Is Meets Was

It is the day before Thanksgiving, and I have FINALLY finished another book. The target audience is people like me with ancestors having the surname of Fitzgerald. My dad's mother was a Fitzgerald. It is available with a hard cover, printed in color. At more than half the price, you can order the paperback version in black & white.  Irish Like Me: The Fitzgeralds  paperback, black & white Irish Like Me: The Fitzgeralds  hard cover, in color I hope you will give it a try.

Don and Grete (Downing) Goodwin, Cape Neddick, Maine, 24 October 2002. About twenty years ago, knowing my love of family history, my cousin Grete's husband sent me an album that he found in a box in his garage. I determined that the album had belonged to my great-grandmother Maggie (Carroll) Merrill (1861–1945).  Most of the photographs had been taken in the late 1800s in Franklin, New Hampshire. If you have an ancestor with the surname of  Carroll, Cunningham, Cushing, Dwyer, Hanley, Killigrew, Lynch, Meneghin, Merrill, Morrison, Munson, Rand, Roberts, Wall, or Wheeler, you may find a picture of them in  Grammy Merrill's Album . © 2023, Cathy H Paris

I started this post twelve years ago, and unintentionally, I did not click the button to publish it. Never too late? In 2004, we visited our Canadian cousin, Olive Joyce Hudson, aka  Joyce Burnell   (1920-2011) . Joyce regaled us with family stories, especially with tales of her personal adventures. Kilquade in County Wicklow c. 1953 Kilquade, Joyce's childhood home in Ireland, came to life as she told us about its history and how her family came to live there. Joyce Burnell, Nick and Cathy Paris, and Irene and Dave Stradtman Filled with non-stop energy, Joyce put us to work picking plums and preparing them for canning.   Although she had been to Niagara Falls a gazillion times, Joyce personally guided us throughout the area. Thank you, Joyce. © 2012, Cathy H Paris

When I think of Grandpa, I remember Limburger cheese, beer, the Brooklyn Dodgers, playing cards, and fun and laughter—memories of a young child visiting him in Brooklyn and later in Florida.  Also, I remember hushed conversations and the closing of the kitchen door to mask the words being spoken—memories from when Grandpa stayed at our home in Valley Stream, New York, during the Kefauver hearings on organized crime (1950-1951). Grandpa was a key witness. And I remember Mom and Dad being away soon after Christmas 1953 because Grandpa was sick in Florida. A week or two after they left, Aunt Helen, who was looking after my brother and me while  Mom and Dad were gone, climbed the stairs to my bedroom, and then she sat beside me on the edge of the bed. She told me that Grandpa had died. I knew I was supposed to cry, but the tears didn’t come. I was only 8 years old and unable to process the news of Grandpa’s death. Throughout the rest of my life, I would always wonder a...

In the next few days or weeks, I am hoping to publish my book Irish Like Me: A Brooklyn Tree . Thinking that I should do a blog about this, my latest book, I went to my blog,  Is Meets Was , only to discover that I had never published anything about my last book. Irish Like Me: Seasoned in New Hampshire .  I published  Irish Like Me: Seasoned in New Hampshire at the end of last year using a self-publishing company, Lulu.com. The hardcover version, which is printed on premium paper, is available on  Lulu.com's website . A paper back version is available from  Amazon  and other distributers of book. This book tells the stories of Dot, Lib, Gilly, and Freddy’s early years and shines a light on the lives of their grandparents, parents, aunts, uncles, and cousins. Part of the Greatest Generation, Dot, Lib, Gilly, and Freddy were born in New Hampshire. Both of their grandmothers were Irish Catholic immigrants. One grandfather was born in New Hampshire, the son of...

"Oh, my gosh! Is that Uncle Joe?" And yes, it was. There he was, front and center on my television set. I was watching Netflix and in particular, the two-part documentary,  Sinatra, All or Nothing at All .  The dialogue of the film indicates that Joe Bals, the cop in the forefront with his hand spread wide, was protecting Frank Sinatra as he exited the Paramount Theater. According to the dialogue in the film, most nights at 8:45 p.m. in early 1943, Frank Sinatra left the Paramount, and he was swarmed by fans as he tried to get into the vehicle that would take him ten blocks away to the site of his nightly radio broadcast.  Great-uncle Joseph Bals (1897-1968) was a New York City policeman. He joined the force in 1923 and retired as a lieutenant in 1960. Most of that time he worked in the heart of Manhattan, giving him a unique opportunity to observe the rich, famous, and powerful people of his era.  Joseph Bals, 1923 Joseph Bals, date unknown September 23, 1950, Lt. J...

Called Betsy by those who knew her, her formal given name was Elizabeth. She passed into the mysterious beyond one hundred twenty-four years ago on 29 October—my great-great-grandmother Betsy Fitzgerald nee Graney.  No picture of her, tintype or otherwise, has been discovered. Was she an itsy-bitsy Betsy or a strong, big-boned farmer's wife? Was she brusque and self-absorbed or gentle and kind? In their later years, after they sold their farm to their son, why was she living in Concord, New Hampshire when her husband was living in Manchester? Did she leave her husband, or did he leave her? So many unanswered questions... Betsy's children: Lizzy Spead c. 1870, James E. Fitzgerald c. 1880.  Perhaps her visage is reflected in the faces of her children. She bore ten of them, five in Ireland during the Great Hunger and five in Andover, New Hampshire in the decade before the Civil War. Even though I never met Betsy, and despite the fact that we never co-existed on this planet, Betsy...

The National Archives of Ireland is a wonderful resource for exploring your Irish family history, and it is an invaluable place to explore the Tithe Applotment Books*. Unfortunately, if your ancestors lived in the civil parish of Kilgobban [sometimes spelled Kilgobbin] in the county of Kerry, Ireland, you will NOT find them in the  Tithe Applotment Books at the National Archives of Ireland.   Fortunately for me, at least seven years ago, I downloaded a copy of the now-missing pages. Since then, I have been unable to find the website from which I downloaded these pages. Therefore, for the benefit of others seeking to find traces of their ancestors in Kerry, I am writing this post to provide a link to images of the twenty missing pages. The  pages for Kilgobban from the Tithe Applotment Books include the townlands of Killelton, Knockglass Beg, West Knockglass Beg, Knockglass More, Bonnaw, Curraduff, Glandine, Curracullenagh, Beheenagh , Upper  Kilteenbane , Lower...

My family is very fortunate that we have two tintypes of one of my four great-grandfathers. My guess is that one of the pictures was taken about 1870 and the other about 1875. Although Great-grandpa Gilbert Samuel Merrill lived for about forty years after the tintypes were made, I have yet to find any other pictures of him. This is perplexing, but what is more puzzling is the identity of the man with him in the tintype from about 1870?  If you have any suggestions as to the identity of the man standing next to my great-grandfather, please send me a message at IsMeetsWas@gmail.com. Gilbert Samuel Merrill was born to an older couple on 24 June 1846 in the town of Cumberland, Maine. His parents, Samuel Merrill and Hannah True Warren, were fifty years and thirty-eight years old when they married in nearby Pownal, Hannah's hometown. Twenty-five months after the wedding, Gilbert was born. Hannah became pregnant again in 1849, and tragically Samuel died of sunstroke before the birth of th...

Helen Elizabeth Nimmo, c.1908 I got caught in a time warp when I enhanced and colorized photographs of my grandmother taken when she was a child. Seeing the pain revealed on Grandma's face makes my heart reach for her in a way that it never did when she was alive. We spent a great deal of time together when I was young, mostly playing card games. Despite her physical proximity, there was always an emotional distance. Now I can feel her pain. If I only had understood then... College graduation, Spring 1967 Above is the last photograph taken of Grandma and me. © 2020, Cathy H Paris

Mary Elizabeth Merrill, (1886-1918) Commonly called the Spanish Flu, although it is now widely believed to have originated in the state of Kansas, the last pandemic had an irrevocable impact on our family. On Thursday, 3 October 1918, our grandmother, Mary Elizabeth Merrill of 413 Lincoln Avenue in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, died from the Spanish Flu. Her death certificate attributes her cause of death to La Grippe. She had been sick for two weeks. During her last four days, she suffered from pneumonia. The family legend is that she was pregnant with her fifth child. Mary was only thirty-two years old. Dot (Dorothy), Gil (Gilbert),  Lib (Elizabeth Mary), and Fred  (Frederic) Merrill, c. 1917 The whole family was stricken by the virus, and a nurse was brought to their home to care for the family. Mary’s four children recovered without any lasting physical effects. My dad, Gil, was five years old at the time. Dad told me that his earliest memory ...

After months of struggling to publish an eBook version of  Pioneers of Vanderveer Park, I am happy to report that you can now  download  the book to your Kindle or the Kindle app on your iPad or mobile phone. For those of you who have already acquired the printed book or the PDF version, I have greatly appreciated your personal feedback, and I hope you will translate that into a positive online review. As most of you may already know, I have written this and my other books as non-profit ventures. The price charged at Kindle is the minimum price which Kindle would allow me to set. My reward is your reading and enjoying the book. Why did it take months of struggling to turn  Pioneers of Vanderveer Park into an eBook? Like many first time efforts, the biggest part of getting it done was learning how to do it. Now when I create books, the process of turning them into eBooks will be relatively easy. © 2019, Cathy H Paris

Free download or a printed copy is available now at Lulu.com. The Epub version is coming soon to Amazon. com— Pioneers of Vanderveer Park . This is the true story of two people, Conrad and Augusta, who began their lives in Germany when the Civil War was raging in America and Otto von Bismarck was leading Prussia into wars with Denmark, France, and Austria. Conrad and Augusta lived the immigrant's dream of finding opportunity in a foreign land and culture—pioneers. Conrad and Augusta were among the leaders in the transformation of the farmlands in the middle of Brooklyn, New York into neighborhoods filled with homes. This development, whose name and whereabouts were familiar to all who once lived in Brooklyn, is now all but forgotten—Vanderveer Park. Vanderveer Park and its sister development, Bay View Heights, included most of the area between Cortelyou Road and Kings Highway and between Flatbush Avenue and Troy Avenue. Conrad was the builder of the Cortelyou Club ...

  When religious and political differences in England tore the country apart with anger and hate, twenty thousand people left England and sailed across the Atlantic Ocean to America. One of the people was my 7th Great Grandfather, Aquila Chase. Aquila was born about 1618 in England. Aquila may have been born about thirty-five miles from London in the town of Chesham. Today you could drive from Chesham to London in about an hour.  There were no cars when Aquila was alive. If Aquila went to London, he walked, rode a horse, or maybe took a carriage. The trip took a whole day. I don’t know if Aquila ever went to London, but I do know that Aquila and his brother, Thomas, sailed to America, arriving by 1640. When Aquila and Thomas arrived, my 10th Great Grandfather, Rev. Stephen Bachiler, was already in America.  The Rev. Bachiler was a tall, thin man with white hair, very dark eyes, and a prominent nose. He was obstinate and had firm beliefs. Although he moved and...

Amongst my collection of old photographs are pictures of my grandparents when they were in high school in Franklin, New Hampshire.  Fred and Mary played on the basketball teams for Franklin High School [Fred is the rightmost young man in the middle row, and Mary is the leftmost young woman in the front row.] Franklin High School, Class of 1902 [Fred is the rightmost person in the middle row.] Pup, officially known as Frederic Carroll Merrill, was born in Franklin on 10 December 1884, the fourth of eight children born to Gilbert Samuel Merrill, a Yankee who at the time, was a foreman at the Winnipesaukee Paper Mill, and his wife Maggie Carroll. Maggie was only 14 years old when she immigrated to Franklin in 1875. Some of Maggie’s aunts, uncles, and cousins had already arrived in Franklin. This included the Cunningham, Cushing, and Sullivan families of Franklin. Maggie's parents and siblings started arriving in Franklin years later, but not long after Fred's bi...

Family Reunion at the old family farm in Andover, NH, July 13, 2013 Who knew we were canoeing on top of our families' great investment of 1866? Not me, at least not until last week. Also last week,  my perception of my great-great-grandfather, James Fitzgerald, was radically changed by just a little bit of new information. In 2002, 2003, and 2007, I visited the offices where the property records for Merrimack County are housed in Concord, New Hampshire. During these visits, I went through all the Grantee Books and Grantor Books, looking for property records pertaining to my great-grandfather, James E. Fitzgerald, and to his father, James Fitzgerald. I had copies made of the forty-three property records which I thought were relevant to their stories. These included mostly deeds and mortgages. As you can imagine, this was a fairly large stack of paper with lots of legalese. In 2007, I spent painstaking hours extracting pertinent information from all this paperwork...