Bilaeva

My birthday was 1 October, and I just received a birthday card from Stephen. The front of the card reads: Birthday, Birthmonth, I was close. Enclosed with the card is a keyring with my initials GB in big gold, glossy letters. And the message in the card reads: One year older and yes... still an Ol' Git! I also saw this keychain and had to go back and pick it up. After all, who couldn't use a Del-Boyesque personlized key chain." Thank you, Stephen! I love it.

Stephen invariably reads my posts about three weeks after I've written them, so most of you probably miss the pithy comments he leaves. This one is my favourite, all the way at the bottom.

Do you remember the faded picture of John and Ellen Ducie and baby Moina in some publication detailing his many achievements? Well, it turns out there was an original photograph, and Bob had it. And he gave it me!!!!! What a treasure. And it belongs to me. Dad, you can have it . . . but you'll have to prise it from my cold, dead hand.

Bob gave me one other picture to keep, of grandma Bobby and a little bubba named Bruce. She wrote on the back: Bruce & Mama 7/20/47. Look at all that hair! Seems to be a Bovee trait.

I also have about 15-20 pictures I borrowed to copy. There are some nice pictures of Phyllis and her children. Bob always seems to have a cheeky little grin on his face, it's really sweet. There are some of great-grandfather Alfred and Ann LeDuc. There are pictures of Evelyn as a baby and with Phyllis's family. And there are some pictures of grandma and her sisters as children; there is even a picture of a two-year-old Phyllis pushing her dolly pram around the back garden of their house in Montana. Here is one I scanned already. From left to right: Mary, Phyllis, a friend, grandma Bobby, and another little street urchin, probably in Jackson Heights. I love the grin on grandma's face. Aren't they lovely, all three of them! Click on the pictures to make them bigger.

I spent the weekend in Boston staying with Bob. I left Friday morning and had the afternoon to spend at the archives. I researched some vital records and then headed up to the Charlestown branch of the Boston Public Library. I thought they might have a local history and genealogy section. I was wrong. They had few books of slides with old views of Charlestown and I got to see two or three pictures of Main Street as it would have been in Michael O’Brien’s time. It certainly wasn’t worth the schlep from the T Station. Oh well. I think the Main Public Library or the local historical society might be a better bet. (I’m trying to write this on the way back into New York. The highways in the Bronx are horrific; Basra to Baghdad is probably a smoother ride!)

Later I met up with Bob and after dinner I got him to fish out all his pictures and family papers. He had a biography piece on Alfred O’Brien from a book entitled “History of Montana.” We'll have to locate the book when we go to Montana. It's quite long, so I'll email the text of the article. The information on his parents is mostly fantasy. Bob and I have a theory about this. Phyllis had told Bob that she was brought up as a Protestant and that when she married his father, she had to convert to Catholicism. Odd, as both of Alfred’s parents were definitely Catholic. Perhaps when he went off to Lehigh University to study engineering, he realized that his social and carers prospects were better if he weren’t a Catholic. Then he went off to Montana where he married Moina Ducie in a Roman Catholic ceremony - well, her Irish parents would have seen to that - but the article clearly makes every attempt to expunge his Irish famine immigrant background. Perhaps this explains why neither Bobby or Phyllis new anything of their aunts and uncles… Alfred had become somewhat estranged from them. By 1928 he was in Connecticut and then New York, that’s not so far from his family in Massachusetts and yet there seems to have been little contact. The article also has some useful - and I assume relatively accurate -information about his siblings. One sister was married to an artists. Perhaps this is our Boston Public Library fellow!

Saturday, we drove to New Bedford. We stopped first at the public library where I spoke to the chap at the Genealogy Department. He told me that Frank Paul's original name could be Paulinho, rather than him having dropped it completely. He told me that he may have come to New Bedford without his family, as a cabin boy on a whaling ship, especially if he had an older brother who was also a crewman. I told him that Frank was from Pico and he said that there are only twelve parishes and that the Church has microfilmed all their baptismal records, so it wouldn't be impossible to find him. The Azorean records list the child's name, parents and godparents, and grandparents, so it would be a real find! They had copies of the Catholic St.Mary's Church records, so we looked up both of Frank Paul's marriages and the baptisms of some of his children. They give the child's middle name which often wasn't recorded on the civil records and the godparents for each child. I have a photocopy of my gt-gt-grandmother Mary Ann's baptismal record from 1859. We went to Frank Paul's address from the 1900 and 1910 census, 128 Achushnet Avenue, but while many of the old Victorian clapboard houses in the neighborhood have survived, Frank's house has been replaced. We also didn't have much luck at the cemeteries, but I now have the contact information so I will phone them on Monday.

We had dinner with some of Bob's friends that evening, which I really enjoyed. It was nice to spend some time getting to know Bob. I have so little extended family, so it's a real treat to talk to someone who knows us and our background. He loaned me a lot of pictures to scan, so I will let you know when you can look at them on my flickr account.

Most of the female names I’ve researched in Boston and New Bedford have been extracted and the names and dates entered in Familysearch. None of the ordinances had been done yet, except for just one or two names where the baptism has been done. This was really frustrating as I had wanted to do the temple work for all these women. I was afraid that they would be irretrievable. So I made a list of them all and took it with me to the temple on Thursday to see what could be done. The temple recorder told me that if I bring all the names prepped as a Temple Ready file, he can print the ordinance cards there and I can do all the work. I was so happy I was literally jumping for joy right there in the office. (I realise that isn’t really the done thing in the temple, but perhaps I’ll be forgiven…) Most of these names are children of Michael O’Brien and his sisters. The one I’m most pleased about is my own great-great grandmother Ellen Mulherin. Her baptism was done in the London temple in 2003, but I will be able to do her endowment and seal her to her parents. And on the subject of Ellen, I have a real treat for you, and will post it as soon as I can get it scanned!

I went to Boston again last week. I found Michael O'Brien's will at the Probate Court - they just handed me the original. It's only one page. He left everything to be split equally between his seven children. There's a court document that lists the names and addresses of all seven, which gave me the married name of two of his daughters. His total estate was worth $6,360.24. I tried one of those online old money calculators and it comes out as anything between $75,000 and $250,000. It all depends on whether you compare the consumer price indices or the increase in per capita income, something, blah, blah, I don't know.

I couldn't find anything at the Boston Public Library on Maurice Flynn, so I went up to Holy Cross Cemetery and wandered around in the wind and rain, but managed to find the family grave just as the rain let up. I got some good pictures. And in the evening I went to the Boston temple to do the endowment for Eliza Roche there in her adopted home. I've been in touch with Bob and I'm going back again this weekend to stay with him.

Grandma wrote to Wayne County, Ohio requesting a death record for Mary Ducie, but they responded saying no record was made. They said this was common, but I thought it rather odd, especially around 1900. So last night I was looking in Familysearch for any record of her, and I found an extracted marriage in 1879 in Wayne County, Ohio for William Collier and Mary Ducy. This is two years after her husband Patrick died in 1877. I then looked up this William Collier in the 1880 census to check the age of his bride. He is listed as 45, his wife Mary as 65 and born in Ireland. She's the right age and how many Mary Ducys could have been floating around Wayne County, Ohio. So I shall see if I can get ahold of the death record for Mary Collier to see if she was born Mary Costello. I had also thought it odd that both her daughters upped and moved to Montana and abandoned her in Ohio on her own. Perhaps they didn't.

Ian and I were so high up in the arena last night, right at the front of the balcony, that vertigo was very nearly was the word. The show was amazing. It was my first big arena show. I sang along with 20,000 people. The stage was reallly cool, it had an elliptical walkway. Keane played about six or seven songs, and Tom Chaplin's beautiful voice filled the huge space. U2 can play like nobody I've seen. And I know Bono is the big star and he wrotes thought-provoking poetry, but I think The Edge is the best thing in that band. OK, they're all amazing. A bit of politics from anybody else would be cloying, but from them it's OK. They put their time and their money where their mouths are and actually try and do something to improve the lives of the world's impoverished and forgotten peoples. We certainly got our money's worth. U2 played for well over 2 hours and we both heard our favourite songs. It's amazing the memories that come up with different songs, the Gulf War, boarding school, things going back half my life ago.

As they're reading a bedtime story about dinosaurs, Jonathan says to his Granny:

I know what the Jurassic period is - that was a long, long time ago. I know a lot of things about a long, long time ago. And I was only born in 1999!!

Have you noticed my new links on the right hand side? There's some thrilling stuff. Do go exploring!

As of this morning, I am the proud possessor of a ticket for the U2 show at Madison Square Garden next Monday. I've never been to such a huge show and what a way to start, with band a like U2. I've been listening to them as long as I can remember. And the opening act is Keane, a British band who write beautiful songs. I can't believe I'm getting both in one go. Hurrah for me. I'm really quite chuffed.