Is Meets Was

"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