(Almost) Wordless Wednesday: Dear Uncle Pat

Benita (McGinnis) McCormick
          (1889 - 1984)

Benita McGinnis painted this watercolor rendering of her Irish uncle sometime during her visit with relatives in Ireland in 1913.

Unfortunately, we may never know more about "Dear Uncle Pat," as she titled the painting, except that he was 93 years old at the time.  That would make his birth year either 1919 or 1920.  The likely county would have been Roscommon, where most of the family originated.

Some possible family surnames include Gaffney, Healey, Kelly, McGinnis, and Quinn.

"Dear Uncle Pat"
Watercolor by Benita McGinnis, Ireland, 1913
From her scrapbook

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Copyright ©  2014  Linda Huesca Tully

Did you know Benita (McGinnis) McCormick, or are you a member of the McGinnis, Gaffney, Quinn, Kelly, Healey, or McCormick families? Share your memories and comments below.

Thankful Thursday: The End of the Breadcrumb Trail

Thomas Charles Gaffney (1874 - 1937)
Cora Alice (Terrill) Gaffney (1879 - 1951)
Agnes Evelyn (Gaffney) Johnson (1902 - 1977)
Ernest F.W. Johnson (1900 - 1958)

Last of a four part series

Agnes Evelyn Gaffney

Unlike her parents Thomas and Cora (Terrill) Gaffney, Agnes Evelyn (Gaffney) Johnson seems to have enjoyed a loving and stable marriage with her husband Ernest but remained childless as far as the records show.

I  cannot find anyone by that her name in her mother's family but suspect she was named after her father's sister, Agnes Gaffney. The photographs we saw yesterday of Agnes and her parents on cousin Benita McGinnis' engagement day suggest they were close enough to gather together for celebrations and special occasions.  Add to this that before 1940, Agnes and Ernest moved into a house on Mill Street in Conneaut, Ohio, just two doors down from her paternal aunt, Frances (Gaffney) Cherry, and we can conclude that she got along well with her Gaffney relatives. 

The 1950s brought sadness to Agnes' life as she began losing several members of her family.   Her mother Cora died in Monroe in 1951 at age 72, and several of the Gaffney aunts died in the years that followed.  Ernest Johnson died the day after Thanksgiving on November 28, 1958.  Agnes would have been 56 at the time, barely two years younger than her husband.

By then, many of the younger Gaffneys had already left Conneaut for bigger cities. With so many of them gone, it is no surprise that Agnes eventually left, too. Some of the Gaffney cousins had moved south to the warmer climes of Florida, and she might have wanted to move there to be near them in her old age.

The bread crumb trail of records is broken abruptly for nearly two decades between the time of Ernest's passing and Agnes' own death at age 75.  It would be nice to know what her life was like during that time.

The Social Security Death Index does give us a clue.  It indicates that she received her Social Security Number 1951 through the Railroad Board.  She had worked as an office clerk for a railroad company back in 1940 and most likely retired between the late 1950s or early 1960s before moving to Florida. 

Until this point (except for during her early childhood when she moved back and forth between several cities with her mother),  Agnes lived in Conneaut most of her life. The move to such a different and distant area for a small town girl was a major change for her, especially as a widow. If she had the affable Gaffney personality, though, she should have had no problems making new friends.

Agnes Evelyn (Gaffney) Johnson
- from the scrapbook of Benita (McGinnis)
McCormick, year unknown

The Social Security Death Index also notes that Agnes' last residence was in Fort Lauderdale, the same city in which she died on September 4, 1977.  

Agnes' body was returned to Conneaut, where she was buried next to her husband in Glenwood Cemetery.

People are not one-dimensional creatures, and everyone has a story.  Some people's stories are harder to find than others. My mother once said she hoped she would not be remembered as "just another name on a family tree, hanging precariously from some obscure branch" of the family tree.  I think most of us would agree.  All of us deserve to be remembered for more than just our names.

The story of Tommy Gaffney started out as a scant trail of breadcrumbs as I tried to learn what was behind this practical joker and happy-g0-lucky man so beloved by his family. The more crumbs I found, the more they seemed to follow a trail of the twists and turns that all of us experience in our lives.  They led us to discover new people and revealed aspects of his life we might never have expected or imagined.

As we reach the end of this trail of bread crumbs of the life of the colorful Tommy that led us to learn more about him and discover his wife and daughter, I wish I could meet them, if only to say how glad and grateful I am to have learned about them.  

There might be more waiting around the bend to discover about the Gaffney family, but other ancestors patiently await their turn.  For now, we shall say farewell to this wonderful family until we return to visit another day.

May the road rise up to meet you,

May the wind be always at your back.

May the sun shine warm upon your face,

And the rain fall soft upon your fields.

And, until we meet again,

May God hold you in the hollow of His hand.

                                                                          - Traditional Irish Blessing

In case you missed them:

Part One:     Mystery Monday:  More than Meets the Eye

Part Two:   What the Records Can and Can't Tell Us
Part Three:  Wishful Wednesday:  Happy and Not So Happy Endings

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Copyright ©  2013  Linda Huesca Tully

Are you a member of the Cherry, Gaffney, Johnson, McGinnis, or Terrill families? Share your memories and comments below.

Sibling Saturday: The Gaffney Brothers, Part One

Edward Gaffney  (1871 - 1871)
John Patrick "Jack" Gaffney (1866 - 1911)
Elizabeth (Kane) Gaffney (Btw.1874-78 - 1930-40)
Nancy (Gaffney) Zoldak (1902 - 1990)

John Patrick Gaffney

If you have been following this blog for the past several weeks, you have met the six Gaffney sisters of Conneaut, Ohio:  Janie, Maggie, Lyle, Di, Frank, and Agnes.  They were known for their Irish wit, humor, and stories.  They also were favorite subjects around our family table.

But they had brothers, too - three of them: John Patrick, Thomas Charles, and Edward.  And today we'll begin looking at them, starting with Edward and John.

Edward, born January 22, 1871, died the same year he was born.  He may have died either right after he was born or in the months afterward.  He is buried at Conneaut City Cemetery with his mother, Bridget (Quinn) Gaffney, the gravestone reading simply "Edward." 

John Patrick Gaffney, as the eldest son, inherited the Gaffney House (1) from his late father, John Francis Gaffney.   The Biographical History of Northeastern Ohio published  this biography about him in 1893:

John Gaffney, proprietor of the Conneaut House, Conneaut, Ohio, was born in Ashtabula county, this State, July 11, 1866, son of John F. and Bridget Gaffney. 

His parents came from the old country to America previous to their marriage.  The father was a traveling man for many years - traveling until the Conneaut House was built, after which he was its proprietor until the time of his death, February 28, 1892, at the age of sixty-six years.  He had been a resident of Conneaut since before the war.   

Mr. Gaffney was a devout Catholic, as is also his wife.  The names of their children are as follows:  Janie, Margaret, Elizabeth, Delia, John, Frankie, Agnes and Thomas.  All are at home and unmarried except Janie, who is the wife of Thomas E. McGinnis, a railroad engineer and a resident of Conneaut.  Mr. and Mrs. McGinnis have two children:  Benita and Eugene.  

Of John F. Gaffney's brothers and sisters we record that one brother, James, resides in Erie, Pennsylvania; that Elizabeth is the wife of Patrick Cozens, of Conneaut; that Patrick, another brother, is deceased; and that Mary is the wife of Peter McGordy, Chicago.  Mrs. Gaffney had a brother and sister who came to Conneaut, Terrence Quinn, who died here; and Mrs. Edward Tinney, still of this place.  She has two brothers, Thomas and John, farmers in Iowa. and one brother, Henry, in St. Louis. 

John Gaffney's first employment was that of yard clerk at the Nickel Plate, where he remained for two years.  After this he clerked in his uncle's store in Erie some time.  Then he went on the road as a traveling salesman, being in the employ of S. Peterson & Co., a wholesale grocery and flour house of Chicago, and continued on the road until after the death of his father, since which time he has conducted the hotel. 

The Conneaut House is situated on the west side of Mill street, south of the New York, Cincinnati & St. Louis Railroad, being conveniently located for railroad men, who are its chief patrons.  Mr. Gaffney, having spent some years on the road, is acquainted with the wants of the traveling public, and he knows how to cater them in a courteous and pleasing manner.  Indeed, he is eminently fitted for the position he occupies. 

He affiliates with the Democratic party, and is a member of the Catholic Church.  (1)

Sometime between 1893 and 1900, John Patrick Gaffney, also known as "Jack" Gaffney, left Conneaut for Chicago.  Whether or not he sold the family hotel, known variously as the "Gaffney House" and the "Conneaut House," we do not know.

The United States 1900 Census in Chicago, Illinois, shows him living with his sister, Mary Jane, her husband, Thomas McGinnis, and their four children at 215 Monroe Avenue, in the Hyde Park neighborhood of Chicago.  By now, he was employed as a clerk for the Chicago City Hall and was known for his precision and his "most legible hand." (2)

How Jack met Elizabeth Kane, a young schoolteacher from Cleveland, Ohio, I do not know, but I wonder whether his sisters had anything to do with it.  Agnes and Maggie Gaffney lived in Cleveland at the turn of the century, where they taught elementary school.  He might have met Elizabeth during his visits with his sisters there.

John Patrick Gaffney and daughter Nancy.
Chicago, Illinois, about 1903.

Jack and Elizabeth were married on September 9, 1902, in Chicago.  Their only daughter, Nancy, was born three years later, on November 2, 1905.   By 1910, they were renting a nice three bedroom, three story brick flat at at 747 East 65th Street, in Chicago's seventh ward.   The young family seemed to enjoy a blissful life, and Jack must have felt blessed to have a beautiful young wife, a bright, cherubic daughter, and a good civil service job.

Sadly, the one thing Jack was not blessed with was good health.  For several years he was afflicted with heart disease, a condition that plagued his father and his siblings.

His premature death at age 43 on March 4, 1911, was reported the next day in the Chicago Daily Tribune:

JOHN B. GAFFNEY, for many years a clerk in the employ of the city, died at his residence, 747 East Sixty-fifth Street, of heart disease yesterday.  Gaffney was a clerk in the city collector's office for over eight years.  He is survived by the widow and one daughter, 5 years old.

Elizabeth (Kane) Gaffney

Elizabeth and little Nancy buried Jack at Mount Olivet Catholic Cemetery in Chicago and moved to Cleveland, where they presumably could live near their extended family.  Elizabeth, who had not worked since she married Jack, resumed her previous job as a school teacher so she could support herself and her daughter. 

Nancy went on to become a teacher like her mother, graduating at age 21 from Ohio State University in 1927.  The two, who were very close, lived together and taught at various Cleveland public schools.  It is easy to imagine them comparing notes over dinner every evening, as they shared the stories of their days as teachers in the Cleveland public schools. 

The last time we find any historic mention of Elizabeth Gaffney is in the 1930 Census.  Either she remarried, or perhaps she died sometime during the next decade, because Nancy surfaces as a lodger with a family on Taylor Street, without her mother.  

And whatever happened to Nancy?  Well, she did live happily ever after, but her story will have to wait for another day.

Notes:

(1)  The Gaffney House was also referred to as the Conneaut House or the Conneaut Hotel.

(2)  Transcribed from Biographical History of Northeastern Ohio; published in Chicago: Lewis Publ. Co., 1893.

(e)  Benita McCormick, personal scrapbook, San Mateo, California, about 1982.

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Copyright ©  2013  Linda Huesca Tully

Are you a member of the Gaffney, Kane, McGinnis, or Zoldak families? Share your memories and comments below.

Treasure Chest Thursday: The Walk Home

John Terrence Cherry  (1907 - 1956)

The third of four children born to James W. and Frances (Gaffney) Cherry, John Terrence Cherry seems to have been named after his maternal grandfather (John Gaffney) and maternal great-grandfather (Terrence Quinn).

John Terrence Cherry

He was born between 1906 and 1907 in Conneaut, Ohio, and from family accounts, was a handsome and charming man who inherited the creative gene. He became a graphic artist and watercolorist.  He also was an art professor at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, where he lived with his maiden aunts, Lyle, Delia, Agnes, and Margaret Gaffney. Toward the end of his life, he moved back home to Conneaut with his mother, Frances (Gaffney) Cherry, where he lived until his death in 1956 at age 49.

My mother, Joan (Schiavon) Huesca, remembered him with fondness.  He was a regular visitor to the Schiavon home in Chicago, Illinois, and their summer cottage at Big Blue Lake, Michigan.

From all accounts, everyone loved him, though he never married. My godmother, Angelina (Ciliberto) Schiavon, once told me a story of his wicked sense of humor. She and her husband, my Uncle Tom Schiavon, were visiting the Schiavon to the Cherry home in Conneaut.  John offered to paint a portrait of Angie and invited her to his studio in the attic.  

As he worked, he looked skeptically from Aunt Angie to the picture.  "You're too sweet to paint," he said.  "You need to look at little meaner!"  As Aunt Angie laughed, he gave her a cigarette (though she didn't smoke).  "Pretend you just shot someone and take a drag on that cigarette," he suggested.  My aunt did her best to oblige.

Although John didn't own a gun, he painted one into the picture.  Aunt Angie thought he must not have been satisfied with the result, because she never got to keep the painting. 

I have only seen two of John Cherry's watercolors, and neither is a portrait. One belonged to my second cousin and was a scene of the view from the Cherry home on Mill Street in Conneaut, done in blues and browns.

The Walk Home, Conneaut, Ohio
Watercolor, John Cherry, date unknown.

My mother gave me the other watercolor many years ago.  Shown above, it measures about 16" x 20" and depicts a procession of sorts by the Nickel Plate Railroad (NKP) workers trudging home through the snowy woods on a mid-winter's day.  Many of these workers probably rented rooms from John's maternal grandparents, John Francis and Bridget (Quinn) Gaffney, who built and ran the large Gaffney House, also on Mill Street.  

I imagine that this picture was special to John not only because of his grandparents' home but because his own father, James W. Cherry, was an NKP railroad engineer.  It is special to me because it soothes me with a lasting and treasured connection to a loving family, my family. It hangs in my living room, hinting of stories yet to be discovered and beckoning me to a place from my family's past I have never known but dream of visiting some day.  

For this, John Cherry, I will always be grateful to you.

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Copyright ©  2013  Linda Huesca Tully

Are you a member of the Cherry, Gaffney, McCormick, McGinnis, or Schiavon  families? Share your memories and comments below.

Wishful Wednesday: Frances (Gaffney) Cherry

Frances (Gaffney) Cherry  (1868 - 1953)


I wish I knew more about my great-grand aunt Frances (Gaffney) Cherry.

When I look at this picture of her, taken from a larger portrait with her five sisters, I see a dreamy young woman with faraway eyes and perfectly coiffed hair.  I can't tell whether she is happy or sad.  She looks as though she is wishing she were somewhere else, yet something else about her expression - maybe her lightly pursed lips - says she will keep that yearning - to herself.

Whether or this is what she was really thinking, the fact is that she was a small town girl who remained in Conneaut, Ohio all her life.

Frances A. (Gaffney) Cherry

Frances was born in that northeastern railroad town during the "dog days" of summer, when the heat and humidity were at their worst. Her mother, Bridget Quinn, must have had a difficult childbirth, because the family was so worried about her health that no one thought to record Frances' date of birth until some time much later.  For that reason, the family's best guess was that this middle child (the sixth of ten children) entered the world on September 15, 1868.

Most of the censuses show that Frances "kept house."  I think I remember my mother telling me that she was a good seamstress like her sisters.  The 1900 United States Census  indicates that she married James W. Cherry, a railroad engineer on the Nickel Plate line originally from Cumberland, West Virginia.  This would have been in about 1893, when she was 25 years old.  

While we don't know how Frances and Jim met, we could venture a guess that it might have been courtesy of her parents' boarding house.  John and Bridget (Quinn) Gaffney had built the Gaffney House, at 301 Mill Street in Conneaut, some years earlier.  Their principal boarders were the young men who worked the railroad and needed a place to stay.  Frances' older sister, Mary Jane, had met her husband, Thomas McGinnis, when he came to rent a room a few years earlier, so it would not seem surprising if Frances and Jim met this way, too.

Kathleen (left) and
James Cherry, Junior,
approx. ages 2 and 7.
Portrait by Lou Naef
Studios, Conneaut.

The year after their marriage, Frances and Jim Cherry welcomed their first child, James, just before Thanksgiving.  Three more children followed:  Kathleen in 1897, John Terrence in 1907, and Thomas Charles in 1913.

James Jr. followed in his father's footsteps, becoming a railroad flagman.  He married Helen Crannell and moved to Florida. Kathleen married Herbert Nelson and moved to New Mexico.   John Cherry stayed fairly close to home, eventually moving to Cleveland to teach art at Case Western Reserve University.  Thomas, born with a form of tuberculosis that affected his lymph nodes, died in 1922 when he was only nine years old.

Not only did Frances live in the same town her entire life, but it appears that she may never moved from the street where she was born at all.  She started out at the family home on 301 Mill Street and seems to have moved to 397 Mill Street after her marriage to Jim.  Several of the census records from 1870 through 1940 show number changes on most of the Mill Street addresses, making it difficult to pinpoint the exact location of the two family homes. 

Home believed to be that of James and Frances Cherry,
Conneaut, Ohio.  From the scrapbook of their niece,
Benita (McGinnis) McCormick.

As far as I know, the only place she traveled outside of Conneaut wast was to visit some of her sisters (Maggie, Delia, Agnes, and Lyle), who shared a home in Cleveland, or to Big Blue Lake, Michigan, where my maternal grandparents, Alice (McGinnis) and Ralph Schiavon, had a beachside cottage.

Widowed in 1939, Frances lived for another 14 years, outliving all of her brothers and sisters.  It seems that it was only when she became too old and ill to care for herself that she finally left her beloved Mill Street home.  She didn't go far - only four blocks away - to the Hakola Rest Home on Main Street.  She died there at age 84 of congestive heart failure on April 13, 1953 and was buried in the Conneaut City Cemetery, a block further way, alongside her husband and family.

Other than her important roles as a wife and mother, Frances seems to have kept a low profile.  I have searched for the slightest mention of her in countless newspapers and records, without success.

The Gaffney family had nicknames for most of its members, and Frances was no exception.  Her nickname, "Frank," does not quite mesh with her genteel picture or my grand aunt Benita (McGinnis) McCormick's scrapbook description of her as "ladylike Frances."  Could she have been a tomboy when she was young?  Her dreamily mysterious face will never tell.  

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Copyright ©  2013  Linda Huesca Tully

Are you a member of the Cherry, Gaffney, McCormick, McGinnis, or Schiavon  families? Share your memories and comments below.

Workday Wednesday: Agnes Gaffney: Teacher and Model of Virtue

Agnes Catherine Gaffney (1872 - 1952)
Part Three of Three



Agnes Catherine Gaffney was one of four students in the graduating class of 1890 from Conneaut High School in 1890.  According to the 1940 United States Federal Census, she went on to complete three years of college, making her the highest educated member of her immediate family and the only one to have gone beyond high school.

Agnes Catherine Gaffney
 From a group photo with her sisters at their home
in Cleveland, Ohio.  It was likely taken in the
 mid-1930s.

She taught at various schools in Conneaut, Cleveland, and Ashtabula, including the Station Street School in Ashtabula and Collinwood High School in Cleveland.  

In those days as now, Agnes would have had to sign a contract upon her employment, agreeing to perform her duties faithfully and diligently. Her duties included not only teaching but also janitorial duties. She would have had to start the fire on winter mornings before her students arrived and sweep and scrub the floors and wipe down the desks and chalkboards at the end of the day.  

She also had to abide by a high standard of conduct in her personal and professional life. As a model of virtue to her pupils, she was expected to avoid anything that might give the slightest hint of scandal.  This meant that she could not be alone with a man unless he was her father or brother. Further, she could not marry during her teaching career.  She could not smoke, drink, or even dye her hair.  She was expected to be home by eight at night.  And home could not be just any place.  Her teachers' pay would have been meager, making it difficult to afford her own home.  If she did not reside with her own family or in a teacherage - a dwelling next to or part of a one room schoolhouse, she would have rented a room from a respected local family.  As a result, she lived in several places during her career, seemingly according to where the jobs were. 

These rules were not unusual in nineteenth and early twentieth century America.  In fact,  to see a typical teacher's contract and rules in 1905 for teachers in Ames, Iowa, another midwestern town, click here.

However, with so many regulations, it is understandable that many women did not teach for more than about five years.

Agnes, though, taught for most of her life and never married.  She retired sometime before 1940.  By then she was 67 and shared a home in Cleveland, Ohio, with her sisters Maggie, Di; and a nephew, John Cherry.  They occupied their days with reading, baking, and visiting friends and relatives; and they spent their summers with the extended family at the cottage of my maternal grandparents, Ralph and Alice (McGinnis) Schiavon at Big Blue Lake, Michigan.

As with several of her sisters, Agnes suffered from obesity and its consequences.  She developed arthritis in her later years and suffered further as she watched her close-knit family succumb to heart disease and various forms of cancer.  She, Maggie, and Di seem to have moved back to the family home at 397 Mill Street in Conneaut in the late 1940s, perhaps because of their failing health.  Frances (Gaffney) Cherry, who had been widowed some time before, still lived there, as did her son, John Cherry.  John Gaffney (another of the Gaffney siblings) had died before 1920, but his daughter, Nancy, was in her 40s by then and also lived in Conneaut.

Maggie, who had suffered from kidney and heart disease, died in 1949. The following year, Agnes was diagnosed with bladder cancer.  It must have seemed like her world was caving in when her sister Delia developed uterine cancer shortly afterward. Still, the sisters were as strong in spirit as they had been close their life long. Despite the gravity of their condition, they helped one another as best they could, together with their older sister Frances "Frank," who was suffering from heart failure.  According to my mother, Joan (Schiavon) Huesca, they never lost their sense of humor and love of life through it all.

In the spring of 1952, Agnes entered Conneaut's Brown Memorial Hospital.  When she died there on April 4, 1952, her nephew, John Cherry, noted that she was only two days away from her 80th birthday.  

Delia and Frances would follow her within the next 12 months.  



Also in this series about Agnes Gaffney:

• Part One:  Church Record Sunday:  Sacred Solos for High Voice
• Part Two:  Mystery Monday:  The Hotel LaRose

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Copyright ©  2013  Linda Huesca Tully

Are you a member of the Gaffney, Huesca, McCormick, McGinnis, or Schiavon  families? Share your memories and comments below.

Tuesday's Tip: Share Those Stories!

For as many stories as my relatives told about "the (Gaffney) Aunts" of Conneaut, Ohio, it seemed that I could find only a fraction of information about them in books and historic resources.

The Gaffney Sisters:  Clockwise, beginning from the back row, left:  Elizabeth,
Delia, Margaret, Agnes, and Mary Jane.  Taken in the back yard of the "Aunts'"
home on Rocky River Drive, Cleveland, Ohio, 1932.  

The information available to me about my great-grandmother, Mary Jane, was more plentiful, mostly because it came directly from her children and grandchildren and was repeated often.  But absent a few mentions in the federal censuses and scant other resources, I know little about the other sisters:  Margaret, Elizabeth, Frances, Delia, and Agnes Gaffney.

Maybe even sadder is that I have forgotten some of those stories I heard long ago.  I should have written them down sooner.

Stories are like languages.  You have to practice them over and over again to keep them strong and vibrant and alive.  If you don't share them, the stories fade away into the recesses of your memory, depriving others of their richness and legacy. The details fade with the years until no one remembers what happened or why or to whom.  

And eventually, like some unused language, they die out quietly.

Stories are especially important to remember people who may not have had children. They ensure that their memories will live on through their extended families, whether they may have been nieces and nephews or cousins who loved them and were loved by them.

Someone dear to me once said they saw no reason for keeping sentimental memorabilia because they had no children to whom they could give these things.  They could not imagine that anyone would care about them after they died.  For this reason, the person decided to spare anyone the trouble of disposing of their memories - letters, photographs, and other hallmarks of their life - by shredding all those things.

This was heartbreaking to hear.

To the contrary, I believe that with very few exceptions in this life, whether today or in the future, we all will matter to someone.

Admittedly, the rush of seeing how far back we can trace our family trees is a big motivator for this "genealogy thing" that we enjoy.  But isn't the greater reason for many of us to learn more about the people behind the names and the dates? Don't we want to know why they made the choices that formed their lives, and how those choices affected our own experiences and identities? Don't we want to know if they are like us, in some way?

For the most part, raw data cannot answer those questions. That is where the stories come in and are so important to help us understand our personal and even wider histories.

I have combed countless sources to learn more about my great-aunts, the Gaffney Sisters. In the coming days, you will learn more about some and less about others. If only they were here to tell their own stories or to chime in, "how right you were" or even "I wasn't that way at all."  Instead, all I can do is share what I do have about them from my perspective and hope it does them justice.

I remember my mother and my great-aunt telling me how full of fire and drive and passion these five women were.  All but one of them spinsters, they doted on their nieces and nephews with hugs and kisses and more than a few mouth-watering cakes and cookies. They were all very close and enjoyed nothing more than a good Irish story and a hearty laugh. One of them (I don't remember who) was "swapped out" from her infant basket for an Indian baby for a short while by an Indian mother playing a trick on my great-grandmother, Bridget (Quinn) Gaffney, who had turned around to hang her laundry on the clothesline. I even know (all too well) that the sisters had what the family called the "Gaffney legs" - wide calves and flat feet, likely due to their happily well-fed forms. These infamous legs would become the dreaded standard comparison for many a female Gaffney descendant.

Maybe I'm just being sentimental, but knowing these few things just doesn't seem like enough.

I wish I knew and remembered more about these delightful women than just a couple of paragraphs on a page.  I am grateful for this, as there are many more people about whom I know nothing beyond their name, sometimes a partial one at that.

It is hard to imagine that any of them ever wanted to be forgotten.  They meant something to someone in their day, and they mean something to me and surely to others now.  I owe who I am to them, in some unknown way.  How I wish they could have known that they mattered to people who had not even been born yet.

I cannot stress this enough.  There is a purpose for every life on this planet, whether or not it is apparent today.  Every person has a story, and every life deserves to be honored and remembered. Someone really will care and want  need to know the whos and hows and whys of our lives.

No matter how much or how little you may know about the people who were near and dear to you, don't waste another minute.  Keep those memories alive.  Write them down, in a letter, on a blog, or in a scrapbook. Record them digitally.   Recount them at the dinner table.  Tell them to your young captive audience while you're driving in the car.  And then tell them again. And again.

Share those stories!

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Copyright ©  2013  Linda Huesca Tully

How do you share your stories?  Leave your memories and comments below.

Sibling Saturday: The Gaffney Sisters of Conneaut, Ohio

Mary Jane (Gaffney) McGinnis

     (1858 - 1940)
Margaret "Maggie" Gaffney

     (1860 - 1949)

Elizabeth "Lyle" Gaffney

     (1862 - 1934)

Delia "Di" Gaffney
     (1864 - 1952)
Frances "Frank" (Gaffney) Cherry
     (1870 - 1953)
Agnes Gaffney
     (1872 - 1952)
Clara Gaffney
     (1877 - 1877) (died in infancy)

Scrapbook page shows (at left) a group photograph Cabinet Card of the
Gaffney sisters, taken by Lou Naef Studios, Conneaut, Ohio; center top,
photograph of  Thomas "Tommy" Gaffney; at right, Cabinet Card
photograph of John "Jack" Gaffney,  by Robinson & Roe Studios,
71 & 79 Clark Street, Chicago and New York.

In the scrapbook of her life, my great aunt, Benita "Detty" (McGinnis) McCormick, paid homage to her mother, Mary Jane McGinnis and Mary Jane's five sisters and two brothers Thomas and John. This week, we'll take a brief look at her mother's younger sisters, Elizabeth, Margaret, Frances, Delia, and Agnes Gaffney.  

Not included in these descriptions were two babies, Edward and Clara Gaffney, both of whom died in infancy.  According to my mother's recollections, they were always fondly included by their brothers and sisters in conversations about their family.


Aunt Detty begins her description, above, of her mother and "the aunts," as they were collectively known to the family:

Where is this world could a girl have found six such wonderful women to watch over and guide her as my mother (Bottom Left in photo) and her five delightful sisters - two dressmakers, one milliner, a school-teacher, one lady, one clown and all of these marvelous cooks!

Elizabeth Gaffney (Aunt Lyle)

          The milliner and woman 
          of the world.

Aunt Margaret

Maggie, the wise, the tactful, the wonderful friend!

  

  

Ladylike Frances -

           Aunt Frank Cherry

Aunt Delia

"Di" of cookie fame.  The practical joker of the town.

Agnes, the Lamb.  

With a beautiful soprano voice and a keen mind.  One of Ohio's leading teachers of Americanization and music in the Cleveland public schools.

Mary Jane McGinnis

Her straight eye kept my father's [illegible] in [illegible].

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Copyright ©  2013  Linda Huesca Tully

Are you a member of the Cherry, Gaffney, McCormick, or McGinnis families? Share your memories and comments below.

Thankful Thursday: A Daughter Remembers

Thomas Eugene McGinnis

     (1855 - 1927)

Mary Jane (Gaffney) McGinnis

     (1858 - 1940)

Benita Elizabeth (McGinnis) McCormick

     (1889 - 1984)

Benita (McGinnis) McCormick, or "Aunt Detty," as she was known to our family, kept a scrapbook of her life and memories.  She began it in the early 1970s and added to it from time to time over the years.  On this page, one of the earliest from her album, she attached a photograph of her parents, Thomas and Mary Jane (Gaffney) McGinnis.  They were known to all simply as Tom and Janie.

Scrapbook page from Benita (McGinnis) McCormick's album,
written by her at age 82 in 1972, San Mateo, California

Aunt Detty writes here of her father, Tom:

My father was one of the aforesaid young men working for the N.P.R.R. [Nickel Plate Railroad] in the early days of that road. The story was that as he passed the open dining room window of the Gaffney House to register for a room, he looked up, saw mother and fell madly in love.  When he registered my Aunt Margaret who was at the desk, observed, "You are carrying the biggest lunch pail I have ever seen in my life."

"It is?" laughed my father, "I guess it's true.  But I've just seen the girl I want to fill it for me - she's at the window at the back of the hour ironing!"

By the healthy look of the bridegroom in this picture, it would appear that somebody kept his lunchpail pretty well packed. Wouldn't you say?  Of course, in a family boasting four daughters, somebody was usually busy filling lunchpails for hunger men in the sunny old kitchen those days.

The only illness I can recall in my father's life was his last.  He was an unusually athletic, healthy man, with the most happy and genial disposition I have ever known and just about the most popular.  I loved him very much and often feel him near me.  A good father is a great blessing.

On the same page, she also remembers her mother, Janie:

My mother was a clever fashion designer, never using a pattern - simply held a paper up to her subject and cut to suit the figure before her. 

She made the dress she is wearing in this photo.  It was from satin and beautifully draped, as you may see.  Her hat was made by her sister Elizabeth (Aunt Lyle to us children), who was as clever with hats as my mother was with gowns. 

The parasol my mother is carrying was brown silk with a golden brown bone handle.  I recall admiring it.  Sometimes she would let me hold it.  I remember hazily that many years later I glimpsed it wrapped in tissue in an old trunk in our attic.  But it was then beginning to split, as taffeta will in time.

My mother was aged 26 when this picture was taken.  Which makes her birthday in 1858 (December 2).  She died in 1940, at the age of 82 years old (my present age in 1972).  
Some women become morose in old age, but my mother was alert, interested in people and events to the very last - As I write I keep saying, "Thank you, God, for having given us such wonderful parents!"

Aunt Detty notes that her parents' portrait was of "the newlyweds in Cl. O (Cleveland, Ohio), where they spent their honeymoon."

However, after comparing the above photo with the engagement portraits they had made before, Tom looks a bit older and considerably stockier than he appeared in his original photograph, no matter how well Janie may have packed his lunch pail.

Janie McGinnis (the former Mary Jane Gaffney) also appears a bit older here.  Was this taken in 1884 or sometime later, perhaps during a later trip to Cleveland?  Although the cabinet card style photograph shows that they were in Cleveland wearing their wedding clothes, I would love to know why and when they were there.  Did they return to Cleveland after honeymooning there, maybe for an anniversary or other special occasion?

What do you think?

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Copyright ©  2013  Linda Huesca Tully

Are you a member of the Gaffney, McGinnis, or McCormick, families? Share your memories and comments below.