52 Ancestors Challenge Week 10: "Worship" - Mothers, Keepers of the Faith

I don't have much to say about "worship" or practicing of faith in my family history except that I think most of us are so rigid in our faith that we tend to assume that if we were raised in a particular faith that our ancestors were also raised in that faith. I see it with patrons I have worked with on their genealogy research a lot. I sometimes find a religious record for their ancestor to which the client will balk, "Oh no, they were NOT *insert whatever faith they assume here*." However, very often my own ancestors practiced whatever form of Christianity was celebrated in the nearest house of worship. Not big walkers for Jesus, I guess.

Although I am not a practicing Catholic, I do identify as Catholic. I was baptized Catholic, attended Sunday School, and received all the appropriate sacraments, including confirmation in the Church. My confirmation name is Rose, by the way, after Saint Rose of Lima, Peru, who was the first person born in the Americas to be canonized but I chose it because she bears the name of my birth flower. I was not born in April; thank you very much.

Aside from my paternal grandmother who is VERY Catholic, religion has, again, been relatively fluid in my family history. Most of them really did just attend the church closest to the house.

Both my grandmothers were raised in Catholic households. Neither of them, though, married Catholics. That is correct. My very Catholic grandmother, who would not attend a wedding if someone Catholic was not marrying someone who was also Catholic, did not, herself, marry a Catholic. My grandfathers were both Protestants. Grandpa Gardner was raised Episcopalian and Grandpa Earle was raise a Methodist. Grandpa Earle did convert to Catholicism but not until July 1956; eight years and three children after he married my grandmother.

Like those I help research, I too tend to think of my grandfathers' lines as Protestants. Those steadfast in their faith can probably understand my reaction then when I discovered my Grandpa Gardner's father buried in Calvary Cemetery; a very large CATHOLIC Cemetery in Brooklyn and Queens, New York. Yes. Brooklyn AND Queens. Two counties of the City of New York. That is how large the cemetery is.

What was my Protestant grandfather's father doing in a Catholic Cemetery?

Um, well, he had to be a Catholic! Sure enough, he was. Albert Gardner, born Almond Desjardins (21 September 1891 - 11 February 1946), was from a large French-Canadian, CATHOLIC family. Would ya look that that? He was raised in his mother's faith (Catholic), he married an Episcopalian woman and his children were raised in their mother's faith. His grandson, my grandpa, married a Catholic and his children were raised in their mother's faith.

Thus, I have surmised two things about my family's worship. 1.That mothers are the keepers of the faith and 2. they are still not big walkers for Jesus.

Mr. H's Grandpa & The New York City Catholic Protectory

This summer I will be teaching an online course through St. John's University about Genealogical Sources & Services. Some time ago I determined the culminating project for the course to be an ancestor's biography. My students will write a 1500-3000 work biography on an relative; it doesn't really have to be a direct ancestor just someone who passed before they were born and that they are able to find records about. 

As a teacher you can write all sorts of checklists and rubrics conveying to the students your expectations and how they will be graded but in some instances I believe it is best to also supply them an example they can model. Some worry themselves that the students will just copy the example and not really learn the concepts involved. I disagree, especially in this instance. There is no way they can really copy the biography I wrote on my great grandfather, Albert.

Albert was quite a character. According to newspaper articles he had quite a few brushes with the law as a youth. At one point he was sentenced to the New York City Catholic Protectory. This institution was sort of an orphanage / juvenile delinquency program run by the Catholic Church in an effort to instill morality and ethics in children. Hmm. 

According to a New York Times article from July of 1865 this institution received children who were:

1. Children under the age of 14 years, who, by consent in writing of their parents or guardians, may be intrusted to it for protection or reformation.
2. Children between 7 and 14 years of age, who may be committed to the care of such corporation as idle, truant, vicious, or homeless, by order of any magistrate in the City of New-York, empowered by law to make committal of children for any such cause.
3. Children of the like age who may be transferred, at the option of the Commissioners of Public Charities and Correction of the City of New-York, to such corporation.

For my biography on Albert, I researched the history of the Protectory as well as discovered records available about the young residents in FamilySearch.org.

As my regular readers know, I also work at a public library once (sometimes twice) per month doing one-on-one consultations with individuals interested in researching their family history. 

This past month I worked with a patron we'll call Mr. H. He has come to see me once before. At that time we worked on his father's side of the family. At this visit we focused on his mother's side. After finding a few records he began to tell me a story about his grandfather. He had heard his grandfather and his brothers were put in some type of orphanage after his mother died. "But it wasn't an orphanage really because they eventually went back to their father," Mr. H said. "He went there when he got in trouble with the law too one time. It was run by the Catholic church which is why he didn't want to have anything to do with the church."

I became silent. I waited for him to say the word protectory. I waited. I could see him struggling to recall the word. And then I asked. "Was it the New York City Catholic Protectory?"

"YES!"

I immediately switched over to FamilySearch.org and found the un-indexed database. The struggle to find this particular database was due to the fact that is it titled Residents' Identification Cards, ca. 1880-1938 and authored by The Society for the Protection of Destitute Roman Catholic Children of New York City. Lot of words to remember. However, it is indeed the records for what was part of the New York City Catholic Protectory


Because it is not indexed, we had to scroll through the alphabetically organized images. And there we found it, Mr. H's grandpa 12 index cards worth of information about the circumstances surrounding his residency there at what was then called The Lincoln Hall School in Lincolndale, New York.

The cards told of his brush with the law at a very young age, about the health conditions of his parents which landed him there at his first visit, it gave his mother's maiden name, and helped us to narrow down her date of death to sometime between 1905 and 1907.

Albert was just 2 1/2 years older than Mr. H's grandpa. And although I can't find Albert in those digitized records, not all of them are digitized mind you, I can't help but wonder if the two resided there at the same time and if so, did they know each other. Either way, I like to think that my great grandpa Albert helped me help Mr. H add a little more detail and color to his own family history.

Keeping the Faith: Multi-Religions

This coming weekend my 5 month old niece is going to be baptized in the Catholic church. Now I am Catholic but my sister is not. Our mother is Catholic but my sister's father wasn't. We have different fathers. My dad is Catholic, though. Now my brother-in-law, the baby's father, he is Catholic too. And although my parents are both Catholic, neither of my grandfathers were. My paternal Grandpa eventually converted to Catholicism but maternal Grandpa never did. But then again, his father was a Catholic...but his great grandfather wasn't. 

:) Are you following any of this?

My point is simply to never assume that just because you are baptized in one faith that your ancestors were of the same denomination. The likelihood is that they were NOT all of the same faith. I truly think that in the past a family's particular brand of Christianity depended on the denomination of the church they could walk to. I'm really not kidding.


Just keep in mind while you are researching your family's history that all their baptismal records may not be in the same church...or synagogue. 

My grandma's brother-in-law is a priest. Her grand nephew...a rabbi. 

Twillingate, Newfoundland - St. Peter's Anglican Church

While on my trip to Newfoundland with Cousin Peter and Cousin Kelly we took a boat tour in Witless bay to see the puffins. 

I do not know how I can come from a seafaring people because I hurled like I had taken ipecac; that is a medicine used to induce vomiting. I was dying, a cold sweat, the shakes, the works - serious, serious motion sickness. Now granted, it was a rough sea that day but I get nausea just standing on the dock. So by the time we got to Twillingate, there was no way I was getting on a boat tour to see icebergs. I saw them just fine from the harbor - - look:

In any case, while Cousin Peter and Cousin Kelly hit the seas I romped around Twillingate looking for records on my dead people. 

A trip to Town Hall directed me to the Twillingate Museum which is housed in the former rectory of St. Peter's Anglican Church. 

They had a few records of burials in the community. In this instance, though, their records didn't provide me with anything I hadn't already learned online. But I got to give them information they didn't know.

Their records showed a burial for a Thomas Warr in December of 1890 but I know that Mr. Warr's body is not interred there. He was the captain of the ill-fated ship "The Rise and Go" on which my great-great grandfather, Abraham Earle, was lost.

You learn something new everyday, but once in awhile you get to teach something new too.

Lawrence Fay in the 1880 U.S. Census Mortality Schedule

I have developed a personal catalog of all my genealogy documentation. Recently, I have been working through all the census records in my collection; making sure I have produced a transcript for each one. By the way, one can find many blank U.S. Census forms available online to help with transcription.

Then I came across my copy of the 1880 U.S. Census Mortality Schedule listing my 3rd great-grandfather, Lawrence Fay. These Census Schedules are unlike the regular U.S. Census records. The U.S. Census Mortality Schedules list individuals who died in the preceding year; not the calendar year, mind you, but a census year. If the 1880 census started on June 1, the schedule list deaths from June 1, 1879 through May 31, 1880. I learned that fact this morning by reading a posted by Michael J. Leclerc on the Mocavo blog.

I found this Mortality Schedule by doing one of those broad sweeping, Hail-Mary type of searches in Ancestry.com. That's what I call a search when I am at my whits-end  and hoping to find anything I can by just searching for a last name; in this case, Fay. Sometimes I have success trying to see everything a database might have but most of the time that type of search results in too many hits and is just too overwhelming. I don't really recommend it but in this case I found a record I might not otherwise have found because he was indexed as Laramie Fay. Although, the record clearly looks like "Lawrense" to me.

These schedules provide the name of the deceased, age, sex, race, marital status, place of birth, parents' place of birth, occupation, month of death, how long a resident of the county, address at which he/she died, and attending physician.

At the time I found this record, I knew Lawrence Fay was buried in Saugerties, NY at the cemetery of St. Mary of the Snows Roman Catholic Church. I didn't know for sure where Lawrence died, though. I had found his wife, Bridget, and their children in a curious 1880 census record in which Lawrence's name is listed but then crossed out. I didn't know if he died in New York City or Saugerties.

Here is a detail from the 1880 U.S. Federal Census record I have for Bridget Fay and her children:

She was living on 44th St. in Mahnattan between 9th and 10th Avenue in 1880. See those Kellys listed between the two halves of the Fay entry?? Well, I have information that indicates Bridget's maiden name to have been Kelly. This record has me wondering if the Kellys living in the same building as the Fays in 1880 were perhaps Bridget's sisters or cousins of some degree. Maybe Larry & Bridget moved from Saugerties to Manhattan to be near her family because he was sick with Bright's Disease; an obsolete classification for nephritis, a kidney condition.

This 1880 census record has put me on a hunt for the Kellys but the other 1880 record, the Mortality Schedule, clarified for me why Lawrence's name was crossed out and helped me determine a date of death for him.  Lawrence's death certificate, which is held by the New York City Municipal Archives, indicates that he died on December 23,1879 and was buried on Christmas Day in Saugerties. What a very sad Christmas that must have been and what a very important record the 1880 Mortality Schedule proved to be.

Writing Church Correspondence

Yesterday I posted about being leery of the information given on a headstone. My advice is to always seek documentation. Use the headstone as a hint and seek out death certificates, obituaries, and church records.

Today I want to address church records and the deep gratitude I have to religious institutions that share their records in whatever format. 

Yesterday I mentioned that as soon as I learned that my 3rd great grandparents, Lawrence and Bridget Fay were interned in the cemetery at St. Mary of the Snow in Saugerties, New York, I contacted the church. I found their phone number online and placed a call to their church office. The phone call allowed me to confirm the church's mailing address, obtain the name of a contact person, inquire as to if they had records, how far back their records dated, and if their was a required fee or recommended donation associated with making a search request.

In my experience, churches are often happy to share the information they have and more often then not they have information.  Sometimes you get a church that is unresponsive, usually due to a lack of staffing or an absence of records. Some churches will tell you outright that records do not exist; often because of fires in the past.  

Typically there is a fee required. Sometimes the fees are exorbitant as has been my experience with Catholic cemeteries but churches usually only suggest or request a nominal fee; say $10.

If there is not a fee, I strongly recommend you make a donation when you request that the church staff search their registers. Often institutions charge a fee because searching requires time and energy from an often limited staff. Just because one institution is not charging a fee does not mean they aren't in need of a little financial support to help them maintain their resources and staff.It is also very likely that you will have to deal with the same institution in the future as you discover more information about relatives who may have also been members of the same congregation. Make friends.

Usually a church will require the request be made in writing. Constructing the request letter is the hardest part. You want to be as specific as possible about what you know already know and what you want to find out. However, you also want to know every hint the church records might hold for you and your research if the church is willing to share extra info. State that! ...in a nice concise note.

If you have the name of a contact, use it formally or use "To Whom It May Concern:"

Dear Ms. Smith,

State your business in detail. Start by mentioning if you have had previous contact.

As per our conversation on Tuesday, May 7, 2013, I am writing to request a marriage record.

Include full names, exact dates or as best estimated dates.

I believe my great grandparents were married at St. Monica’s Church in June of 1918. Their names were James Aloysius Fay and Mary Prince.

Acknowledge any uncertainties that you may have regarding your information.

The exact day of their marriage was either June 2 or June 7 in 1918.

Because you are not looking at the registers yourself, kindly request a desire to know any additional information the researcher might find, and your willingness pay additional fees if necessary.

I believe my family was active members of your church from 1900 to about 1925. I would be very interested to know if you come across any other individuals with the last name Fay, Faye, Prinz, or Prince during the course of your research. I would be delighted to pay  additional fees for the extra information you find.

Sometimes the research will find something and let you know. 
Acknowledge any donation of fee you are including in the envelope.

 Enclosed you will find a check for $10 made payable to the Church of Saint Monica.

And close kindly.

 Thank you so much for your time and attention to my inquiry,

Within days of the request I made to The Church of St. Mary of the Snow in Saugerties, I received a two page letter back disclosing several family internments and baptisms. The secretary there, Sandra, shared with me information she found that she thought my be pertinent to my research. For example she wrote:

"There was a notation of the following: Elizabeth born July 10, 1852.

"Parents: Michael Fay and Fanny Butler.

"Sponsors: James Byrne and Bridget Fay.

"Perhaps this was a brother to Lawrence?"

This was not information I requested. It was not information she needed to share with me. I have, however, stumbled across other mentions of a Michael Fay in the area who I suspect may have been Lawrence's older brother. Here we see a Bridget Fay serving as a godmother to the daughter of a Michael Fay. Hmm. Sandra has put me on the case to learn more about the family of Michael Fay and Fanny Butler-Fay.

Thanks, Sandra!

Don't you hesitate to contact religious institutions for their assistance in your research. Regardless of your religious beliefs or affiliations such organizations hold records about your ancestors. Don't ignore these repositories, be grateful for what they are able to share.

Losee Place 1912: When Research and Possession Come Together

I love it when I find a document that relates directly to a family heirloom. The first time had this experience was looking at the Inventory of Estate for my 4th great grandfather, Leonard Losee. The first line of the list of his possessions was "bible." Now I did not own the bible but I had seen it. It belonged to a distant cousin who has since passed away. Sadly, I do not know who owns it now or if it is even still in existence but to see an object I had seen and touched listed on a document from 1886 made my heart flutter.

I had a similar experience while doing some newspaper research. Several years ago I found an article on page 5 of the Brooklyn Eagle from December 2, 1912 entitled "Find Mass of Honey in Freeport Relic." The article is about the property once owned by Leonard Losee. In 1912 the property was sold by Leonard's son, John Losee, Sr. to Mr. Albin N. Johnson, a prominent real estate developer in Freeport, New York.

The article is focused on a specific building on the Losee Place property; the old Methodist Church that Leonard Losee had moved to his property in 1860.

Funny enough is that I own the photos taken in October 1912 of the property. They were passed down to me from my paternal grandmother. She inherited them from her mother-in-law, Ethel Losee-Earle. The front of the photos are labeled "Property of G. Losee." G. Losee must be Georgianna Losee, the daughter of John M. Losee, Sr; Ethel's aunt. 

The scans are not very clear but here is a picture of John Losee, Sr. standing by the old Methodist Church in October 1912. 

I believe the author of the caption to be Amy Johnson, the wife of Albin Johnson. The caption on the reverse reads as follows: 

Picture taken October 1912, of houses on Losee Place, Freeport, prior to making any changes on said tract.

The smaller building was moved there about 1860 and before that time was used as a M. E. Church near the corner of Babylon Turnpike and Seaman Ave., being the oldest church in the vicinity. The old barn was made of timbers taken from the wreck of Nestor or Mexico about 1860.

John M. Losee, Sr. in foreground

-Amy

To own a photo of the subject of a newspaper article like this solidifies for me the feeling that I am holding a piece of family history and in this case community history. I cherish the photos like no other possessions I own.