1910 - 1930 Mary Nolan delving deeper !!

1910 where are we at in the world at this time ?

Here are a few events and discoveries that were happening. Check out the washing machine date.  Thank goodness for Alva I say.

Jan 3 British miners strike for 8 hour working day

Figure 1: the first electric washing machine
called The Thor and invented by Alva Fisher

Jun 2 Pygmies discovered in Dutch New Guinea
Aug 9 Alva Fisher patents electric washing machine
Oct 5 Portugal overthrows monarchy, proclaims republic
Dec 3 Neon lights first publicly displayed (Paris Auto Show)

If you are chasing further information concerning different years, have a look here as its a easy to manoeuvre site. http://www.onthisday.com/date/1910

I sort of wanted to start off like this as to get my head back into that era. It helps me develop a picture and gives me that imagination and enthusiasm to dig further.

As I have previously mentioned our Mary was living with an Italian family in 1910, this was recorded in the census of that year. The address was 261 East St 8th St Pauls. There is mention of 6 children born with 1 now  living, (this being Robert). She is working as a domestic at a restaurant.

The interesting snippet of info that I get from the above 1910 census entry is the 6 children born. I have found no further details regarding other births for Mary, besides Robert at all and unfortunately I feel this might not be able to be verified.

Keeping with the timeline, Mary's only surviving child, Robert marries in 1918 in Missouri.

We next find her in 1920 at 423 East St 7th St Pauls where she is listed as a lodger and gives her occupation as a dishwasher at a restaurant. Her age is given as 50 years.
I have tried to research the street addresses for St Pauls where our Mary was residing but I am having difficulty narrowing down specifics.

Figure 2 : Map of Saint Paul 1903

I did come across this map above of St Paul in 1903 on a great site and felt this gave me an idea of the layout of the city around that period.

There are a series of streets, named 5th, 6th, 7th to name some examples that run parallel to each other.

The shaded  grid area looks to be the inner city area and East St 7th seems to be located on the upper right hand side of this section. You will also notice the Missippi River runs right through the city.

The map is from this site here, which is a great research tool and can be purchased as well.

St. Paul and Minneapolis Maps (click on the blue link to take you to the page).

As a bit of extra information, when Robert, Mary's son filled in his Registration Card in 1917 for WWl he lists his mother as being dependant on him.

Mmmmm interesting,  does that mean Mary was unable to work at that time ?  Going back to the 1920 Census she is working as a dishwasher at a restaurant. 

My next question is where did Mary reside between the years of 1920 to 1930 as in the 1930 US Census we find her having moved to Kansas City. To find further information on this I will have to look in the Directories and see if I can track her down.

Alas that is a job for another time.

Tune it for next week where I will be looking at Mary - from 1920 onwards with her move to Kansas City 

Hope you have enjoyed the read and I am off to have a cuppa :)

Thomas and Ellen Nolan - getting to know you

Ok lets get down to it.

What do we know. ????? I want to build you a picture of him and his wife  and what led to them leaving their homeland.

Thomas was born around 1833 in Ireland, I have no details as to a county at all, as Ireland is his place of birth listed on all documents from the USA.
He married an Ellen in Ireland approximately around the year of  1859.
Ellen's approximate birth year is said to be 1835.

Thomas and Ellen had a daughter Mary Nolan born 23rd December 1860 in Ireland . Mary's birth has not been verified and once again the variations through out all the US census entries just throws it all out of whack.

The family immigrated to America (USA) or North British America (known now as Canada)  between the years of 1860-1861.



 Mahoney's sketch
of the woman and child in 1847
Fig 1

Lets go back to Ireland though and set the scene. We all have read about the horrific Potato Famine from 1845 -1849. Leading up to this period almost two thirds of the eight million Irish people depended on agriculture and the single crop of the potato for their survival. The year of 1846 bought a devastating disease  called Blight which along with unusually cool moist weather and a strain of Phytophthora,  caused the disease to flourish and decimate full crops causing utter starvation to a high percentage of the population. This continued annually for successive years and it claimed the lives of over one million Irish people from starvation.
After successive crop failures over a period of years a mass exodus of the Irish people began.  It is said that one million Irish immigrated to America alone.


At the time of the beginning of the famine in Ireland, Thomas would of been roughly 12 years of age and Ellen about 10 years old. I could not imagine the grief and desperation that they both would of had to endure during this period of their lives.



Sailing Ship Around The Period Of 1860
Fig 2

Next we jump a few years and I will take you to the 1860's era and give you a little information  on immigration to America. There were two directions that you could of travel through.  One being a transatlantic voyage to the East Coast Ports, mainly Boston and New York and the other  by land or sea to Canada, which was then called British North America.
At this time Ireland was still part of Britain and fares to Canada were a lot cheaper than fares to the USA.


I have only surmised that Thomas and Ellen would of chosen the Canadian route as they eventually settled in Minnesota in the USA and that is a border state with Canada. As Canada was not an independent nation and still a British Territory Irish immigrants did not need  to apply for Naturalisation because they were British subjects already.

Well what have we summarised today.

I feel like I have only provided mainly assumptions in this blog however I have tried to build a picture of what life would of been like for Thomas and Ellen in Ireland and why they felt they had to emigrate to the Americas in search of a better life.

How sad it must have been for them to leave all their extended families behind knowing that they might never see them again.

Note : All information is provided concerning the Potato Famine and the emigration of the Irish people has been summarised from reading through some fabulous sites. I have listed a few here if you would like to do some extra reading.

http://www.irishamericanjourney.com/
http://www.historyplace.com/worldhistory/famine/america.htm
http://www.britannica.com/event/Great-Famine-Irish-history
http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/irishfamine.htm

Fig 1 - A sketch completed by the artist James Mahoney who was living in Cork, Ireland. In early 1847 he was asked by the Illustrated London News to tour the surrounding countryside and report on what he saw.
Fig 2 - Picture courtesy of  http://www.irishamericanjourney.com/



 

Plan Of Attack - a genealogy must

Where to begin ?????


Well after going though all my files and data I have decided to focus on one side of the family at a time. One big word


FOCUS



I have a slight problem with drifting off track and diverting to other tasks, so this little picture here will keep me on task.

Do you thinks she looks like me. LOL




I have chosen my Nolan family line to commence with. One reason behind this is that my Mums sisters and brothers are all big supporters of me continuing on with the research and writing a book.
They love hearing all the new information and I love our catch-ups at Aunty Joan's house.
Many theories and old hearsay rumours have been assessed at these meetings and a good old laugh occurs always.


The data displayed here in this image below details the Nolan line and you can clearly see where I have some gaps to fill.

 

Perhaps the most logical place to commence is with Thomas Nolan (my ggrandfather) and his wife Mary. I think this might be one of my biggest stumbling blocks and its going to take some digging for sure.

 

Now its off to start the delving ......................

 

 

 

Read and Refresh - the 2 R's when it comes to family history

With a nice strong coffee in hand and my favourite recliner chair wound back I made a start on my re-reading of my records and files. Two hours later, I was still going and decided I needed to put a halt to it as it was getting close to tea time and hungry mouths were calling me.



What I found is that I am quite organised as to how I store my hard copy files but its my online data that needs some sort of  system. What a must this is in the world we live in, I need to be able to access this data as fast as possible, not search and go through a mountain of discs to find what I want.


Do I use an external hard drive or copy everything over to my Dropbox account. ????
I will need to check out other storage options at a later date, but now I need to make a decision as to which way to go. I am leaning towards Dropbox because I can access that on both my phone and tablet.

Going through my hard copy files brought out many emotions. One being WOW, I have actually amassed quite a lot of information.
I also came across a few pages of Nans infamous Snake Stories, what a read, she was indeed a brilliant story teller and writer. Hopefully you can have a read here with page 1 shown.


So my brain is now familiar again with where I am up to in my research and what's missing.


The next process is to set out a research plan to empower myself with the updated resources so I can follow along with my missing links.