Family History

The Saga of Catherine Lennon Buschmann

This is one of the oldest photographs I have of my maternal grandmother’s family. In the early 1990s my grandmother made this enlargement from the smaller original and carefully attached post-its with the name of each person she knew. I’ve used those names many times to identify people in other photographs she wasn’t able to … Read More →

This is how a family loses someone

This part of my family history starts with my great grandfather, Thomas Lennon, and the mystery woman buried beneath him in Old St Raymond’s Cemetery in the Bronx. (In the older cemeteries in NYC multiple bodies “stacked” in one gravesite is common.) Her name was Margaret Rowlands, (they apparently left off the “s” on the … Read More →

“Tell me why their stories matter…”

This is my second cousin going through meeting minutes from the 1920s for the American Alpine Club. She was with me last week at the AAC Library in Golden, Colorado, while I was digging into their amazing archive. I put her on the meeting minutes looking for any mention of Allen Carpé while I was … Read More →

And now starring Great Great Aunt Kitty Fullam…….

My maternal great grandfather, Thomas Lennon, had 3 siblings including a sister named Catherine who went by the nickname “Kitty”. She is what I consider a “bridge” ancestor as there is someone living today (namely, my mother) who remembers Aunt Kitty. Unlike so many of the names and faces I deal with in this family … Read More →

Souvenez vous dans vos prières…..

These are my paternal great grandparents who immigrated to Rhode Island from Quebec in 1927. There are a couple of interesting things about these prayer cards. First, they are in French even though my great grandparents had lived in the U.S. for about 35 years when they died, and second that they include actual photographs. … Read More →

The summer of 1977

This is us, the summer of 1977, at Spessard Holland Park in Florida. I grew up only 20 minutes or so from here, spending very nearly all of my childhood at beaches along the Space Coast. My father is in the back of the picture, smiling. He was the one who taught my brother and … Read More →

The women

The more time I spend researching my maternal grandmother’s family, the more clearly a single theme has emerged. While the men are interesting (and pretty much universally good looking), their lives have all been fairly predictable. They held basic unremarkable jobs (except when my great grandfather worked on the beer wagon – that was pretty … Read More →

Finding family we lost 75 years ago….

I have written about my grandmother’s cousin Evelyn in two other posts. I wrote about her death, at almost 24, in November 1940 from diphtheria, about two weeks after her toddler son died from the same disease. I also wrote about my continued search for Evelyn’s two older daughters, Joan and Barbara, and for Evelyn’s … Read More →

Ladies of the ’50s & what they wore

I have been reading Women in Clothes, a fascinating book the includes the thoughts of literally hundreds of different women about what they wear, why, how it makes them feel, the clothes they remember, the clothes they have longed for and on and on. It’s really quite the piece of cultural history and I highly … Read More →

Greetings from Hollywood High, 1944

During World War II my maternal grandfather, Pete Hurley, received Seabee training in Port, Hueneme, California and apparently (from this postcard anyway) had a bit of time to take in the sights. Read about the Seabees and the naval base here. My grandfather worked in a shipyard in NYC before the war so was a … Read More →