Fruits of One Tree

  L-R: Laura Eloise Ludlow (1871-1950), William Todd Ludlow (1841-1905), Ida Victoria Ludlow (1877-1900), Sarah Elizabeth Laing Ludlow (1838-1911) My mother gave me this photo of her grandmother, the girl on the left, and her family. On the back, it says “Grandma and Grandpa Ludlow.” The two girls seen here were the youngest of six children born to William Todd Ludlow and his wife Sarah Elizabeth Laing. The two oldest were boys, Matthias and Lewis, and the two middle children were twins who died at birth. [1]   I always wondered why the older brothers aren’t in this photo. Was another photo taken of the parents with just the two boys? From left to right, the photo shows Laura Eloise Ludlow; her father, called Billy; her little sister Ida Victoria Ludlow; and her mother. Ida was born in October 1877, and she looks about six here, so this was taken about 1883. [2] The family lived in Rahway, New Jersey, just west of Staten Island, New York. Ida looks a little bit the way I reme...

                                                                       Elizabeth Rhoda Craven Jobe Those of you who are related to the Jobe family will remember seeing this old photograph which frightened many of her very youngest descendants. Her granddaughter Maye told us that this was her father’s mother, Elizabeth Rhoda Craven. She only lived to be 57, but (except for her hair color) she looked older than that in this photo. Because she was a poor woman in a poor part of the United States, there are not enough records to answer some basic questions. And since her son, Maye’s father William, ran away from home, his children grew up without knowing her family. But they did hear the story that when she fixed that gaze on him, he knew he was in trouble! Luckily, DNA matches from one of...

  John's billy club engraved 12207 John was born in Brooklyn on May 11, 1875, to Irish immigrant parents Daniel Fennessy and Mary Mullany. [1] Dan and Mary were both baptized in Ardfinnan, County Tipperary, but immigrated several years apart. [2] John was the oldest of their five children. He married Mary Kinane at St. Bridget’s Catholic church in Jersey City in 1895 and lived there until his death in 1944. [3] For the first few years of their marriage, John worked as a clerk. They lived on Mercer St. in Jersey City, moving up and down the street to different apartments. Back in the days before television and radio, people would come watch handball tournaments on Mercer St. There are newspaper articles online giving his score in those tournaments. [4] In 1901 and 1902 he acted with an amateur theater group at St. Bridget’s. [5] At the same time, “Johnny” became one of the experts in a new sport, ping pong, at the church. [6] But maybe after Daniel Joseph was born in 1897, a...

This photo of Dan Stephens was taken about 1940, when he was about 70 years old .   My husband’s grandmother’s father was Daniel Harven Stephens. For years, I’ve heard his cousins say, “Dan Stephens was the richest man in the county. Then one of his sons-in-law sold him some worthless stock and he lost everything he had. But when he got rich he treated people just as well as when he was poor.” I also heard the story of when my husband’s grandmother (his daughter Jewell) came to babysit them during summer vacation, she’d take them all to a farm to pick crops.   Genealogical research revealed Dan’s father was an illiterate farmer who moved from state to state in the South, never owning any land.   So, I had built up a picture in my mind that Dan Stephens was a poor, ignorant farmer that was a patsy for some city slicker. Thanks to the availability of online newspapers, I have found out that my impression of Dan was all wrong. In fact, he was an eager entrepreneur who jumped...

 This month I’ve been researching one of my great great grandmothers. She was born Mary Cusick or Cusack in County Cavan, Ireland, in 1846. She didn’t even know her exact birthdate. Apparently, the family never celebrated birthdays. She never learned to read or write, and I’ve seen her last name spelled both ways. County Cavan is a county with no coastline, but it has many lakes. It’s in the northern part of Ireland, near Northern Ireland. I was able to visit it in 2015 and it is a rural area with lush green hills, and reminded me of times I visited Pennsylvania. Mary was a baby and toddler during the Great Famine, but her family must have had the means to find food. When she was a child, she came to America with her mother Mary Smith Cusick and her sister Ellen Cusick. [1] I haven’t yet found out if she had more immediate family making the journey, but I do know her mother’s sister Bridget Smith Flood also emigrated with her husband Peter Flood and son Charles. Charles was Mary...

 I have copies of two photos of my great great grandmother Anna Wilhelmina (Ladewig) Bruguier. One was taken when she was young. The other looks like it was taken when she was in midlife. She looks a little sad, doesn't she? She had good reason to be sad.  I’ve been doing genealogy for over 25 years, and when I survey all the ancestors whose lives I’ve studied, my great great grandmother Anna Wilhelmina (Ladewig) Bruguier stands out as the person who suffered the most losses of family members. It makes me wonder how this affected her. Was she bitter? Apathetic? Depressed? Religious? Angry with God? Alcoholic? We will never know, since there is no one left alive who knew her, and I have never seen any diary or letters from her. One thing is sure, however, had she lived today, all of those deaths could have been prevented by today’s medical care. In 1900 and 1910, the U.S. government was so concerned about childhood mortality that it instructed census takers to ask how many chil...