Family Matters Part 6

 The information was confusing at times because names like Charles and Isabel are repeated in different generations.  My initial research also had some discrepancies as well.  There were two different dates for Isabel Turner’s voyage to America more than thirty years apart.  The family Bible anchors the 1881 date for the Turners.  After more research I determined the other date of 1850 to be when the McCreery side of the family came to America.  While it is much more difficult to research women because of the changing of their last name in marriage, I also believe there was more information on the McCreery side partially due to socioeconomic status.  The wealth of the McCreerys makes them more fascinating to research.  This coupled with the fact that the McCreerys had more news articles and other records written about them made information easier to find.  My grandmother’s brothers were also well established, one a surgeon, another a civil engineer that helped build part of Boston, and a third brother who was a principal at a school.  This was documented in more letters in my grandmother’s hand, but I could not authenticate the information on the internet.   
What was baffling was that my mom shared very little of this information before now.  I knew my great grandfather went to Brown and that my grandfather was a research chemist for DuPont with numerous patents to his name and even that my mother cut her leg on the beach while on vacation.  It wasn’t until last week that she revealed that the beach was on Martha’s Vineyard.  This past week I also discovered that my grandmother went to high school with Rose Kennedy.  Additionally my mother also revealed that her family would often hear of the Kennedy gossip through their neighbors in Oak Bluffs.  I never found out exactly what happened to the farm.  My grandmother wrote that it was sold, but she did not say when nor did she say if the big house stayed in the family and if so who retained the deed.  A search on the address my grandmother remembered did not match the current town records.  My assumption was that it was sold to a developer and the original road no longer exists.  The McCreery Department store went out of business in 1953 after 116 years in operation.  It survived the Depression, but closed its doors amidst the news of Stalin’s death, the execution of the Rosenbergs, and the end of the Korean War when Dwight D. Eisenhower served as President.   

Family Matters Part 5

 Discovering that my great, great Grandpa Joseph McCreery owned property in Martha’s Vineyard was just the beginning.  When I tried to ascertain why there was so much information on the McCreery side more details began to surface.  Buried in the pages of hand written correspondence was a sentence about visiting the store Uncle James owned in New York City named McCreery’s Department Store.  In the late 1800’s McCreery’s had the reputation of Macy’s and is listed among the emerging department stores of that era.  I happened upon an advertisement for McCreery Department Store dated 1948 for sale on eBay.  This particular detail surprised even my mother.  Searching for more information yielded little results, although I did find a photograph of the store.  James McCreery was born in Ireland, which corroborates my mother’s claim that there was some Irish in the blood line.  The store was founded before James arrived.  Perhaps James’ reason for coming to America was to run the store.  Later he inherited it or acquired it.  I found some additional information about James McCreery’s descendants online, but I could not validate the information because I did not have records of his wife or children. 

 

Family Matters Part 4

 Letters from my grandmother describe a family farm in Oak Bluffs not far from Fall River where Charles and Isabel McCreery resided.  It was not until I searched for Oak Bluffs, Massachusetts that I realized it was on Martha’s Vineyard.  The family owned farm was the summer vacation home for the brothers and their families.  In old letters my grandmother describes the property as a large orchard located on the northern part of the island.  My grandmother, Isabel Long describes the orchard with over two hundred and fifty trees.  The apple orchard was the largest; the small pear orchard was to the rear of the big house and in the front about a dozen dark cherry trees.  Behind the outhouse was a small peach orchard and beyond that is what she describes as a farm with chickens, cows, and even a large garden.  Isabel Long’s grandfather, Joseph McCreery collected the trees and shrubs on his travels and planted them in his gardens.  The barn and shed were covered in grapevines.  Many people would come and visit the vineyard and leave with sacks of fresh fruit.  The summers must have been heavenly as a child playing among the trees in the orchard until the sun went down.  Grandpa Joseph McCreery was very protective of his gardens and did not want the children to climb the trees but my grandmother confesses that they did.  On occasion the adults must have taken the children to the Flying Horses Carousel located on Circuit Avenue.  The Carousel was brought to Martha’s Vineyard in 1884 and still is in operation today.  My grandmother’s father, Charles John McCreery died as a result of injuries sustained from an automobile accident while vacationing in Oak Bluffs in July 1933.  His wife Isabel died two years later on her sixty-seventh birthday after an appendectomy.  The notes said she was so sad after Charles death that she had no desire to get well.  They are buried in Oak Grove Cemetery in Fall River, Massachusetts.       

Family Matters Part 3

 Isabel Tuner married Charles John McCreery on February 1, 1888.  Charles John McCreery was born in Fall River, Massachusetts in 1865.  He attended the prestigious Brown University graduating in 1886, Phi Beta Kappa.  Although I remembered hearing that my great grandfather attended Brown, there was no elaboration on his life.  Family letters reveal that he worked for a law firm after college and planned to be a lawyer but love had another path for him.  Charles was courting Isabel Turner and she wanted him to teach so they would have school vacations together.  He became Principal of two schools at the same time; Westport High School and Tucker Street Grammar School.  He was also the President of the Fall River Teacher’s Association in 1892.  According to records from Fall River, Charles also served on the board of directors for several businesses in and around Fall River: Shove Mills, Sagamore Mills, and Loyal Unity Lodge to name a few.  This information alone reveals that Charles was a well educated man and a prominent figure in the community.  He was the superintendent of schools for a number of years.  When he lost an election by one vote and he was made the District Superintendent of five schools in Plymouth. 

Family Matters Part 2

I realize this is probably pretty boring, but it does get more interesting next post.  :)

On October 31, 1881, Nancy Bills Turner boarded the S.S. Atlas with her three daughters bound for Boston, Massachusetts.  According to a letter from my grandmother, her husband William Turner left for the United States of America some time before to secure a job and housing for the family.  Nancy along with her daughters Isabel, Florence, and Mary left Newton, England and boarded the ship just after Isabel Turner’s thirteenth birthday.  The ship arrived in Boston, Massachusetts on November 16, 1881.  I could find little more about William and Nancy Turner.  Turner was a common name in England as well as in America.  A Google search for William and Nancy Turner in Newton, England yields thousands of pages.  Searching a number of different ways still produces hundreds of leads with a recurring Joseph Mallord William Turner, an impressionist painter of the 1800s.  The fact that Isabel Turner was a teacher suggests that she was educated.  While education was more common in the late 1800’s, for females it was generally reserved for those who could afford it so it is likely her parents came from at least a middle class or upper middle class background.  Regardless of the socioeconomic status of William and Nancy Turner, it is evident that their daughter Isabel Turner married into the elite upper class of Fall River society.  

Family Matters Part 1

To follow is part of a Geneology Project I have been working on for one of my English classes.  If I get enough hits, I'll post more of the story:  

Researching my mother’s family history became an intriguing and unwieldy task, involving numerous phone calls and spending hours pouring over old letters and family documents then chasing down leads via the internet.  Someone on my father’s side of the family had already compiled enough information to fill a three inch binder complete with a copy of the family crest, possible reasons for immigration, and records of ancestry back to Denmark in the early 1600s.  On the other hand, my mother’s family history was like assembling a puzzle with missing pieces without a picture diagram, fitting together tidbits of information from an incomplete family tree and thirty year old hand written letters.  What I discovered astounded and baffled me.  Buried beneath the mountain of yellowing papers was history filled with affluence and revelations of my family giving insight into my mother’s personal psyche.