I tried to do the 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks Challenge last year but the days got away from me. Instead I turned my attention to writing a series of essays on each of my direct ancestors back to, and including, my great-great grandparents. I then compiled those essays into a book to someday give to my nieces and nephew.
I noticed that the further I went back in time the shorter the essays got. I didn't really have stories about my great-great grandparents as individuals, as opposed to my parents and grandparents who I knew and experienced things with in my life.
So when I think about my ancestors and whom I admire most, I wonder what I really know about most of them. Do records really tell us much about a person's character? How much do those documents really tell us about a person’s inner life, or the way they endured the events that shaped them?
That being said though, I have always thought my great-great grandmother's life story would make for a great movie, though. I've written about her before. I think Julia Roberts could play her in the movie. See the resemblance?
Annette "Annie" Hinch-Henry was born in Barnamelia, Ireland near Hackettstown, kind of close to where County Wicklow touches County Carlow. She was born on February 22, 1868 to James Hinch (about 1816- January 29, 1886) and Jane Kavanaugh-Hinch (unknown - about 1875 in Ireland).
James and Jane had six children:
- Jane Hinch (about 1859 – unknown)
- Hannah Hinch-Nugent (December 25,1859 – July 7, 1925)
- Mary Hinch-Kehoe (May 10, 1864 – June 17, 1947)
- Annette "Annie" Hinch-Henry (February 22, 1868 – March 2, 1952)
- James Hinch (July 1, 1870 – about 1884)
- Sarah Bridget Hinch-Stoothoff-Rhodes (June 25, 1873 – January 4, 1965).
The Hinch family knew loss. Annie’s mother appears to have died around 1875, leaving those six children behind. Annie’s brother James, would never reach adulthood. Family lore said that young James drowned in a river. I didn't question it, but when my cousin Pete and I visited the National Archives in Dublin in 2018, the records told a much sadder story. The only death that fit was for a thirteen-year-old boy named James Hinch who didn't drown in a river but rather died in a workhouse from diphtheria on September 27, 1884. I think that is him but I am only confident that Annie left Ireland having already buried her mother and a brother.
Shortly after that boy's death, Annie’s moved across the sea. There is a passenger list that may record her arrival in New York on June 6, 1885, traveling with her father, James, and her younger sister Sarah aboard the HMS City of Chester into the Port of New York at Castle Garden. Their surname is indexed as “Hench,” and the only sibling listed is Sarah, not Annie’s older sisters, Jane and Hannah, which makes me a bit uncertain that this is them. Still, if it is them, Annie would have been seventeen when she stepped onto American soil at Castle Garden and sadly, only a few month later her father died on January 29, 1886. James Hinch is buried in St. Monica’s Cemetery in Jamaica, Queens, beside his brother Charles Hinch (about 1817 - January 24, 1895). Annie was not yet 18 years old when she buried her other parent.
Annie was 27 when she married Victor Henry II (June 1874 – June 23, 1908) on June 18, 1895 in New York. They had six children in their 13 years long marriage:
- Charles Aloysius Henry (March 26, 1896 – June 14, 1949), my great grandfather
- Mary “Annie” Henry (December 8, 1897 – April 6, 1899)
- Jane Veronica Henry-Edsall (November 14, 1899 – May 19, 1982)
- Victor Henry III (July 10, 1902 – September 15, 1940)
- James Henry (June 24, 1904 – July 16, 1905)
- Robert Henry (February 7, 1906 – February 10, 1906)
Only three of their children lived to adulthood, Mary died as a toddler and their two youngest sons died in infancy.
Then on June 23, 1908, Annie's life shattered publicly when her husband Victor committed a very scandalous murder-suicide involving Annie’s first cousin, Mary Hinch-Cassidy (March 1862 – June 23, 1908). The details are complicated, painful, and deeply entwined branches of the Hinch and Henry families. Annie was left a widow with young children, carrying a grief that was both intense and very publicly shameful and yet, she endured.
After everything she had lost, Annie continued to give. While her children were still young, Annie took in orphans. I recall my great uncle Bobby, Annie’s grandson, speaking about one orphan in particular; Eddie Reed (August 12, 1921 – December 7, 1937) who appears in the 1930 census in Annie’s house. Eddie died while in Annie’s care and the loss just devastated her. Apparently, she had taken Eddie to the doctor complaining of abdominal pains. They performed an appendectomy on November 19, 1937. He continued to complain of pain afterwards but the doctor didn’t believe Eddie, they thought he was faking his pain to avoid school. Days later on December 7, 1937 Eddie died at Jamaica Hospital. He was just 16.
I found Edward Reed’s death certificate at the New York City Municipal Archives; Queens Death Certificate, 1937, document #8434. His mother’s name may have been Catherine Reed; his father is unknown. Anna Henry is listed as his guardian and she is buried with him at St. John Cemetery in Middle Village, Queens, New York.
I suspect that Annie received a good deal of support from her family following the death of Victor; if not financially, at least emotionally. I had heard one story in which she had to put her children into an orphanage but fought to have them returned to her when she learned they weren't being fed well. I know her sons and daughter cared deeply for their mother in her later years as well, opening their homes to her again and again. In fact, in the 1950 U.S. Federal Census, Annie was living with her then recently widowed daughter-in-law, my great grandmother, Anna Marie Sauer-Henry (July 19, 1899 – May 8, 1986) in Uniondale, Long Island, New York at 15 Fenimore Avenue; the house my grandmother grew up in. When Annie passed on March 2, 1952, though, she was living with her daughter Jane in Pearl River, New Jersey.
I don't know her voice or her laugh. Did she laugh? She must have laughed. I don't know what else could have sustained her through so much loss, but I know she crossed an ocean; buried her parents, siblings, five of her six children, and her husband; she survived scandal; opened her home to foundlings with nowhere else to go; and was remembered with love by the people who did know her. For someone I never met, I admire her a great deal for her perseverance.