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| My husband's Irish grandfather. |
This photo, my husband's grandfather, a man none of us ever met, has always fascinated me. I know or have been told anyway, that he was born in Ireland, County Mayo, (God Help Us) and came to the United States sometime around the turn of the 1900's.
SO how did he end up in this uniform and this rickshaw and where was this photo taken?
No idea what-so-ever.
Not life shattering, if I never find out, just a mystery that nags at my brain, when it is not full of say:
1. Weeding the garden and why isn't it done?
2. What should I make for dinner tonight or will anyone be home to eat it, if I do make something?
3. WHERE ARE THE MISSING SOCKS? (That is question that has dogged me my entire life.)
4. How to set the alarm on my husband's alarm clock, you would think I would know, but no, I do not.
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| Not the best photo ever taken, but there you are. |
Intermittently, between all of those pressing thoughts, I do wonder about this fine Irish man. He worked hard, by all accounts, married a bit later in life, had six children, was widowed when the youngest (my father-in-law) was three or four years old, and then died a few years after his wife. Thus leaving six children, alone, to band together, to raise themselves.
Recently, one of the family said that he owned a bar in Chicago. I thought, "Of course he did! He was Irish." another said he was a plumber, I thought, "That explains how he got the liquor to run a bar, which may or may not have been in Prohibition."
In general, I wonder, which parts of him do my children, his great-grandchildren, carried forward today?
Thomas Joseph McEneely was in the United States Navy. That is his Navy uniform. He was stationed on the USS Concord. He was indeed a plumber. He immigrated to the US in the mid 1880's. He married Honora Swift in 1907. She was also from Ireland. She died at the age of either 43 or 46. There is some discrepancy in her birth year it seems. Thomas died in 1930. They are both buried at Mt Carmel Cemetery in Cook, Illinois. I found a picture of him and Honora. I'll post it on your Facebook page.
ReplyDeleteMarnie,
DeleteHow very kind of you to find all of that out. How did you do it?
Thank you so much,
Naomi