Circle of Creativity VII

Inspired By A Portrait...

Actually most of the stories I tell start that way … this one is a little different …. As a collector of portraits, memorabilia, letters, postcards, pieces of the lives of those from my past …  (if you hang in there till the end, I guarantee this story is worth it...)

I’ve worked on one of my father's lines for over 15 years … I’ve been filling in the brothers and sisters of my great-great-grandmother’s own family. She was Hannah Clare (Moylan) Atkinson, 1835-1914. Hannah immigrated to California from Ennis, Co. Clare, Ireland about 1856.

I’ve documented 3 sisters of hers who also came to the USA, Bridget to Shasta County California, Mary to Pottawatomie County Kansas, and Margaret to San Francisco California. Another sister, Susan Moylan Reidy never emigrated, but her son,  Thomas Moylan Reidy/Reedy, emigrated a generation later to Lowell Massachusetts.

These women left their family in Ireland after the first years of the famine, by ship to the USA. I don’t know yet if they came solo, in pairs or as a group of 4. I don’t know why Mary stayed in the St. Louis/Kansas City area, but to know she married Patrick Hennessy there in 1858. Did she meet him on the ship, at the port where they landed or on the streets of St. Louis? I may never know … but she stayed in Kansas the remainder of her life. She and her Patrick had six children. Their family portraits were in the album of their Aunt Hannah in California, I have their portrait, and those of some of Mary’s grandchildren. That portrait helped me find a great-granddaughter of Mary’s, Rosemary Quigley McPhillips. Rosemary lives now in Maryland.

About 8 years ago, I was “found” by the granddaughter of Thomas Moylan Reidy, MaryLee Goguen. MaryLee found a family tree online and realized we were of the same family and we’ve been wonderful cousin researchers from the moment we spoke on the phone. Her collection of memorabilia included her great-aunt Hannah’s postcards and letters sent from San Francisco to Lowell, over 100 years ago. The addresses in the book crossed out and changing as Hannah moved around the city with her daughters.

The Meeting

Picture this, the train station in Boston, 4^th of July holiday, meeting your distant cousins. Not only visiting Boston for the 1^st time, but connecting with family 150 years after our ancestors left Ireland. We had a fabulous visit sitting there, watching the travelers coming and going …. We each had photographs to share, and Rosemary and I had some of the same portraits, different poses of Mary Moylan Hennessy her great-grandmother.

Mary Lee Goguen - Rosemary McPhillips - Linda Trudeau - Boston 2009

I left Boston for a photographic workshop in Ireland…whether by circumstance, happenstance, or angelic serendipity, the workshop was in Ennis, Co. Clare, Ireland.

Jackpot! I’d come prepared, researched and had letters from the family in Ennis to the relatives in Lowell, 100 years ago. . . I’d sent a letter, copies of photographs and other items to Oliver Moylan of Ennis. Oliver is the grandson of the youngest sibling of Hannah and her sisters. We met, verified stories, and have become fabulous friends and cousin researchers. Oliver came to San Francisco in 2009; I visited Ennis, again in 2011, and met more of Oliver’s own family.  

Miriam Geraghty - Oliver Moylan - Linda Trudeau  - Quin Abbey 2009

Norman Brown - Linda Trudeau - Oliver Moylan - San Francisco 2010

Annette & Oliver Moylan - Linda Trudeau - Ennis, Co Clare, Ireland 2011

So that is the back-story to this tale I’m telling today ….

From time to time, I’ll choose a different family member to research, as new information becomes readily available online through so many different sources. I chose James W. Finn, 1860-1940.  I found his portrait in an album, signed on the back “Cousin Jimmy Finn” … Cousin Jimmy, as I thought of him, was born and raised in San Francisco, son of Margaret Moylan Finn. I love it when the relatives themselves name their own relationship to mine, telling me exactly who they are and how they are related. This makes the research so much easier! Verification of the relationship from the source!

Jimmy came from a family of 6; married briefly, widowed shortly thereafter, and had no children. I found he’d worked for Pacific Gas & Electric Company, from its earliest days in San Francisco. Later he was the secretary to the Police Chief in the city.

I decided to look at Jimmy’s brothers and sisters, and look for descendants on their lines. When searching it’s generally easier to follow the lines of the men, until you can find the married names of the women, I stuck to this plan. From census records and city directories, I found Howard Finn of San Francisco a nephew of Jimmy, and grandson of Margaret Moylan Finn. Howard had a son, also named Howard Finn. Looking at the census, doing the math, wondering could this younger Howard Finn, now about 81 years old, still be living in California? Well why not; I decided to check the white pages online. This database not only has listing as a telephone and address directory, it gives an approximate age, culled from current public records. 

I found only one Howard Finn, age 80, living in Red Bluff, California. Hmmmm… I wrote a letter, mailed it and waited …. I wrote, "are you the great-nephew of James W. Finn", copied a photograph enclosed it, and waited… A few days later, an email from Howard himself, telling me "yes" I have the right Howard Finn, and his own sister Barbara Finn Bentley is their family historian. Barbara emailed me shortly thereafter, and we arranged a date to meet. Barbara lives in San Francisco, where I met her for a lunch date in October. She invited her 2^nd cousin, Gail Hettich Markley to visit as well … we had a fabulous time, sharing photographs, stories, and the tales of our ancestors.

Barbara and Gail had collaborated on their own family history, beginning with Patrick & Margaret Moylan Finn. Their documentation mirrored mine, but they knew nothing of the Moylan line. I filled them in, we had so much fun!

Gail Markley - Barbara Bentley - San Francisco 2011

Now in the words of Paul Harvey, “The Rest of The Story” …. As I told Gail and Barbara of the visits to Ireland, meeting our cousin Oliver and his wife Annette, I was sharing that Oliver and his wife, Annette, had visited San Francisco, almost bi-annually for over 40 years! Annette’s brother had married and relocated to California from Ireland. While I didn’t know the name of this couple, I did know that after Annette’s brother had died, the sister-in-law visited home in Ireland, and ended up marrying her husband’s own brother a few years later. They moved back to Menlo Park, just south of San Francisco, which is where Oliver and Annette had visited so many times. . .
Gail said “that’s my best friend Nancy, she was married to the two Madigan brothers, and Nancy passed away a couple of years ago …. Gail said she remembers playing tennis with Oliver, and going on a group vacation to Lake Almanor, California.

So in case you missed it, starting with a photograph, I found 2 cousins, and one of those cousins had met another of our own cousins, 25+ years ago, here in her own hometown of Menlo Park, and didn’t know he was her cousin!!! She just knew him as her best friend’s brother-in-law from Ireland. Amazing, she’d not remembered hearing his last name, and said even if she did she hadn’t known her own great-grandmother’s maiden name yet ….

I wrote to Oliver telling him the amazing story, and a few weeks later he wrote saying he would come to visit again …. 2 weeks ago, Oliver called, “I’m coming to San Francisco, can you fix up a meeting with those new cousins you’ve found” … of course!!! Oliver, Gail, Barbara and I had a wonderful visit last week. He and Gail reminisced about Nancy and her husbands, the different visits over the years, the tennis games, neighbors and vacations. How simply amazing, these two cousins from opposite sides of the world had met all those years ago, and now were “meeting again” for the first time …

Linda Trudeau - Gail Markley - Barbara Bentley - Oliver Moylan - San Francisco April 2012

For the math, Gail & Barbara descend from the eldest of the Moylan sisters, I from one in the middle, and Oliver from the last born son, 25 years younger than his eldest sister … so while some cousins are of the same age now, the family tree has them a generation or two apart.

Serendipity yes, but I like to think I’ve received some angelic help from the ancestors ….

I’ve told Oliver we now need to have a visit that will include, MaryLee from Boston, Rosemary from Maryland, Barbara and Gail, and we’ll reunite the descendants of these sisters from Ireland…. Who knows what the next search will bring …

Follow the link here to my friend Christie's monthly inspiration:

http://girltakesphoto.com/2012/05/its-the-second-tuesday-of-the-month-austin-fine-art-and-portrait-photographer/