Smith side, he would have been very proud.


 

Herbert R. O'Conor: The Inevitable Success

A lucky discovery that proved me wrong. Again. The Dixon Clan

Crimminy jickets!  I am really bad at this stuff. 

I am not sure if all this work was a complete waste of time but I now know that it was based on an incorrect assumption.  I asked myself “who else could this Joseph Dixon be, other than a brother of our great-great-grandmother, Catherine?”.  Joseph and Catherine were born about seven years apart; both were born in Country Tyrone; they shared the same last name; and for pete’s sake, Joseph and his wife, Anna, were buried in the Catherine’s daughter’s family plot in New Cathedral Cemetery along with nine other known family members?

I can answer that partially now.  This Joseph was not Catherine’s brother.  That means that Sarah Gertrude Dixon Delaney was also not a sibling.  That means I did a whole lot of work to figure out who was NOT our fourth cousins. Maybe Joseph was Catherine’s cousin.  Maybe he was her second cousin.  Maybe he was a complete stranger who snuck his way into the grave and the rest of the stuff is just a coincidence.  Who know?  NOT ME!

That’s the bad news.

Here’s the good news…

I know that this Joseph was not Catherine’s brother and this Sarah was not her sister because I found a portion of a biography of Dr. Joseph Dixon, Archbishop of Armagh.  It turns out that family history of us being related to him is true.  The story of the Archbishop’s early life was previously posted on the website of a school in Coalisland, Ireland that was named for him.  It has since been removed from that website but a cached version is google-able and the portion I saw was a cut and pasted transcript on Ancestry.com. I have now copied that so that it doesn’t go missing because there is some juicy information in there…including Catherine’s real brothers and sisters.

_________________________________________________

http://www.primatedixon.coalisland.ni.sch.uk/Cover.htm

The Dixon family lived in a single story farmhouse at Corrainey along the side of the road leading from Coalisland down into Bush. James Dixon, who was born in 1776, married Jane Casey, who was born in 1777. They are buried in Killyman Churchyard, with a daughter Mary, who died in August, 1827, at the age of thirteen. They had a family of four girls - Catherine (later Mrs McGovern), Sarah (married Hugh Curran, a farmer), Jane (married James Magill, a publican), and Mary (died young) and three boys - Joseph, James and Francis.

They had a farm of 8 acres 3 rood and 35 perches on which there were three houses, let to James Reynolds, Robert Currie and Patrick Hillen.

These were the boom years of the domestic linen industry, between 1775 and 1825, until the factories took over all the trade. Spinners and weavers worked in their own homes and generally worked through an agent to sell their linen at the weekly market in Dungannon Market Square, where the population doubled on market days. It is probable that the Dixon family had an interest in the linen industry. Francis, the heir, certainly owned webs and looms in the homes of weavers in 1860.

The Coalisland of Joseph Dixon’s young day was a growing, developing community. The Canal was completed in 1787 and, for the next Century and a half, carried heavy traffic. Wharfing and warehouses were around its basin. Many industries had grown out of the local coal and fireclay mining. S. Lewis in his 'Topographical Dictionary of Ireland' published in 1837 refers to Coalisland's many aworks, potteries, flourmills, iron works, forges, plating mills, spade mills and works for the manufacture of firebricks. The 1834 map of the area shows tile works, grain mills, a starch factory and bleach greens.

There is a long-standing tradition in Coalisland that Joseph was born on 1st July 1806, in a lodging house, approached by three stone steps, which stood along the back river to the rear of Barrack Street in the town. It seems a reasonable explanation that Jane was on business in the village, when Joseph decided to be born. Sister Mary Cusack who wrote a life of Dr. Dixon in 1878, says he was born in the Parish of Donaghenry. Corrainey is in Dungannon Parish, the Parish of Ballyclog and Donaghenry was separated from Clonoe by Dr. Curtis in 1822 and Barrack Street was in Donaghenry.

Jane Dixon was a woman of piety and was interested in educating her family in days when education was the exception rather than the rule. Joseph Dixon, in later years, referred to her devotion to the Blessed Virgin. 'Take note of my name being Joseph, and what will help you, I am sure, to remember, it is this, that I am not named after a member of my family, but my mother gave me the name of Joseph, because it was the name of the Spouse of the Blessed Virgin.'

Early Education - The Report of the National Commission for Education in 1826 mentions a number of Schools in the area, but there is no record of where he received his early education. It was obviously a very good one. He often told a story of an incident on his way from school one day. He was walking along with a companion when a boy of another religion began to verbally abuse them for being Catholics. The companion took the situation and the miscreant in hand and ended the matter.

Maynooth - At the age of 16, on the 26th August 1822, Joseph Dixon entered Maynooth to study for the Priesthood. He followed a brilliant course and graduated with distinction. His brother James followed him to Maynooth a few years later and was one of the outstanding students of his time. James later left the Diocesan Clergy and joined the Congregation of the Missions - the Vincentians.

At the end of his first year in the Dunboyne Institute Joseph competed with two brilliant classmates for the Professorship of Moral Philosophy in Maynooth College. Dr. Whitehead was successful and the other, Dr. Magennis, was later appointed Professor of Theology in 1830. These three were ordained on the same day in June 1829.

Dr. Dixon was appointed junior Dean in Maynooth in September 1829, and was promoted to Senior Dean in September 1833. As Dean he was said to have been exact on breaches of discipline, but he always tried to be a guide in the formation of the characters of future priests. After an extensive examination in Hebrew, Syriac and Chaldaic, by a panel chaired by Archbishop Murray of Dublin, Dr. Dixon was appointed Professor of Sacred Scripture and Hebrew in September 1834.

He was highly regarded by his peers and by his students, both as a teacher and as a scholar. Evidence of his deep scholarship came when, in 1852, he produced his book "A General Introduction to the Sacred Scripture". He wrote this book for the student of Scripture and for the educated layman, as there was, at that time, no such book by a Catholic author in the English language. It was a very comprehensive, learned and theologically correct work. It was well received and highly praised by Scripture scholars. He was justly proud of the work and on the occasion of an audience with the Pope at the time of the Definition of the Dogma of the Immaculate Conception, he presented Pius IX with a copy.

Maynooth was the hub of Irish Ecclesiastical life and little happened throughout the land that was not discussed there. Dr. Dixon loved the intellectual stimulation of his fellow professors and the opportunity for study. For a man, already of deep piety, it was a place where he could develop and increase his life of devotion. The formation of the minds and characters of future priests was a task he relished.

He was well aware of the turmoil in the Church at the time. Because of the work of the Revolutionists, Pius IX and the Church Government had to leave Rome. Irish Church affairs were handled by Cardinal Fransoni from Naples since 1848. The Irish Church needed time to get itself organised after the ravages of the Penal Law years. The terrible trauma of the death, disease, poverty and emigration of the Famine Years of 1845-49 had also to be dealt with. Concessions granted by the Government after Emancipation had to be examined and viewed with suspicion after years of repression. The Irish bishops were deeply divided on three of these concessions. One group was headed by Primate Crolly and Archbishop Murray of Dublin and the other, by Archbishop McHale of Tuam. The three matters were the National Schools Bill - to give education to young children in non denominational schools - The Charitable Bequests Bill, about what legacies could be left to religious institutions and the most divisive, The Queen's Colleges Bill - the Universities at Belfast, Cork and Galway. It is necessary to mention these to introduce Dr. Paul Cullen, Rector of the Propaganda College in Rome and formerly Rector of the Irish College in Rome. The National Schools and Queen's Colleges disputes were referred to Rome and Paul Cullen was called in by Propaganda as a consultor. This brought him more to the fore-front in Rome when Archbishop Crolly died in April 1849 and the See of Armagh was vacant.

The Appointment of Dr. Paul Cullen - In accordance with the Propaganda Rule of 1829 for the selection of a bishop, the parish priests of Armagh Diocese met in Armagh on 22nd May 1849. They selected, by vote, three priests whom they suggested to Rome as candidates for the bishopric Joseph Dixon (26 votes); Michael Kieran, P.P., Dundalk (12 votes); and John O'Hanlon, Professor of Theology in Maynooth (12 votes). Propaganda instead appointed Paul Cullen to be Archbishop.

The English Catholic newspaper 'The Tablet" on Saturday, 12th January 1850 argued that it was unheard of that at least one of those proposed by the Parish Priests, even if taken out of the order of the voting, was not appointed. They took this as another case of Rome putting in their own man to carry out Rome's ideas. Propaganda had the right to reject the candidates and it was almost inevitable, in the circumstances, that Paul Cullen - the strong, brilliant scholar, astute leader, fully aware of Irish Church affairs, absolutely faithful to Rome and outside the Episcopal squabbles - should be chosen.

He was appointed in 1849 and lived all his time as Archbishop of Armagh, in Drogheda. Archbishop Cullen was moved as Archbishop of Dublin on 1st May 1852 and continued to dominate Irish and world Church affairs until his death on 24th October 1878. He was created Ireland's first Cardinal in 1861. He held Dr. Dixon in high regard and took him to the Synod of Thurles as his theologian. Dr. Dixon also acted as theologian at the Synod of Oscott.

Appointment as Archbishop - Joseph Dixon was reading his office in his room when Archbishop Cullen, with Rev. Dr. Carew and Dr. Callan, arrived to inform him of his appointment as Archbishop of Armagh by Pius IX on 13th October, 1852. Reluctantly, he accepted and, when they left, he wept bitterly. After thirty years in the calm, serene atmosphere of Maynooth he had to face out into the rough seas of a divided hierarchy and the problems already outlined. In a letter of November 1852, he gives some indication of the soul-searching it caused him before he bowed to the Will of God. "You must excuse me for having delayed so long to acknowledge your exceeding kindness to me upon the most trying occasion of my life. This appointment to Armagh has been to me a source of great grief and trouble, and although a part of the trouble is now past, as my consecration has taken place, I still see nothing but a continuation of great grief and great trouble to the end of my life. I was told however, by so many in whom I had confiden…

More on the McGovern / Dixon cemetery mystery

A follow-up post that I made in our family Facebook page earlier this week.  I include it here for context, even if it is embarrassingly wrong.

  

In October 2018, I asked the good admin folk at New Cathedral Cemetery for a list of everyone in plots K16 and E46. I knew that these graves contained the remains of many of the McGovern descendants including James McGovern’s (our great-great-grandfather’s) eldest daughter Annie McGovern Driscoll and her children and some grandchildren. Considering that James died in 1895, Catherine Dixon, his wife, was born in in County Tyrone, Ireland about 1826 and passed in 1898 and Annie McGovern Driscoll passed in 1933, I was surprised to see three people on the list including:

K16 6 - JOSEPH DIXON (buried 7/15/1880)

K16 7 - ANNA DIXON (buried 9/22/1890)

K16 15 - MARY DIXON (buried 10/5/1878)

I figured (hoped???) at the time that this might have been Catherine Dixon’s parents and sister. In October, I could not find any details for any of them so I waited to see if there was a gravestone with dates. Unfortunately there wasn’t. I have, however, since found the Baltimore Sun death notices of Joseph and Anna and I was only mildly disappointed.

The obits indicated that Joseph was born about 1819 in Tyrone and Anna was born in 1817. Other than the facts that they were likely poor, from Tyrone, about the same age and buried in the McGovern / Driscoll family, I cannot with certainty tie Joseph to be Catherine’s older brother. But who else could he be?

Joseph and Anna do not appear to have had any children but Joe’s obit also mentioned that his wake was “at the residence of his brother-in-law, James Delaney, 175 Burgundy Street”. I found out that James’ wife’s maiden name was Sarah Gertrude Dixon and she was born in 1835 in County Tyrone. That looked promising. Did I now have two sisters and a brother, and maybe another sister?

Over the past three days, I have tracked down all four of James & Sarah’s children, all 22 of their grandchildren, 11 great-grandchildren and 21 of their great-great-grandchildren as well as spouses and some of the younger generations too.

I sure hope this wasn’t a wasted effort though. I note that there is no descendant of Sarah Dixon that I am a DNA relative of on Ancestry. Maybe none of them have taken the DNA test. Maybe they have done the test but 4th cousins don’t always show a match. Who knows?

By the way, the most famous person in the Delaney clan was who Sarah’s granddaughter, Angela D Carr married. Angela married a guy who came back from WWII and opened a small feed-store on York Road near Govans Elementary School. When people in the neighborhood stopped keeping chickens and small farm animals in their yards, he started stocking regular groceries too. He became famous for his impeccable service, old fashioned neighborhood grocery store, top quality produce and community work. He was C. Paul Maenner. Do you remember him?

Never Assume in Genealogy – It makes a “genea” out of a “log” but “y”?

… and tales of family aristocracy.

A while ago, I was trying to figure out the family of my Grandfather Gentry’s first cousin, Charles V. Gentry (1870 Oh. – 1931 WV).  He appeared to have only one daughter, Lindsay Kelly Gentry (b. 1904), but the daughter’s relationships puzzled me.  She appeared to have two step-sons, pompously named Carl Anton Philip von Saltza and John Warren Hardenbergh von Saltza but despite the uncommon names, I had trouble confirming who, exactly, was their birth mother as well as the name of their father who later married Lindsay Gentry.  Also, why did the father have custody of the children? Did the mother pass away?  Everything about this family confused me.  I could not find enough clues that made sense to me.  Of course, I was then reminded of Melanie’s frequent admonition “None so blind as those that will not see”.

As I often do, I kept my notes but moved on to other parts of the family to find cousins who were easier to figure out.  Yesterday I returned to dear Lindsay to try again.  Sometime in the past few weeks, I became enlighted.  Looking at the clues again, a little more closely, it hit me.  Lindsay Kelly Gentry was male, not female.  Who knew?

Now that I could work quickly, I was led to discover part of the story of a woman who seemed to be near as many interesting stories as Forrest Gump.  Katherine Warren Hardenbergh was Lindsay’s first wife but that was not the beginning of her life’s journey.

Katherine was born on 17 October 1887 to John Warren Hardenbergh and Lilliam Williams Wilson.  The Hardenberghs were an old New York / New Jersey family that was started in America when Jan van Hardenbergh emigrated from Holland before 1644 to a young Dutch colony called New Amsterdam (you may know it by the Lenape tribe’s name for the island, i.e., Manhattan).  Fortunately, Jan started buying land as soon as he arrived and his descendants are still spending the fortune.  To further bolster the family’s standing, John Warren Hardenbergh’s father served in the US House of Representatives.  His great-grandfather was the founder and first President of Rutgers University.  His great-great-grandfather was a field officer who served with distinction under George Washington (unfortunately, he was also the owner of Sojourner Truth, the slave who later escaped and became a famous abolitionist).  His great-great-great-grandfather bought 2 million acres of land in the Catskill Mountains in 1709.

In the first decade of the 20th century, old Dutch money met and fell in love with old Swedish money.  In 1910, Katherine married Count Philip Wencelaus von Saltza in New York City.  Philip had been born in Stockholm, Sweden in 1885 and immigrated to America with his parents and sister when he was only six years old.  His father was a professor at Columbia University where Philip would later study and star on the football team.  The von Saltza family were titled aristocracy in Sweden and Katherine was now a Countess.  Besides being a count, Philip’s father was also well-known artist, painting portraits and murals.

Katherine gave birth to Philip’s two oldest sons as noted above, Carl in 1911 and John in 1912.  At first Philip worked as a mine engineer but war got in the way of life.  During 1915 to mid-1916, Philip was involved in protecting American interests during the Mexican Revolution.  During the latter part of that period, he was actively fighting the infamous revolutionary, Pancho Villa.  Soon after the Mexican Punitive Campaign, Philip was off to Europe to fight in the Great War.  He was captured by German forces in the Battle of Argonne Forest in September 1918.  Fortunately, this was the last major battle of the war and he was only a prisoner of war for a short period.  He fared much better than the 26,000 Americans who died during this 47 day battle.

After Philip’s return to America in April 1919, he was re-united with Katherine and his children.  All was not well though and in 1922, the couple divorced.  War can change you.

Katherine appears to have taken the boys westward and on 6 August 1927, she married 23 year-old Charles James Griggs in Washington state.  Now, I can imagine the problems that could potentially arise when a young man marries a 40 year-old woman bringing in tow her two teenagers but I have no facts of what things were like in the house.  I do know that they soon moved to the San Francisco area and Charles found part-time work in a bank.

You can now use your own imagination to figure out what happened next because sometime in late 1932, Katherine and Charles divorced.  Charles quickly married Charlotte A. Dobson and she gave birth to a son, Peter James Griggs on 28 July 1933.  Within the next week or so, this family’s fortunes turned greatly.  Charles was rewarded with a full-time position and promotion at the bank.  Unfortunately, it was during the Great Depression and the new position came with no additional salary.  Also, Charles was informed by the doctors that Peter had a medical condition that was going to be expensive to rectify.  Charles must have worried greatly over this during the next few days because on 4 August 1933, he walked into the bank’s vault, grabbed the revolver in there that was supposed to be used to deter robberies and he shot himself through his temple.  He left a note explaining to his wife that she should now use the $20,000 from his life insurance to pay doctors to save his son.  Wow.

Meanwhile, Katherine wasted little time of her own.  She finally decided it was time to join the Gentry family.  She married Lindsay Kelly Gentry at the Bishop’s home in Point Loma, California on 21 October 1933.  The Gentry’s made their home in Monterey, California and included 22 year-old Carl until he was married in 1937 as well as John, until his July 1934 marriage to Betty Joyce and again after his divorce shortly thereafter. John married again in July 1941 to Margaret Kathryn Test to prove two things.  First, he liked getting married in July and, second, he was a good judge of athletic genes.  These two produced a star swimmer, but that will come a little later.

This is where the story becomes muddy.  In 1944, Lindsay and Katherine were still listed together in the San Jose phone directory.  The next thing I see is Lindsay’s April 1948 death notice, mentioning his wife’s name as Eleanor.  Later, I see in phone directory the additional clue that her name is actually “Eleanor H.”  Thanks.  I have no clue when Lindsay and Katherine divorced or if Katherine died.  I have no idea when Lindsay and Eleanor married or what happened to her after Lindsay’s death.  I know that an auction company sold off the furniture and artwork of Katherine’s impressive estate in 1960 but that’s all I know about each of them.

There is more to the story though, through Katherine’s son, John Warren Hardenbergh von Saltza.  As noted, he married Margaret Kathryn Test in July 1941.  This couple had two daughters, the first being Karen Lindsay von Saltza who was born 26 August 1942.  Her middle name hints that Lindsay Gentry was still a strong positive influence on his step-son.  The second daughter, Susan Christina “Chris” von Saltza, was born on 3 January 1944 and she turned out to be a champion.

By 21 July 1958, Chris was such a star swimmer that she became the youngest person ever to be on the cover of Sports Illustrated.  In the 1960 Olympic trials, she set the first of her world records in the 400m freestyle.  In the Rome Olympic games, at 16 years-old, she won the gold medal in that event and a silver in the 100m freestyle (second only to the great Dawn Fraser) as well as golds and world records in two relay events.  She is a member of the International Swimming Hall of Fame.

Chris’ older sister, Karen, tempted fate by announcing her engagement to James C. Small at Chris’ 19th birthday party.  Stealing someone else’s limelight is never a good thing and that was proven true again.  A little over a month after Karen and James were married, James, also a competitive swimmer, was practicing with his senior team in the open waters of San Francisco Bay near Alcatraz.  Sadly, a boat ran over him and the propeller severed his leg.  Doctors were unable to save him because of the massive loss of blood.

That’s a sad ending to my story but the good news is that Karen re-married, both sisters have large families and are still alive to enjoy them.  Also, I am still looking to find out what happened to my good friend Katherine.  To be continued…

Jacob Rutsen Hardenbergh
Sojourner Truth
Augustus Albert Hardenbergh
Philip von Saltza
Chris von Saltza
Pancho Villa Expedition
Meuse-Argonne Offensive
New Amsterdam

Girl Who Had The Marrying Habit

My Granddad Smith had a younger sister, Emma L. Smith (1894 – 1990) who lived a long and interesting life, but not one without some troubles. This is the story of one of those troubles and where it lead me to.

I remember my father speaking about his cousins, Joe and Bud Scholz, Emma’s two children. I surely had also met them at family reunions back in the 1960s but I would have been too interested in the pickup softball game or in finding some appropriate sticks to roast marshmallows over the grill. I did not know much about their family situation though until I started researching the family tree. Today, I see that things were a little more complicated than I expected and they led to an unusual story.

At 19 years old, Emma married a Virginian in the local parish church in Baltimore. Walter August Scholz (1890 – 1960) was the eldest son of a German immigrant so he should have been a good fit with Emma whose grandfather had also emigrated from Germany only 40 years before she was born.

Emma was also half Irish and a good Catholic so there was no surprise when nine and a half months after the wedding, Joseph Walter Scholz (1915 – 1971) was born to start the new branch of the family. Exactly three years later, the second child was born. Amazingly, both Joseph and Louis August “Bud” Scholz (1918 – 2011) were born on the same date, May 10th. For some reason, Joe always wrote that his birthday was on 9 May instead of the date on his birth certificate. Perhaps he just wanted his own birthday. Who knows? That is not, however, the reason for this story.

All was not well in the family though. Emma & Walter divorced around the time of Bud’s birth. By the end of 1919, Walter was living in a boarding house in Terre Haute, Indiana and recorded as a macaroni salesman on the January 1920 census. He went on to marry a woman named Yetta Huney in Missouri, in December 1922. They must have tolerated each other enough to stay married but I note that when Walter passed away in 1960, his gravestone also had Yetta’s name already engraved on it as well as the dates “1887 – 19___”. Yetta said “the heck with that” and when she passed away in 1986, she was buried alone in New Mexico. Again though, that has little to do with the story.

After Walter left town, Emma met Joseph Edward Griffith (1895 – 1963) and married him around 1925. By all accounts, Joe was a good husband to Emma and a good step-father to young Joe and Bud. They were a typical American family living in west Baltimore. When Walter passed away, Emma was still a very young 69 years old. It must have been hard on her, once again on her own after so long. Like many widows, she probably kept an eye out for eligible bachelors but I am sure her friends were fixing her up with potential husbands in a pre-eHarmony world. By the way, I’m almost to the story – don’t worry.

Emma did find love! I only discovered this though when I saw her son, Joe’s, 1971 obituary. That obit mentioned that he was survived by, among other people, his mother, “Emma Fuentable” [sic]! Huh? I had already seen her 1990 death notice and that said that her name was “Emma S. Griffith, the wife of the late Joseph E Griffith”. Who was this “Fuentalba”?

It took some digging because of the spelling error but I eventually found Manuel Lagos Fuentealbe (1892 – 1980). Manuel was an immigrant from Chile who came to the United Sates in 1916. In those pre-Trump Wall days, he married a German immigrant and started raising a family of three children before bothering to apply for citizenship in 1927. They too seemed to be the typical first-generation American family and everything was good until Manuel’s wife died in 1961. Somehow, somewhere, Manuel met Emma. Cupid smiled and on Thursday, 26 November 1964 (Thanksgiving Day!), Manuel and Emma were married. My Granddad was probably a witness to the wedding of these two lovebirds, only 72 and 70 years-old. But that’s not yet the story.

Something happened between 1964 and 1973. Not all was well in the Fuentealba home. Manuel and Emma obviously divorced during that period but why? I can only guess but I think I know. There was apparently a third wheel on the bike in the form of a wanton trollop, a gold-digger, a marriage wrecking-ball, a 73 year-old licentious, promiscuous slut.

On 21 May 1973, Manuel married a “lady” named Carrie Emma Frohn. Then again, she may have given him one of her several other names. Who knows? To make a long story short, let me summarize some of Carrie’s exploits:

16 February 1915 – married Walter William Lanahan (1896 – ?), a 19 year old Baltimore boy getting ready to go to fight in the Great War. On Walter’s 1917 military registration card, he mentioned that he was the sole provider for his young wife. Maybe he was pleading to the army: “don’t take me”.

29 November 1917 – married Virgil W. Hiller (1890 – 1924), a Wisconsin infantry man who trained to fight in the Great War in Maryland. During a pre-deployment furlough in Annapolis, he married the love of his life, Carrie Emma Frohn. She obviously never mentioned the name Lanahan because she was still married to her first husband. During their brief courtship, Virgil had to divorce from his first wife, Marie Pavey, whom he married in 1909. She was left back on the cheese farm alone in Wisconsin.

25 November 1918 – convicted on bigamy and fraud and sentenced to 18 months in the penitentiary. During the war, the US government paid part of the soldier’s salary to the soldier but also paid a part directly to their parents or, if they were married, to their spouse. Young Carrie was double dipping.

22 June 1920 – just after Carrie’s release from prison, the final divorce decree was granted to Walter Lanahan. He left her on 17 May 1918, the day he bailed her out of jail and took her to a relative's house to stay. It is not known when Carrie’s marriage to Virgil Hiller was annulled but that would have taken much less time.

About 1925 – married Samuel Gelrud (1890 – ?), a Marine Corps gunnery sergeant stationed on bases in Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic. Carrie had her military pay once again. It appears that she married this New Jersey native just after he divorced his Dominican wife and left her with the two children. Did Carrie precipitate that? It also appears that she continued to live in Baltimore while her newest husband continued to serve in Puerto Rico. That didn’t last long though. By the time of the 1930 census, Carrie was back living with her parents and she reported as being divorced. Trying to live on one soldier’s salary isn’t fun when you are used to twice that amount.

About 1939 – (I am being generous here with the estimated date) – married Thomas Frost (1881 – 1963), a manual laborer who was himself a serial groom. He managed three previous marriages, spacing them about 10 years apart. Thomas had two children from his 1907 marriage to Marie Amelia Miller. After a divorce, Thomas married Rose Marylee Herold in In May, 1917. I don’t know if Rose died or divorced him but Thomas married Anna E. Brown (after her own divorce) in about 1925. I see no evidence of a divorce so I will be generous and assume that it was Anna’s 1938 death that allowed our old friend, Carrie Frohn, to slip into a comfortable pension-earning marriage. Carrie & Thomas were married by the time of the April 1940 census. Despite the series of modest homes in the Clifton Park area of Baltimore, Carrie (now Frost) hosted all the family funerals for her parents and siblings. Interestingly, I note that Carrie was living about a block away from Thomas before they married. Maybe they both hung out at the neighborhood bar or they met while walking their dogs. Who know? It’s of interest though.

10 August 1963 – Carrie’s most recent meal ticket passed away and she was on the hunt once again. After 24 years of somewhat normal marital existence, Carrie was looking for husband #5 (and maybe lining up #6 too) and she would have had a four month head start over Great-aunt Emma. Emma was obviously quicker, more beautiful (due to excellent familial genes) and a better catch as about a year after Joe Griffith died, Emma married Manuel on 26 November 1964.

12 June 1973 – that was the fateful day that Manuel Fuentealba married Carrie Emma Frohn Lanahan Hiller Gelrud Frost, a shameless hussy. What could have happened? Why did Emma and Manuel divorce?

10 April 1971 – Emma’s son’s obituary mentioned his mother last name as Fuentealba so Emma and Manuel were likely still married then. Sometime between this date and June 1973, they divorced. I note that when Manuel’s first wife died in 1961, he was living in a modest Baltimore rowhouse at 2849 Chesterfield Avenue, facing Herring Run Park. He still owned the house when he married Emma. A block down the alley, at 2734 Pelham Avenue, was the home of the recently widowed Carrie. I am guessing that Great-aunt Emma had a new neighbor who may have been borrowing more than a cup of sugar.

Finally, I note that after Carrie and Manuel married in 1973, they continued to live in the Herring Park neighborhood. After Manuel died in 1980 at 88 years-old, I see that his 83 year-old widow finally moved out of a Baltimore rowhouse for the first time in her life (excluding the 18 months she was in prison). Somehow, with no children of her own to support her, with apparently never working herself, she took a bold step for an octogenarian and bought a lovely sprawling 3 bedroom, 2 ½ bath rancher on an acre of land out in the exclusive Baldwin neighborhood of Baltimore County. Impressive. She had hit the lottery.

Resources:
http://unknownmisandry.blogspot.com/2013/11/carrie-lanahan-first-fake-war-bride-to.html

Did I just stumble onto something useful? The McGovern Family

I was looking at the McGovern family tree this past week and trying to figure out if some of the people who I did not have death dates for were buried in New Cathedral Cemetery.  That cemetery has an on-line search function that sort of helps find relatives.  You have to search by the exact first and last name that they have in their database and their database seems to have quite a few errors too.  On Granddad Smith’s mother’s side of the family, there were many relatives buried in New Cathedral including Granddad’s grandparents, James McGovern and Catherine Dixon.

Now I have only been looking for James & Catherine’s descendants so I was excited to find two plots (K16 and E46) that seemed to contain the remains of several Driscolls, Clancys, Morrisons and Porters – all descendants.  Between those two plots, I knew of 13 people from the tree who are in residence.  James & Catherine’s oldest child was Anna McGovern who married Dennis Driscoll on 5/23/1871.  They had nine children, two boys who died unmarried and young, three other boys and four girls who married a Porter, Carroll, Morrison, and Burroughs.  The Morrison’s eldest daughter married a Clancy.

Judging from the individual grave numbers of the 13 people I knew, I figured that there were many more people resting there.  Who were they?

I sent off an e-mail to my good friends at New Cathedral and within a couple of days they replied with a list of everyone in those two plots along with their burial dates.  It turns out that not a single one of the other 12 people buried there were on my tree despite several more Driscolls, Clancys, Porters as well as a couple of Tierneys, an Ewing, a Leary and three Dixons.  Wait!, What?!?! Dixon?

So far, I have not figured out who Catherine Dixon’s parents were.  She was born in Ireland sometime around 1826 and emigrated to America sometime between then and when she married James in Philadelphia’s St. Michael’s Church on 1/1/1849.  But here, in a plot with four of Anna's children, I’m told that in side-by-side graves are Joseph Dixon (buried 7/15/1880) and Anna Dixon (buried 9/22/1890).  One the other side of the plot, there was also a Mary Dixon (buried 10/5/1878).  Could these be Catherine’s parents and sister?

I don’t know the answer yet but maybe if there are gravestone with birth dates and relationships, it may help.  I haven’t found anything in Ancestry.com or Maryland death indexes but I’ll keep working on it and visit the cemetery in December.

The rest of the people in those New Cathedral plots were:

K16 5 NANNIE I CARROLL 10/3/1916 (Anna & Dennis Driscoll’s 4^th child, married to James Carroll)

K16 6 JOSEPH DIXON 7/15/1880 (possibly our great-great-great-grandfather?)
K16 7 ANNA DIXON 9/22/1890 (possibly our great-great-great-grandmother?)
K16 8 JOSEPH S DRISCOLL 10/4/1910 (Anna & Dennis Driscoll’s 7^th child, unmarried)
K16 8 THOMAS CLANCY 11/8/1941 (possibly a son of Hazel’s or brother of James Clancy?)
K16 13 MARY G MORRISON 8/31/1923 (Anna & Dennis Driscoll’s 6^th child, married to Daniel Morrison)
K16 13 MARGARET P CLANCY 6/27/1931 (possibly a daughter of Hazel’s or sister of James Clancy?)
K16 13 HAZEL C CLANCY 10/29/1945 (Mary & Daniel Morrison’s eldest daughter married James Clancy)
K16 14 DANIEL L MORRISON 2/18/1935 (married to Mary G. Driscoll)
K16 14 HELEN J CLANCY 7/29/1939 (possibly a daughter of Hazel’s or sister of James Clancy?)
K16 15 MARY DIXON 10/5/1878 (possible sister to Catherine?)
K16 16 CATHERINE I PORTER 12/6/1910 (Anna & Dennis Driscoll’s 2^nd child, married to Robert Porter)

E46 1 MARY A EWING 3/18/1924 – who?

E46 1 TERESA BURROUGHS 8/4/1950 (Anna & Dennis Driscoll’s 8^th child, married Joseph Burroughs)
E46 2 JOHN T TIERNEY 3/18/1898 – who?
E46 3 PATRICK LEARY 9/12/1882 – who?
E46 4 HANNAH TIERNEY 1/14/1929 – who?
E46 5 DENNIS M DRISCOLL 2/27/1893 (Anna & Dennis Driscoll’s 3^rd child, unmarried)
E46 5 ANNE DRISCOLL 12/15/1933 (eldest child of James & Catherine McGovern)
E46 5 ETHEL DRISCOLL 3/5/1974 (married Leo Driscoll, Anna & Dennis Driscoll’s 9^th child)
E46 7 HAZEL M PORTER 1/12/1897 (I believe Myrtle’s twin died at 4 months old)
E46 7 MYRTLE E PORTER 12/11/1906 (Catherine & Robert Porter’s 1^st child, died at 10 years old)
E46 8 CATH DRISCOLL 11/3/1884  – who?
E46 8 DENNIS M DRISCOLL 8/25/1906 (son-in-law of James & Catherine McGovern)
E46 8 LEO J DRISCOLL 9/7/1938 (Anna & Dennis Driscoll’s 9^th child, married Ethel Marck)