Back Surgery in 1964

Donald is currently under the knife having a cervical discectomy and I am not capable of doing any real research while I wait for news, but I was thinking of these photos of my grandmother, so I thought I would share.

I don't know the details of the procedure, but my maternal grandmother, Marjorie Elizabeth Dean, had back surgery at Montreal General in 1964. The recovery was long, involving a lot of follow up, and my grandparents lived about a three hour drive from Montreal, so they rented an apartment "in town" for the duration. My mother doesn't remember how long her actual hospital stay was or why my grandfather brought a camera to the hospital one day, but I'll never be mad about documentation of life events like these.

The poor thing is wearing a full body cast, as she would for months.

Just casually enjoying a cigarette in her hospital bed!

Poor grandma. She had to hang like this for hours at a time!

My parents had not even met when my grandmother had this procedure but I did unfortunately visit her at this very hospital over Christmas sometime in the 80s. She was at the airport, on her way to visit us, when her rolling suitcase, which had a strap back then, not a handle, hit some ice, went airborne and knocked her down so hard that she broke her pelvis. Yikes!

Mum and I ended up flying to Montreal and spent that Christmas at our cousins' apartment in the city while they were in the mountains. Thankfully, although she was 80 or thereabouts, she did go on to make a full recovery then as well.

I'm still waiting for a call from Donald's surgeon, so I'm going to count my socks or something, since its quite cold here today, and our dog does not want to go for another walk.  Stay safe out there!

WikiTree, Transcriptions, Citations and Discoveries

 

Photo from the Digital Collection of the New York Public Library, cited below,

While my family did have to make adjustments during the Great Depression, most of my ancestors still had jobs. Some took reduced salaries, some delayed marriages, but none faced the hopelessness of an entire family out of work. Donald's family, as I realized this week, while luckier than many, still faced the fear and uncertainty of what appears to be years of joblessness.

I finally joined WikiTree recently and one of the things I picked up on pretty quickly is an emphasis on sourcing. Sourcing is part of the WikiTree Honor Code and every year for about six years now, WikiTree has held a 72-hour Source-a-Thon, where members volunteer to add sources to unsourced profiles for prizes and to improve WikiTree.

When I signed the WikiTree Honor Code last week, I promised myself that I would add citations as I add each new person to my tree, sourcing each fact in each profile before moving on to the next. And this is a good thing. I had been getting a bit ahead of myself and not following good protocols when I was finding new documentation. I had not been transcribing my documents as I found them.

This week I have been adding citations to WikiTree for Donald's maternal grandparents and transcribing all of their records, including census records for 1930 and 1940. My earlier focus was on family groups and ages, transcribing gave me a deeper look.

In 1930, Donald's maternal grandmother, Catherine Barry, was 16 and living at 266 1st Avenue in Manhattan, where she would live her entire life. Living there with Catherine were her parents, Edward and Mary and her maternal uncle, Thomas Fitzsimmons. Thomas was a widower - or possibly divorced -and had been living with the family since about 1917. Luckily, Edward and Thomas were both working; Edward as a stock man in a warehouse and Thomas as an electrotypist at a printers.

Over on East 15th Street in the Bannon household, things were more serious. Catherine's future husband William, then 19, was out of work, as was his father, Frank. Luckily, in addition to William and his parents, his household included his sister, Betty, and her husband of two years, Thomas Caslin who was working as a watch engraver. It's too bad that the unemployment schedules do not survive, so that we could get more detail.

For now, we wait ten years to get our next snapshot of these two families, although we do know that Catherine's father died in 1937. In the 1940 census, it's just Mary, Catherine and Thomas still living at 266 1st Avenue, but none of them are employed. Thomas is then 59 years old, so I don't believe he was retired, but I don't know. Thankfully, things are much brighter in the Bannon household, where William "Buster" and his father are both employed as steamfitters and had been working steadily since at least 1939.

1940 brought joy and sadness to these families. Mary passed away on September 5th, just weeks before Catherine's marriage to Buster on the 28th. He moved into the 1st Avenue apartment and spent the rest of his career working as a steam fitter, except for a stint in the Navy during WWII. I don't yet know what happened to Thomas, although he did register for the draft in 1942. He was unemployed then and originally gave his address as the 1st Avenue apartment, but it was crossed out and changed to an address on East 18th Street.

And just like that, I'm super invested in the 1950 US census! I don't have a whole lot to learn about my own ancestors in 1950, but so many questions about Donald's.

All because I took some time to transcribe these documents. No wonder I still feel excited when I find someone in the census!

The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Photography Collection, The New York Public Library. "Pike and Henry Streets, Manhattan." New York Public Library Digital Collections. Accessed December 6, 2021. https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47d9-4ef4-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99

1930 U.S. census, New York County, New York, population schedule, Assembly District 6, Enumeration District 0200, p. 22A, dwelling 219, family 205, Edward Barry family; digital image, Ancestry (https://www.ancestry.com: accessed 30 June 2021), National Archives, roll 1553, FHL microfilm 2341288.

1930 U.S. census, New York County, New York, population schedule, Assembly District 6, p. 13A, dwelling 46, family 187, Frank Bannon family; digital image, Ancestry (https://www.ancestry.com: accessed 30 June 2021), National Archives microfilm roll roll 1553, FHL microfilm 2341288.

1940 U.C. census, New York County, New York, population schedule, Assembly District 6, Enumeration District 31-467, p. 4A, dwelling 265, family 22, Edward Barry family; digital image, Ancestry (https://www.ancestry.com: accessed 19 Nov 2021), National Archives mircofilm roll T626.

1940 U.S. census, New York County, New York, population schedule, Assembly District 6, Enumeration District 31-464, p. 8A, dwelling 201, Frank Bannon family; digital image, Ancestry (https://www.ancestry.com: accessed 30 June 2021), National Archives microfilm roll m-t0627-02634.

Honor Roll Project - Bellmore, NY

As part of Heather Wilkinson Rojo's Honor Roll Project, I have transcribed this Roll of Honor in Bellmore, NY to make the names visible to search engines so that family researchers can find them.

This memorial park is located on Bedford Avenue just north of the Long Island Rail Road tracks.

Erected by the residents of Bellmore in honor of our boys who answered their country's call. In The War For Liberty 1917-1918.

George R. Adams

William Armstrong

Harold Baldwin

Walter Brockman

Clair S. Bartholomew

G. Anderson Bloomer

Frank R. Britton

Amos Baldwin

William Betz

Michael Betz

John Busch

Rudolph Busch

E. H. Bohnemann

Le Roy Dunn

Walter T. Dunn

Harry Green

Arthur Horn

George Howley

Dr. H.V. Holcomb

Frederick Hodgson

Walter Hardy

Harold Hardy

George Johnson

Peter Johnson

Paul Jaeger

Jacob Karp

Mande Karp

Alex Karp

Jacob Koch

Elmer Kress

Frederick Lutz

George Merrett

James M. O'Hearn

Kenneth Tillotson

Thomas Palermo

Arthur Southard

Frederick Schebs

Thure Sindburg

Percy Smith

William Smith

Herbert L. Von Mechow

Harold A. Von Mechow

Emil Wiedeman

No plaque here lists the names of those who served or died during World War II.

In Memory of the men from Bellmore who died during the Vietnam War.

James Kendrick

Joseph Piambino

Joseph Mancuso

Joseph Mandarino

Charles Meerholz

Richard Weidner

William Klenert

Michael Mannina

Greg Ellison

Charles Emery

William Wicks

John Coughlin's Will & Probate Record

 

After giving myself a month of Ancestry to examine some of the documentation there for ancestors on Donald's Barry lines, I followed a hint to the Surrogate's Court record of the John Coughlin of the Coughlin headstone series.

You may remember that verifying the information for John lead me to Irish Catholic parish records and the discovery of two potential siblings who appear to have stayed in Ireland.

John's first bequest gives some additional documentation of one of those siblings. When I was searching the parish records for the Coughlin family, there was a baptismal entry for a Patrick with same name parents as John and Ann. John has given us further evidence of this relationship.

"First, after my lawful debts are paid, I give and bequeath unto my brother Patrick Coughlin residing at County Galway, Ireland the sum of Five hundred Dollars."

Next, John gives us something new to search for, if this type of record from the Emigrant Savings Bank survives.

"Second - I give and bequeath to my nephew-John Barry my Gold Watch, but I direct the same by [sic] placed by my Executor hereinafter named in the Emigrant Savings Bank for safe keeping until he arrives at the age of 21 years, when the same shall be delivered to him"

John's third bequest gives us more information about the Coughlin headstone. The headstone says that it was erected by John's sisters Ann Tucker and Winifred Barry, so I had pictured a scenario where the sisters had pooled their money to erect the stone after John's death, but his will tells us what actually happened. 

"Third. - I direct that the sum of one thousand dollars be applied by my Executrices towards my funeral expenses & this item is also to cover the expense of a tombstone, Requiem Mass, and other Masses to be said for the repose of my soul after my death & I most earnestly request that my Executrices will obey my wishes in that respect"

One thousand dollars then would be worth about $28,000 today.

When I was researching John for the headstone series, I noted that I wasn't finding anything documenting a wife or children. From the lack of mention of any children in the will, I strongly suspect that he didn't have any, and now we have this new wrinkle.

"Fourth.-My wife Ann Coughlin having deserted me for the last six years without any cause on my part I ignore her in this my Will & leave her nothing, & it is my wish that  receive no part of my Estate"

Mysterious and sad. When my research focus returns to John, I will have to see what, if anything, I can discover about Ann and their marriage. I will also be following up on the mention of a Mary Coughlin as next of kin in the Surrogate's court portion of this record. It is possible that Mary is another sibling who joined John, Winifred and Ann and some of their nieces and nephews here in the states but that remains to be seen.

Stir Up Sunday

I grew up in the Episcopal Church, a member church of the Anglican Communion. In fact, until I was about six, my father was an Episcopal priest.

Today is the Sunday before Advent and the collect for the day in the Anglican Book of Common prayer begins something like "Stir up, O Lord, the wills of thy faithful people". Today is also the day that many Anglicans make their Christmas puddings, or, like our family did back when, their fruit cakes. Add these things together and you get Stir-Up Sunday.

Unfortunately, I have not continued this tradition, not being a fan of fruit cake, but I do have some photos of my and my mother stirring up the batter back in the late 70s.

Let the Christmas traditions begin!

Tombstone Tuesday - Barry/Bannon/Fitzsimmons at Calvary

Photographed by me in 2019.

Although I was able to resist renewing my Ancestry membership while I was researching the Coughlin headstone, I broke down about a week ago and have already connected to some interesting documentation. This plot, also at Calvary Cemetery in Queens, has been at the center of the most interesting so far.

After concluding the Coughlin headstone series, I went back to more traditional research on Donald's Barry lines, starting with his maternal grandparents, William Francis (Buster) Bannon and Catherine Winifred Barry and Catherine's parents, Edward Barry and Mary Fitzsimmons. While I was reviewing Ancestry hints, new and old, I saw that I had, years ago, accepted a hint from FindAGrave. I was confused, though, because the headstone photo I saw when I followed the link was not the same headstone that I photographed in the summer of 2019. I almost rejected the hint until I realized that the information on the headstone matched Donald's family, but was missing his grandfather's name.

Used with permission.

This was the original headstone for this plot, replaced after Buster's death in 1985 because his name would not fit. It rested on the back of the new headstone for many years, but when Donald visited in 2003, the old stone had disappeared.

After Donald told me the story, I sent a message to the contributor of the photo, thinking they would never remember it eleven years later, and ended up speaking with him on the phone. But he did remember, having found the stone in 2009 behind some planks of wood in the general vicinity of the plot and photographing it, not knowing any details of course, and putting it up on Find A Grave for the family to hopefully find one day. He was even kind enough to scan a map with the location of the headstone as he found it eleven years ago and email it to me last night.

Late this morning, Donald and I made our way to Calvary Cemetery to see what we could find. As we pretty much expected, we found that the headstone was now gone again, which was a bit of a let down, although I'm not really sure what we would have done with the stone had we found it. I'm sure it was supposed to have been taken by the monument company when the new stone was installed.

The best part for me is that we have this photo of the original headstone and can document the change. You just never know where a day of combing through Ancestry documents will take you.

Verifying What is Written in Stone - Summary & Resources

I've had a lot of fun with this project; trying to verify the information on this headstone from Donald's family. I have relearned some old lessons, like taking the time to understand a new-to-me record set before diving in, I've learned about new records and I have a nice list of things to learn and investigate. And additional documentation is needed for a lot of the information on the stone, so the project isn't really over, just my blog series.

I've loved looking through New York City census records for this time period; these time capsules are a great tool for imagining life in the past. Like the occupations captured on just one page; an embroidery designer and operator, a janitor, two coopers, two vaudeville actresses and a department store detective and a handful of servants. I think you could write a novel using just one page as a starting point.

I want to learn more about Winifred Coughlin; about her life in Ireland if at all possible and her early years in New York City, before she married William Barry. There were some fantastic lectures at the British Isles Family History Society of Greater Ottawa conference and I'm hopeful that they can help me add to our knowledge of the Coughlin family in County Galway.

I am also hopeful that learning more about William Barry will help us to discover his home parish in Ireland and open up another branch of Donald's family. I'll be looking for any documents related to his immigration and naturalization as well as records of the Emigrant Savings Bank, which I believe are on Ancestry. The New York Public Library also seems to have some images, but I'll have to look into that further. Investigating William Barry's Civil War service is sure to be another great learning experience. I plan to start with a webinar at Legacy Webinars and go from there.

In the spring I will be on an absolute mission to do two things in New York City that I've been talking about for a while; finally visit the Tenement Museum and spend a day in the Milstein Division of the New York Public Library. A presentation at the New York State Family History Conference by one of their librarians gave some great examples of how their holdings can help you get a picture of what the city was like at a particular time. This is what it is all about for me. And maybe we can get back to Castle Garden, now that we know so many of Donald's ancestors came through those same gates that my own ancestors did.

Like most of you, I would imagine, I have quite a wish list of books and website subscriptions that would greatly help in my research. A couple of months ago, I joined the The New York Genealogical and Biographical Society and can't wait to get my hands on the New York Family History Guide and Gazetteer and the New York City Municipal Archives guide.  But the NYG&B also has some great free resources.

Reading their guide to New York State census records saved me a lot of time searching for non-existent records. You can read it here to learn about the availability of each census, what areas may be missing in any particular year and what information was collected. It's really a must-read if you are researching in New York. At the end there is also a list of links to other articles that you may find useful; like Researching Irish Ancestors in NYS and Surprising Facts About Immigration to New York. NYG&B has a nice collection of webinars for members, they also have a YouTube channel with a few lectures than anyone can watch. This includes five hours of classes from the Fundamentals Day at the recent New York State Family History Conference. That is a must-watch if you haven't already.

In my ongoing research into Donald's family, I also want to learn more about Lutheran church records. Not only was Annie Miller Barry born into the Lutheran church, but I suspect that one of Donald's great-grandmothers, Emma Fredericks, and her ancestors were as well. For this I will need help from resources like the FamilySearch Wiki and a great book that I bought last year; How To Find Your Family in U.S. Church Records: A Genealogist's Guide by Sunny Jane Morton and Harold A. Henderson, CG.

Something I wrote about during this series was the National Library of Ireland website where you can find images from Irish Catholic parish registers. There is no index on their website and you won't get any hints as you may on Find My Past, but if you know your ancestor's home parish, you may be able to find them for free without the index or hints.

Facebook groups are a great way to access the "hive mind" when you are stuck on something. Back in 2013, Katherine R. Willson started a list of Facebook groups for genealogy. Her last update to the list was in January of this year, which you can find here. Since then, Cyndi Ingle of Cyndi's List has taken over and you can find that on her website, here, although as of the writing of this post it is still under construction.

Chronicling America is a free digitized newspaper resource from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Library of Congress. This is where I found the news article about William Barry's mourner who collapsed at the church before his funeral.

One last resource that I thought I would use more, especially for analyzing records in search of Annie Barry's year of birth, was Clooz. One of the drawbacks of this program is the data entry. It did get a bit ponderous and I admit that I lost patience for it, although that may have something to do with the fact that I desperately need new bifocals. Since concluding the series, I have gone back and entered the data for all of the records that I have for Annie, but I was not able to produce a report that would have been any help with this problem. I'll keep working with the software, though, and keep you posted when I've had a chance to watch more of their videos and use it more.

Of course, the most important thing to remember from all of this is that just because information has been "carved in stone," or even recorded in a parish register, doesn't make it correct!

The Honor Roll Project - South Ozone Park/Jamaica, NY

 As part of Heather Wilkinson Rojo's Honor Roll Project, I have transcribed this Roll of Honor at Aqueduct Racetrack in Queens County, NY to make the names visible to search engines so that family researchers can find them.

Donald and I stumbled on this roll of honor when we were at Aqueduct Racetrack back in the spring to get our vaccines.

The plaque says that this honor roll is in memory of departed comrades from the Robert F. Mangel Memorial Post 1781 of the American Legion. I was not able to find this post on the American Legion website, so I don't know how this roll of honor came to be at the racetrack, but I am very glad that we noticed it so that I could share these names.

Robert F. Mangel

William Eokes

Rudolph Gleisner

Benjamin Rasoh

Jacob Tishman

Arthur Mayberry

Frederick L. Kennedy

Andrew J. Goldsborough

William Tilt

Joseph S. Dwyer

Benjamin Russe

Frank Ortell

James Frances Griffin

Herman Loonan

John O'Connor

Patrick S. McDermott

Fred E. Sassen

Joseph G. Fields

Louis M. Walger

Joseph H. Pesoe

Samuel Schneider

John J. Farnam

Leo T. Lynott

Howard Storms

John F. Kennedy

Leroy DuBois

Joseph Weissman

Edward Canavan

John J. Reilly

Marcellus Martucci

Luke C. Garvey

Lester P. Gracie

Isadore Nekritz

Leo Gal

Jacob Price

Malcomb Hirsch

Max Meyer

Raymond J. Hays

Theodore J. Hoofnagle

Jas. D. Heatherington

(James D. Heatherington)

Joseph E. Keegan

William M. Brady

James Joseph Ledden

Louis A. Becker

Irving McLean

Frank A. Sullivan

Joseph Berkman

Jacques Taylor

Adolph Davidson

Philip M.P. McKim

John Hastings

Harry J. Wynn

George Murphy

Augustine L. Daly

Jesse Rosenfeld

Albert J. Smith

James Chieco

Clifford Cullen

James Quigley

John O' Day

John J. Bennett

Vincent A. Keough

William Waiss

Theodore I. Mittle

Henry M. Lyle

John A. McDougall

Edward Noonan

Charles Von Stade

Hugh McGinnis

Jacob Lazarus

Stanley O. Brown

Thomas J. Veldron

Charles Fink

Jack Seidelbaum

Morris Roder

James H. McGrath, Sr.

John F. DeBoe

James J. Lynam

Joseph King

James J. Kelly

John F.R. Egan

Lawrence S. Fields

William Duffy

Edgar A. Tompkins

Charles Herman

Edward Neloy

Vincent J. Carroll

Seymour Kossover

John J, Mullen

Joseph M. Ryan

Henry Sassone

Thomas J. Rongos

James E. Kenney

Robert Ettinger

Harry Harris

Walter H. Gillen

Raymond F. Kehoe

Leo J. Kelly

Eugene Hines

Pierce Butler

Patrick J. Devine

William Cohn

Michael M. Goldstein

Ward A. Herrington

John Shields

Joseph M. Murphy

William J. O'Reilly

Peter Mellet

Frank A. Buchheit

Charles Forte

William Bartow

Stephen F. Ryan

James T. Murphy

Martin Zolinsky

Rudolph Bier

William F. O'Brien

Dominick Pellettire

Joseph M. Murphy

Arthur Henretty

Louis Calabrese

Harry M. Stevens, II

Harold J. Richards

Bernard Grossberg

Henry W. Meagher

Frank M. Dogherty

Laine Coleman

Charles J. Serafini

John B. Pawlowski

William C. McMannis

Theodore Kirwin

William H. Safarik

T. Loni Burch

Ernest A. Hennington

Charles H. Hewitt

William Lynch

James V. Long

Charles DeMartin

Charles W. Escher

Frank Fernino

Joseph Pupino

William E. Fey, Jr.

Clifford D. McCartney

Charles J. Ruff

Edward M. McMillen

Roy L. Davidson

Frank J. Smith

William E. White

Harold Kirsch

George Caras

Thomas Caruso

Verifying What is Written in Stone Part XI - Richard Barry

 

Here we are at the eleventh and final part in this series where I have been verifying the information on the Coughlin headstone at Calvary Cemetery in Queens, NY.

The final death recorded on this headstone was Richard Barry, the second youngest son of William Barry and Winifred Coughlin. The headstone only has Richard's years of birth and death, but I was able to find documentation and/or clues to both full dates.

An entry in the NYC municipal births index for a male Barry child, with parents of the right names and a date of birth of January 14, 1880 matched not only the year on the headstone, but also Richard's entry in the Baptism register at Immaculate Conception church in Manhattan where he was baptized on February 15, 1880. Although my genealogy budget will not allow for the purchase of all of the certificates for Donald's collateral ancestors, I do plan to get this one. I am curious to see what the original says. Richard's year of birth on the marriage index is also a match to the headstone.

I have found a few clues for documents that may verify Richard's date of death, but I'll have to keep digging for something better. For now, it appears that he died on 15 July 1969 and he was living at what was then a bungalow in the Bay Park neighborhood of East Rockaway on Long Island.

While Richard's is the last burial recorded on this stone, we know of at least one more. Anna Barry, Annie and Richard's only child, is also buried in this plot. Anna or Cousin Anne as I have always heard her called, never married and lived in that home in East Rockaway until her death and then left it to the family member who helped her through her last days, Donald's mother.

Unfortunately, the original structure was severely damaged after taking about four feet of water during Superstorm Sandy. Luckily, the family was able to rebuild and a new home, raised about four feet, sits on the site today.

Although this is my last post in this series I do plan another post or two to share some of the resources that I found useful in this research and what I plan to do next in researching Donald's family.

Verifying What is Written in Stone - Annie Barry - Updated

 

This is part ten of verifying the information on the Coughlin headstone in Calvary Cemetery. William Barry and Winifred Coughlin were my partner Donald's 2nd-great-grandparents.

This is a rewrite of a post that I published yesterday and took down a couple of hours ago because I missed something glaringly obvious in my analysis and decided it was best to start from scratch.

Annie Barry, as her name appears on the headstone, was the wife of Donald's great grand uncle, Richard Barry. Annie was born in New York City to German immigrants August Miller (Muller, Müller, Mueller) and Elizabeth Fleck (Flecke, Fleek, Flege, Fleger,) sometime before 1880. This does not match the date on the headstone for which there is other documentation, but since Annie appears on the 1880 census, she could not have been born on December 10, 1882. This is the obvious bit that I missed for over a week, probably because I was already leaning toward an earlier birth year and because the 1880 census was not among the first documents that I found, but still, wow!

So far, I have not discovered a civil birth record for Annie and it does not appear that a record of her baptism in the Lutheran church is available online. Her first appearance in found records is that 1880 census where her age is listed as 6. The next record I have found is the 1900 census which says she was born in December of 1876 and she is 24. The math here is actually incorrect, she would have been 23 on her last birthday, which is the information requested. In the 1905 New York State census, Annie is 28. These three census records are, so far, the only documents that I have found for Annie between her birth and her marriage.

The next time that Annie is found in available records is when she marries Richard in 1906. The entry in Catholic church marriage records does not capture age or date of birth, but the civil record does and that is the first time Annie is recorded as being much younger, her age is listed as 23 and her birth year (possibly implied) is 1883. Three years later, Annie converts to Catholicism and appears in a baptismal register where her date of birth is recorded as December 10, 1882. Annie appears in six more available United States and New York State censuses before her death in 1956, and they all line up with her "new" date of birth.

Before the implication of the 1880 census dawned on me this morning, I compared all of the birth, marriage and death records for Annie's family members to the census records and found that the birth information in those census records was very consistent with the vital records.

So, why this discrepancy? Why did Annie live her entire married life as a "younger" person? I doubt very much that it was simply vanity. I don't think that nine siblings and two parents carry this secret for you for that. I think that Annie and her family were trying to keep her marriageable. In a city packed with young, single women and with at least one younger sister marrying before her, Annie needed to present herself as younger than her actual age. Even today, many people tie a woman's entire worth to her ability to marry and have a family. There must have been even more pressure in the early 1900s, so if the world wants you to be young, you give the world what it wants.

As for verifying Annie's date of death as recorded on the headstone, I haven't been able to do so with online research at this point. It looks like Ancestry may have something, but that will have to wait until I rotate my memberships again and I will update you when I do.

Verifying What is Written in Stone Part IX - Winifred Coughlin

Part nine of this series to verify the information on this headstone brings us to Winifred Coughlin Barry, Donald's 2nd great-grandmother.

In other posts, I have demonstrated the relationships between Winifred and her children, husband and siblings, but there was one piece of evidence of the relationship between Winifred and Ann that I left out, something I found before I started this series. Winifred appears in four censuses after the death of her husband; two state and two Federal. In 1910 she is living with her son Richard, who is single. After his marriage, in the 1915 NY census, Winifred is living with her widowed sister, Ann Tucker. The only things left to verify are her date of death and her age.

There is an entry for Winifred Barry in the death index for New York City and the date of death matches the headstone; September 23, 1928. I'm still looking for a death notice or obituary but I do have another lead or clue. Winifred had a will. Because she died less than 100 years ago, the images are not online and I will have to investigate further to see if family can obtain a copy now, but the index card in the collection on FamilySearch does have a matching date of death.

This 100-year rule may also present an issue in obtaining a burial record, but first I will have to figure out where to go for that. Although Immaculate Conception, the church where Winifred and William were married, where they baptized some of their children and where William's funeral was held is in Manhattan, part of the Archdiocese of New York, and has baptism and marriage records on Find My Past, burial records are still held by each church. At the time of the 1925 New York State census, Winifred and her son Richard and his family lived in the outer borough of Queens. Catholic churches in Queens belong to the Archdiocese of Brooklyn and are not part of any current Find My Past projects. I learned that this weekend watching Jen Baldwin's session at the New York Family History Conference and was a little crushed, I must admit, since a big branch of Donald's paternal side settled in the Corona neighborhood of Queens.

What about Winifred's age, can I verify that she was 91 when she died? The index entry for her death certificate doesn't provide the name of an informant, but I do know that this person did not provide Winifred's mother's name and did not provide her father's name correctly, calling their knowledge of Winifred's early life into question.

Some other sources we could use to verify Winifred's birth and therefore her age, are either unavailable or will take more time to uncover. The baptismal records from Winifred's home parish in Ireland are incomplete and the baptismal entries from March 1836 to May 1840 are lost. If Winifred was 91 at the time of her death, her baptism would most likely have fallen in that time period.

So far, I have not found Winifred on passenger lists or in the 1870 census, although I believe she came to America in the late 1860s.

• In 1880, her age is recorded as 37 (1843)
• In 1900, she is recorded as being born February of 1837
• In 1905, her age is recorded as 66 (1838)
• In 1910, her age is recorded as 73 (1837)
• In 1915, her age is recorded as 78 (1837)
• In 1920, her age is recorded as 83 (1837)
• In 1925, her age is recorded as 88 (1837)

It certainly appears that Winifred believed she was born in 1837 and that does match the gap in the baptismal registers of her home parish in Ireland. I feel pretty comfortable that Winifred was born in 1837 and was therefore 91 when she died, but unless I can uncover something further about her birth when I do more research in Irish records, we won't ever know "for sure."

Verifying What is Written in Stone Part VIII - Ann Coughlin

 

This is part eight of verifying the information on this headstone and brings us to Ann Tucker, née Coughlin.

Ann was the younger sister of Winifred Coughlin, Donald's 2nd great-grandmother. The stone provides us with her dates of birth and death and elsewhere on the it also says that she was the sister of John Coughlin and the beloved wife of John Tucker.

Ann/Annie/Anna was baptized in the parish of Clontuskert, County Galway, Ireland. I posted about finding those records here. Ann was baptized on June 6, 1842 at four days old according to the original register and the transcription that was done later by a parish priest, which matches the information on the headstone. The parental match also tells us that Ann had the same parents as John, although we don't actually have proof of her relationship with Winifred through the registers, since the entries surrounding Winifred's purported date of birth are missing.

Ann's relationship to her husband is still unverified, but I will keep searching civil and religious records. A 1900 census entry where Ann Tucker and John Tucker are living with a niece with the last name of Coughlin does give me some documentation of marriage and a clue, saying they have been married for 20 years.

An entry in the death index for New York City matches the date of death on the stone, May 7th, 1916. As Ann was predeceased by her husband, I am guessing that Winifred was the informant on her death certificate. Whoever it was provided the names of Ann's parents, and that is also a match to her baptismal record and to her siblings' records. The indexed entry does not provide any details of Ann's marital status or give us a spouse's name.

Although I have not yet found an obituary or death notice for Ann, I did find this interesting item in a paper seven months after her death.

The date and the names of related beneficiaries make it clear that this is our Ann Coughlin. The amount of Ann's estate surprised me, to say the least. According to an inflation calculator, the estate would be worth over $600, 000 today and she left Winifred the equivalent of $90,000! There must be more to uncover there.

For now, though, I feel that the information on this headstone for Ann/Annie/Anna Coughlin is likely correct, but there is still so much to discover!

Verifying What is Written in Stone VII - John Barry

 

This is part seven of verifying the information on this headstone from Donald's family. The next death chronologically is John Barry.

John Barry, although not stated on the stone, was the son of William and Winifred, their eldest child together, born a year after their marriage. Although John lived to adulthood and had possibly been married (his death index entry says he was a widower but I have not yet verified a marriage), his death in 1914 means that poor Winifred buried three of her five children before she died in 1928.

Find My Past has a baptismal record for a John William Barry with a birth date that matches the stone exactly and FamilySearch has a death index entry for a John James Barry with a death date that matches the stone exactly. Both of these documents include the names of John's parents, and John William is the name the enumerator recorded in the 1880 US Census, but importantly, I don't yet know who the informant was for John's death certificate. In any case, I'm mostly comfortable with those documents being a match to this John Barry.

Of course, things may change with further research, but I believe that in this case, the information on the stone for John Barry is correct.

The New York State Family History Conference at the New York Genealogical and Biographical Society is over and Donald's surgery was postponed until December, so I should be able to post regularly again. This week I'm also hoping to get my Feedly set up again and read the latest issue of The Record from the NYG&B.

Verifying What is Written in Stone Part VI - John Tucker

This is part six of verifying the information on the Coughlin headstone at Calvary Cemetery in Queens, NY.

John Tucker was the husband of Ann Coughlin whose sister, Winifred, was Donald's 2nd great-grandmother. John's marriage to Ann is really the only information to verify, not even his dates of birth or death or his age, are included on the headstone. Even John's burial in this plot can only be confirmed with expensive interment records.

So far, the only proof I have found of Ann and John's marriage is a 1900 census record. I'm as certain as I can be that I have the right Tuckers because the address matches other records, like John's death record, and there is a niece with the last name of Coughlin living with them. The enumerator recorded that John and Ann had been married 20 years, but so far that hasn't helped me find any further records of their marriage; nothing in the newspapers I have searched so far, nothing in civil records and nothing in church records. I'm sure that as more church records come online from the Archdiocese of New York, I will eventually be able to find a marriage record. 

This is all I've discovered about John so far. His death record does state that he was a plumber and that he had lived in the United States and New York City for about 50 years at the time of his death in 1907. But, as always, my search will continue.

My posting may be a bit sporadic over the next week, Donald is having disc surgery today and I'm trying to watch as many sessions from the New York State Family History Conference as possible before access ends on October 18.