HAPPY FATHERS DAY PART ONE

 

My dad, Thomas Dowd, was born in July 1918.   He was the first child of Thomas Dowd and Gertrude O’Rourke.  My grandfather was a railroad engineer and my grandmother was a housekeeper, as 99% of the women of that time.

In 1920 another child, Richard Regis, was born.  My grandmother said that her husband drank too much alcohol and she had to meet him at the gate to get his paycheck or he would have spent the money at one of the local bars.  Finances were very tight for the new family. 

Tragedy struck one day in October, my grandmother had reported, my grandfather was intoxicated and fell down a flight of steps and then went to bed.   He was dead by the next morning, October 16 1921.   The death certificate listed a cerebral hemorrhage as the cause of death.

I think my dad always was angry about his father.  He said he spent his life living first with his O’Rourke grandparents and then with a step family after Gertrude remarried in 1928. 

Thomas talked about the poverty and everyone had to survive on their own because there was no assistance for widows.  She worked to bring in money as a winder at Westinghouse Electric in East Pittsburgh PA, and her parents took care of the children.  

One of his activities was to pick up the coal that had fallen from the freight trains that rolled by across the street from his grandparents home.   I suppose every bit of coal that he and his brother gleaned helped the family.  He spoke of eating soupy potatoes and how he hated apple butter because it was all they had to put on their bread.

His grandfather, Patrick O’Rourke,  worked as a street sweeper for the Borough, he had lost his job in the Homestead Steel Mill after the HOMESTEAD STRIKE in about 1892.  From what everyone said at the time the men who struck were blackballed from working in any steel mill again.

In 1928 Gertrude married again, it was the only option at the time and a lot of women married to have someone to support them and the new wife would take care of the children from any previous marriage.   My dad hated the situation, he and his step father never got along.  Thomas felt he was too strict and treated the step children different because HE was supporting them.  Her second husband, Peter Paul Graham died in 1938.   After that my dad had to drop out of high school in the 11th grade to support the family.  I think he always regretted that he never had the opportunity to graduated from High School, he told me that he had wanted to be a surgeon.

In 1938 jobs were hard to come by because of the depression but he found a job at the Union Railroad with help from some friend of the family.  Initially the company did not want to hire him because of the legacy passed on from his father (I think he might have had a slight mishap with a train.)    A woman spoke up for him and said “You are hiring the son, not his father.”  He got the job and continued to work there for forty two years.

This is getting to be a long post, I will have to divide the tale into sections and continue it in installments.

SUMMER TO DO LIST

 

Thankfully, the tasks associated with selling our daughters house, packing and moving, are now over and done.   This will leave me with things I want to do related to Genealogy.

In an idea from  A PATIENT GENEALOGIST Devon Lee suggests using EVERNOTE to save your genealogy related emails.  This struck me as a great, better than great idea.    I have a lot of emails stuck in my inbox and did not know what to do with them.

I love Evernote, I use it only for Genealogy to write my thoughts as a research tool and also to store clickable  links from web sites, posts from my blog and notes from Sacramental Records that I have found.  I started with Evernote before I got my copy of MS Office 2010 and One Note is also an option but I am too lazy to move everything at this time. One Note also appears to be a good option for note keeping.

My favorite part is that is “portable”  I can check facts and my note when I am not at home.  So, with that lead up I will be copying and pasting emails this summer. 

I want to go to HUNTINGDON COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY, and BEDFORD COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY to search for my husbands ancestors of the Coleman and Saylor families.   I need to get into the Courthouse records.

I also need to find more about a unknown Sperl person whose marriage record I found at the Archives. 

Writing with regularity in my blog is now high on my agenda, since it was virtually neglected since the winter time.  I have now set these goals in writing for the world to see and I suppose I will have to act upon them, it gives me a good push to get going.

MEMORIAL DAY

 

 

Michael J O’Rourke, my dads cousin on his mother (Gertrude O’Rourke) side, killed in WWII.

Battery C 466th Parachute Infantry Battalion

466th HONOR ROLL

 

 

Richard B Dowd, my dads cousin on his father (Thomas Dowd) side,  killed in WWII.

Owen Mulroy, my dads uncle, killed in WWI.

Darius Anthony, my husbands 2x great grandfather, killed in Danville, Virginia, Civil War.

May they all rest in peace.

BACK TO NORMAL

 

Or somewhat I suppose.  The past few months have been filled with doing repairs, updates, painting and packing.  Nothing related to Genealogy or research.

The daughter has been moved and everything related to her house in upstate PA is finished.  The move is done and everything is in a  storage unit.   All that is left is to move into her purchased house and move the stuff out of storage.  

I guess we will repair, and paint at the new place but it involves a ten minute ride as opposed to a five hour ride.

I need to get back to my research and work of the family tree.  What I would like to find on my side are records on Ireland and Germany. This is proving to be difficult because of the lack of records. 

On my husbands family I am now going to be searching records from the Colonial, Revolutionary War and Civil War era. I am happy that Pennsylvania was part of the original thirteen colonies and hopefully find some answers.   This will involve research trips to a few Historical Societies and Courthouses.   I will have to make a list and see where this will take me.

EUREKA MOMENT

For the past five years I have been trying to figure out when did my grandmothers brother Dennis died.    I found his Baptism in the St. Thomas Baptism Register in the Archives of the Diocese of Pittsburgh.  He was born 28 October 1875 in East Pittsburgh PA.  My grandmother Gertrude always said “he drowned in the river”
While looking at copies I had in my possession I was reviewing the delayed birth certificate of my Uncle William and  grandmother Gertrude O’Rourke.  They are the only of the siblings that I knew. 
The answer was sort of sitting there all the time. 

At the time of my Uncle Bills birth, 6 May 1888 he was the tenth child born of Patrick O’Rourke and Ellen Mortel.  The older children I knew about were Anne, Dennis, James, Mary  and Thomas.  Who were the other three?   This means that Denis was alive as of 1888 and he would have been thirteen at the time.

By the time my grandmother was born there were six children living and three had died.  Can I assume Dennis was one of them?  There was another sister born 18 May 1890 who was also recorded in the Baptisms of St. Thomas RC Church, Braddock PA.   In my grandmothers birth/Baptism record  her name is recorded as Bridget Gertrude. 
In 1888 there were a total of ten children, including William but not including my grandmother and her sister born in 1890.  I can account for Dennis but who are the other two?  Who are the missing children, it seems there are some unaccounted for and I do not even know the correct number.

So, when did he die?  My theory was and still is that he died in August of 1891 because that was when Patrick bought the plots in Braddock Catholic Cemetery.   A person, especially a poor one, would not buy a cemetery plot if he did not need one.

The funeral records from the churches  foundation up until 1945 do not exist for St. Thomas, and the cemetery records for the same period are non existent also.   I need to recheck the cemetery to see if they have a list of who is buried in the plot.

UPDATE ON MY ACTIVITIES

 

After two weeks, and months before, of hard and intense work we had the house in tip top shape and listed. The house looks great and after five day we got a good offer. There is still a house inspection due and the closing is set for the end of May, I hope all goes well. 

The cats are still growling and hissing at times, but no blood has been drawn.  No fighting no biting and that is good.  We now have to start to pack and get ready for the move.

It makes me wonder how in the world our ancestors, a lot who seem to move all the time, did this with regularity.  I theorize they had much less stuff and it was a lot easier, plus a lot of them rented so they did not worry about selling a house and buying a new one.

Did they have realtors 100 years ago and how did one go about buying and selling a house at that time.  Where did they advertise?   I think I shall research this question and see what I can find.

Here’s hoping all goes smoothly.

HAPPY EASTER

I looked for an Easter Picture but my sisters Communion was the only one I could find with us together for a religious picture.  This picture must have been taken in May or June circa 1965.

I have not been posting lately since our daughter starts her new job tomorrow and we are getting her house ready for sale.  We have been painting, doing yard work and packing.