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.

Mystery Monday: Hotel LaRose

Agnes Catherine Gaffney (1872 - 1952)
Jane (McCormick) Olson (1927 - 2011)
Part Two of Three

Hotel LaRose, Santa Rosa, Califormia.
Pencil drawing by Ruth Robertson.  Date unknown.

In yesterday's post, we looked at a book that belonged to my great-grand aunt, Agnes Catherine Gaffney. Agnes, blessed with a beautiful soprano voice, would have sung from this beautiful hymnal, Fischer's Album of Sacred Solos for High Voice, at Catholic Masses, in her hometown of Conneaut, Ohio.  

This century-old book has made its way down four generations since Agnes used it in the mid-1890s. It came to me recently from my second cousin "S.", who inherited it from her late mother, Jane (McCormick) Olson.

Inside was a long sheet of thin onion paper between the second and third pages, ostensibly protecting a 9" x 12" sheet of white paper with the pencil sketch shown above.  The drawing is not dated, and there is nothing on the reverse. It has two small pieces of scotch tape on the back bottom corners, as if it had been taped to a picture mat and framed.

The drawing depicts a three-story stone building, called the Hotel LaRose, flanked by two large evergreen trees and a tall palm tree in front.  There is no other writing except for the words "Restaurant & Lounge" on the front of the awning on the lower right hand corner.  

At first glance, I guessed it to be an early sketch by my late great-aunt, Benita (McGinnis) McCormick, a well-known local artist. I wondered whether it had some significance to her, or to Aunt Agnes.  But I also wanted to know:  what was it doing in her hymnal? 

Aunt Agnes' hymnal.

Then I put on my glasses - a must these days if I really want to see things as they are! - and looked at the sketch more closely. It turns out the sketch was not signed by Benita, but by Ruth Robertson, who as far as I know is not a relation. 

And there was another thing. Palm trees do not grow in Ohio. The weather is too cold for them. The Hotel LaRose had to be from somewhere else. But where?

I went online and searched for "Hotel LaRose."  The first result revealed a Hotel La Rose in Santa Rosa, California, at the heart of its historic Railroad Square.  When I looked at the hotel's website, I found a photograph that was nearly identical to Ruth Roberton's pencil drawing.

The website went on to note that this lovely hotel was built in 1907, a year after the Great San Francisco Earthquake.  It is listed as a historic hotel with the National Trust for Historic Preservation and was restored in 1985. 

An earlier photograph of the hotel, taken in the mid-20th century, shows that unlike the drawing, none of the windows had any awnings. This begs the question as to whether they were there in the early days or were added after the 1985 renovation.  The answer could help date the picture and even give us a clue about the artist herself.  Google searches did not reveal an artist named Ruth Robertson, much less anyone by that name who lived in Santa Rosa.

Jane Olson and her husband, Eldon "Ole," retired to Santa Rosa in the mid-1980s.  Did they obtain the sketch while living there, maybe from Ruth Robertson herself?  Given their Santa Rosa residence, this seems like the most plausible explanation.

My guess is that there was no connection between the drawing of the Hotel LaRose to Agnes' hymnal or even to Agnes herself, for that matter.  More likely, the large hymnal happened to be a safe place to store the drawing all these years.  

What meaning did it have for Jane?  She did not keep things frivolously unless they had some value or special significance.  Did she and Ole stay overnight at the Hotel LaRose?  Or was this a gift from a friend, a fellow retiree, or even Ruth Robertson?  

If you have any thoughts, let me know.  Otherwise, a trip across the Golden Gate Bridge to the north bay might be in order.  I think I know a good place to stay.


Also in this series about Agnes Gaffney:

• Church Record Sunday:  Sacred Solos for High Voice
• Workday Wednesday:  Agnes Gaffney:  Teacher and Model of Virtue

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Copyright ©  2013  Linda Huesca Tully

Are you a member of the Gaffney, McCormick, McGinnis, or Olson families? Did you know Ruth Robertson, or do you have stories about the Hotel LaRose? Share your memories and comments below.

Church Record Sunday: Sacred Solos for High Voice

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

Agnes Catherine Gaffney

Not long ago, my second cousin gave me a lovely songbook that had belonged to her late mother, Benita Jane (McCormick) Olson and before her, our mutual great grand aunt, Agnes Gaffney.

Titled Fischer's Album of Sacred Solos for High Voice, it evidently was given to Agnes by her older sister, Lyle (Elizabeth) Gaffney, in 1895. Agnes would have been 23 at the time.  Perhaps that is her approximate age in the photo at right, part of a larger group portrait taken with her five sisters, Janie, Lyle, Maggie, Di, and Frances. 

The book was published by J. Fischer & Bro., an American music publishing company established by brothers Joseph and Ignaz Fischer in 1864.  Originally based in Toledo, Ohio, the brothers moved the company to New York City eleven years later.  The company appears to have published mainly sacred and secular music for choral groups, with organ or piano accompaniment.

Aunt Agnes' hymnal of solos for high voice.

Agnes' book is quite large, measuring about 10" x 14".  Its 116 pages, beautifully edged in red, contain sacred music from some of the great composers, including Gounod, St. Saens, and Verdi.  It remains in good condition, though the corners have become dogeared and the cover has begun to fray.

Inside the book is a dedication to Agnes from her sister, Elizabeth, whose nickname was Lyle:

Agnes Katharine Gaffney

From Elizabeth

Fond du Lac, Wisc.

October 23, '95

The first page, inside, is dedicated to Agnes by her sister Lyle.

This page shows the publication date of 1894, in
New York and Toledo, Ohio, by J. Fischer & Bro.

Born in Conneaut, Ohio, on April 6, 1872, Agnes Catherine Gaffney was the youngest surviving child in the family of of ten Gaffney children. She was said to be "as sweet as the day was long," and her niece, Benita (McGinnis) McCormick, wrote that she had the "voice of an angel."  Her grand-niece (my mother), Joan (Schiavon) Huesca, also admired her beautiful singing voice, understandably so given that she could not carry a tune herself.

Vintage postcard of Saint Mary's Church and School,
Conneaut, Ohio

Singing in her church choir was one of the things Agnes would have been encouraged to do as an educator and influential member of her community.  I can picture her, primly dressed, opening her book during Sunday Mass at Saint Mary's Parish, which was right down the street from the Gaffney House. I can imagine her stepping forward for her solo, looking demurely down at her book and glancing up towards her family as she sang the Ave Maria in her soprano voice with all her heart.  Maybe her dulcet voice was partly the reason this hymn was a Gaffney/McGinnis family favorite.

Also in this series about Agnes Gaffney:  

• Part Two of Three:  Mystery Monday:  The Hotel LaRose
• Part Three of Three:  Workday Wednesday:  Agnes Gaffney, Teacher and Model of Virtue

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Copyright ©  2013  Linda Huesca Tully

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

Family Recipe Friday: Aunt Di's Millionaire Steak

Delia "Di" Gaffney
     (1864 - 1952)

Delia "Di" or "Deal" Gaffney.  This is part of 
a group portrait of the six Gaffney sisters.  
There seems to be an impish expression behind 
those innocent eyes, as if Di  had to stop whatever
 mischief she was up to to pose for this portrait.

Of the six Gaffney sisters of Conneaut, Ohio, Delia was the joker. There were several explanations for this.  

One story went that when Delia was a toddler, one of her sisters (no one would say who) was carrying her around in the field when she stumbled into a ditch and fell, dropping the baby. Delia's back was injured, causing her to walk with a limp all her life.

The other story was that she was deaf in one ear, a possible result of childhood scarlet fever.

Due to one or both of these incidents, Delia, variously nicknamed "Di" and "Deal," turned to humor as a way of deflecting attention from her physical challenges.   She loved playing practical jokes on her family and many of the townspeople of Conneaut.  She told colorful stories and had a wicked sense of humor that kept people wondering what she would be up to next.  

Di was born at home in Conneaut on June 23, 1864.  She used to say she was born "during the dog days of summer." She attended Conneaut High School as far as her freshman year.  For reasons unknown, she seems to be the only one of the sisters who never held a job outside home throughout her life.  One would think that as a single woman, she would have had to support herself.  She, did, however, contribute a significant amount to the household by cooking and cleaning while her sisters worked. She also looked after their mother, Bridget (Quinn) Gaffney, when Bridget became too old to care for herself.  

She followed the same pattern her sisters had, living first in Conneaut and then moving to Cleveland, where all the sisters bought a house on Rocky River Drive.

In October 1952, Di was diagnosed with uterine cancer.  It progressed rather quickly over the next month, and she entered Longview Hospital in Kingsville, Ohio, in mid-November.  She died there, two days after Thanksgiving.  She was 88 years old.

This cookbook, given to my great aunt Detty in
1921, made its way to my mother, Joan (Schiavon)
Huesca and then to me.  It is now in the possession
of my cousin, Suzanne, Benita's granddaughter.

Di left behind a small memento for us to remember her.  It was a cookbook published by a women's group from the Congregational Church of Conneaut.  Aptly called Congregational Church Recipes, the hardcover book, published in 1917, measured about 6" x 9" inches and contained about 100 pages.  The aged-gray cover is simple with black writing. The inside first page has two inscriptions, both dedicated simply:

       

August 25, 1917

Deal -

With love and kisses

From Mary. 

I would love to know who "Mary" was.  She might have been Di's eldest sister, Mary Jane Gaffney, or she could have been a friend.  

In 1921, Di gave the book to her niece, Benita "Detty" (McGinnis), as a wedding gift for her marriage to Phillip C. McCormick.  Her own dedication is as simple as the one made to her a mere four years earlier.  

To My dear

Detty

1921

The cookbook itself contains advertisements from local businesses and recipes compiled by the women's club of the church.  The recipes are simple and encourage thriftiness; some of the cakes are "eggless, sugarless, and butterless."  Delia herself handwrote some of her favorite recipes on the back pages of the book, including the one below for "Millionaire Steak." 

Wait - Millionaire Steak in a cookbook that encouraged thriftiness?  Maybe it is not so odd.  After all, as a Chicago millionaire once said to one of my ancestors, how do you think the rich get that way?

Millionaire Steak

1 ½ - 2 ½ lbs. sirloin steak, cut thick

1 cup carrots

1 cup celery

1 cup peas

1 can mushrooms

3 tbsp. butter

1 lg. tbsp. ketchup

3 tbsp. Worcestershire sauce

Cook carrots, celery, peas, mushrooms, butter, ketchup, and Worcestershire sauce together in a sauce pan for 20 minutes.  Pour vegetables and sauce over meat and bake in oven for ½ hour.  Serves 6.

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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.

Workday Wednesday: A Woman of Independent Means

Elizabeth "Lyle" Gaffney

     (1862 - 1934)

Elizabeth "Lyle" Gaffney

This picture of Elizabeth "Lyle" Gaffney is part of a group photograph of the six Gaffney sisters of Conneaut, Ohio. Born on May 16, 1862, Lyle was the second of the ten children of John and Bridget (Quinn) Gaffney.

She was the daughter of hard-w0rking Irish immigrants who risked everything to come to America some years before. They had overcome their share of obstacles to establish themselves on the Ohio frontier, own a home, start a business, and support a large family. The children in turn, grew up helping their parents with the daily chores of running a large boarding house.  

Like her sisters, Lyle learned to sew at the feet of her mother, Bridget.  Early in life, she discovered she had a talent for designing and making hats. Her designs were so popular in Conneaut that she opened her own millinery shop. This was quite an accomplishment for a spinster, as an unmarried woman was called in those days.

Most women married and had children during this time, and having a job or a career was typically not viewed as an appropriate thing for a woman to do.  There were, however, some exceptions.  

Millinery work was a respected field for women, and 19th century society placed no obstacles on it as a career.  The primary clients of a millinery shop were women, after all.   A milliner was expected to know the latest fashions; often many shop owners traveled to New York, Philadelphia, Boston, and even Europe to stay abreast of the newest styles, colors, and fabrics.

Milliners were in effect entrepreneurs, and they were constantly on the lookout for inventory that would keep their customers well dressed and happy.  Their merchandise consisted of not only fine hats and bonnets but also accessories, such as handbags, gloves, fabric, small gifts, and jewelry. Many shops even carried selections of clothing.  Lyle's dressmaking sisters, Mary Jane and Margaret Gaffney, may have even consigned their designs to her store.  With so many possibilities, it makes sense that the word "millinery" is derived from the Latin "mille," or one thousand.

As with many trades, milliners learned their craft by apprenticing.  When Lyle was about 18, she went to live with Hubert and Genevra Hotchkis at 98 Main Street in Conneaut Village, just across the river from her own family home.  Hubert, 44, was a drugstore clerk, while Genevra, 33, was a clerk and a milliner.  The 1880 United States Federal Census indicates that they had no children of their own, but it does show that they had a young male farmworker, a male boarder, and five other young female apprentices besides Lyle living with them at the time.  Like Lyle, the young women were listed as servants.

Two of the apprentices happened to be Lyle's maternal cousins, 20-year-old Annie Quinn and 17-year-old Mary Tinney. 

Lyle is listed on this census as Eliza, short of course for her given name, Elizabeth.

She seems to have done fairly well for herself, even moving out of the immediate area for t time.  There is an Elizabeth Gaffney, age 35,  listed in the 1900 Federal Census, living in the town of Westfield in New York State.  Westfield is about 60 miles northeast of Conneaut, so it is not too far out of the way to be implausible that this could be our Lyle.

The census goes on to note that Elizabeth Gaffney was born in Ohio and her parents are from Ireland.  She works as a milliner and is the head of a two-person household.  The other person living in the house is an 18-year-old woman named Jessie Maginnis, also from Ohio.  The only question mark is why Jessie is said to be Elizabeth's sister, as there were no Gaffney sisters by that name.

Knowing the extended family tree, we find that there is a possible explanation. Lyle's older sister, Mary Jane, married someone by the name of McGinnis - Thomas Eugene McGinnis, specifically. Thomas had a niece named Jessie McGinnis who was born in the same year as the Jessie Maginnis in the census and also was from Ohio.  If these two are who I believe them to be, then could Lyle have been apprenticing Jessie, her young niece-by-marriage?  Would it have been easier to refer to her as a sister when talking to the census taker than to explain the complicated relation?  I wonder.

It is hard to know how long Lyle lived in Westfield, as we do not have any information for the 20 year period between 1880 and 1900, census or otherwise.

Lyle eventually returned to Ohio, this time to Cleveland.  In 1910, at 45 years old, she and her cousin Mary Tinney rented rooms from William Hupertz, a tailor. Family lore says that she opened her own millinery shop sometime afterwards.  She became well known in the area for her elegant hats and counted a number of distinguished clients, among them Annie Sullivan (Helen Keller's teacher), who wore her hats; and the Henry Ford family, for whose children she designed baby bonnets. 

Elizabeth Gaffney, also known as Lyle, in center.
Is she surrounded by other milliners, or some of
her fun-loving customers?

Lyle moved to Chicago in the late 1920s, to help her sister, Mary Jane (Gaffney) McGinnis, who had been widowed in 1927.  Her spunk and sense of humor did wonders for my great-grandmother, who was quite distraught at the loss of her husband, Thomas.  During that period, Marshall Field Department Store hired Lyle as its chief milliner. 

In about 1930, my mother, Joan Schiavon, came to live with her maternal grandmother Mary Jane, during the Great Depression. Mary Jane and Lyle spoiled my mother, making her beautiful bonnets and dresses.  Together they even made her an elaborate ermine fur coat.  From family reports, the coat was unusual, to say the least, in the middle of the austere Depression.
  

Like many in the Gaffney family, Lyle suffered from heart disease. In failing health, she retired and returned to the family home in Cleveland, Ohio, with her sisters, Agnes and Delia. Her condition worsened, and she died on October 3, 1934, at the family home on 17813 Woodbury Avenue in Cleveland, ohio, of angina, or coronary heart disease.  

Lyle made a big impression on my mother, who was 6  years old when her great-aunt died.  She regarded Lyle as her favorite aunt and adored her such that she gave me my middle name, Elizabeth, after her.  Based on the love my mother had for this sweet lady, I'm glad she did.

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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.

Sibling Saturday: Margaret Ann Gaffney

Margaret Ann "Maggie" Gaffney

     (1860 - 1949)

Margaret Ann "Maggie" Gaffney

As I mentioned in my last post, I have been somewhat frustrated in my inability to uncover more about my great-grandmother's five sisters, the Gaffneys of Conneaut, Ohio.

Two things I do know about these loving and much beloved sisters is that they were high spirited and fiercely independent, something that few official records could reveal.

Take Margaret "Maggie" Gaffney.  Barely two years younger than her sister Mary Jane, Maggie decided to follow in her path and become a dressmaker. They and all the Gaffney girls had learned to sew at their mother's feet.  Bridget (Quinn) Gaffney, their mother, probably had learned in the same way from her own mother back in Ireland, as was the custom of the day.

Maggie was born April 15, 1960, in Conneaut, only three days after the start of the Civil War.  Her birth must have been a happy moment for her parents, who like most people were just learning the details of the Confederate attack on Fort Sumter and wondering what the coming months would bring.  We first meet her as a two-month-old infant in the 1860 Census.  It is mid-June and she is living with her parents and two year old sister Mary Jane.  It seems she was named for her maternal grandmother, Margaret (Kelly) Quinn and her maternal aunt, Ann (Quinn) Tinney, also Conneaut residents.

In the summer of 1880, Maggie and her sister Elizabeth "Lyle" were living away from home, presumably as young apprentices in the needle arts. Maggie was 20 years old.  She lived in the home of local merchant James Judson, his wife, Lucy, and their two young children.  She worked for them as a servant, but she was probably apprenticing as a dressmaker at this point, if not for the Judsons, for someone else.  The Judson home, at 134 State Street, was only nine blocks from the Gaffney House at 401 Mill Street in Conneaut.  Lyle, 18,  also was living a few blocks from home, apprenticing as a milliner.

Maggie never married.  She seems to have lived a fairly quiet life, devoted to her family, and she returned home when her apprenticeship concluded. Most of the other children, however, gradually left home. Two of them left to marry and start families, and the others moved to Cleveland, about 80 minutes away.

Maggie's father, John Gaffney, died in 1892 of dropsy of the heart (or heart failure as we know it today).  From then on, she was the sole breadwinner of the household, living at the Mill Street house with her mother Bridget and younger sister, Delia. 

Sometime after her mother's death of chronic bronchitis in 1914, Maggie and Delia moved to Cleveland, to live with their sisters Lyle and Agnes. Maggie moved back home to Conneaut just before she died jon February 26, 1949, just two months before her 89th birthday, of cardiac decompression and kidney disease.

Maggie's sweet face, with its expressive eyes and lips pursed into a quiet, confident smile, gives one the impression that she was a calm, understanding, and caring young lady.  She also has a slightly inquisitive look about her.  With these qualities, she must have been a good listener to whom people might have told many a story or asked for advice. 

Her niece, who was my great-aunt Benita (McGinnis) McCormick, seemed to think so.  She described her Aunt Maggie in her scrapbook as "the wise, the tactful, the wonderful friend!"

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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.

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.