A Trip to the Archives (NJ)

Yesterday I took the day off from work and drove out to Trenton, NJ to the State Archives to see what I could find.  I got my newsletter from the Monmouth County Genealogy Society the other day and there was a small article in there saying that the NJ State Archives now has death certificates up until 1955.  Be still my heart!!!!  They used to have death certificates up to 1930 and anything later than that you had to order from the Dept of Health and pay a fee.  At the archives, I can drive there, look it up myself on microfilm and pay fifty cents a page for copies.  It still cost me $7.00 in copies, but I like doing the research myself.

I went there with the intent of ge.tting death certificates for Hanna McConville, Edward S McConville (Momma and Poppa Mac), William "Pop" Bergen, Edward L Bergen Sr and then I thought that I may as well get birth certificates for my Bergen uncles: Ed Bergen and Bill Bergen.  Well I found Uncle Ed's birth certificate without a hitch, but I could not find one for Uncle Bill.  Maybe his birth was not registered, I don't know.  I did get death certificates for Hanna McConville, Pop Bergen and my grandfather Ed Bergen, and my mother's uncle Edward S McConville, Jr, who died when he was 23 years old on Christmas Eve 1925.

But I found a couple of bonuses.  While looking through files, one of the ladies who works there said they had birth certificates back to the 1860's.  I tried to find a birth certificate for Annie Sullivan Bergen, who was born in Jersey City NJ 1867, but I couldn't find it (she married Pop Bergen and is my great grandmother).  So  I decided to look for our grandfather, Edward Bergen Sr and lo and behold, I found it.  He was born 6 Sep 1893 in Jersey City to William Bergen and Annie O'Sullivan (I don't know who put the "O" in O'Sullivan), it lists an occupation for William but I can't read it, and it gives an address of 475 Henderson St Jersey City.

I have tried on several occasions to find a death certificate for Annie Bergen, and have never been able to find it.  Yesterday, I decided to check again and I found it almost by mistake.  I had gone past the Bergens (they are arranged in alphabetical order for the year on microfilm) and while going back through B-E-R-G-I, I found it.  She spelled it Bergin, so it was filmed later on that roll.  The certificate is hand written and I cannot read the cause of death, but when I looked at the date, I did a double take.  She died 29 Oct 1909 (102 years ago today), but I found it yesterday.  I also went to the Jersey Journal to check for an obit and the obit gives her name as Anna L. Bergen and says beloved wife of William and sister of Mary, Thomas, Edward and John Keaveney.  No mention of her son/our grandfather, Edward, which I thought was kind of odd.

The last thing I found, that was sort of odd, was a death certificate that I was not looking for.  While looking through the Bergens in 1943, for Edward and Willliam, I first found Edward (they are alphabetical), but then I found a Mary Bergen, age 70 of Jersey City, but it says that she is the widow of Patrick Bergen (this is William "Pop" Bergen's brother)  Her death certificate says that she is buried in Holy Cross Cemetery in North Arlington, NJ, it also says that her maiden name was Fitzgerald.  I had found a marriage for Patrick Bergen and Mary Fitzgerald on Familysearch.org, so I know that  this is William's sister-in-law.  I called Holy Cross and found that Mary is buried there and the plot belongs to Thomas Bergen ("Pop's" other brother).  Thomas was buried there in 1931 and Patrick was buried there in 1933. "Pop" also had two sisters Kate and Mary, You can't swing a dead cat without hitting a Kate or a Mary in Irish families, that is what make them so hard to track.  Below is a picture of "Pop" Bergen with my uncle Ed.  Florence Armstrong said "He was the biggest man I ever saw."

So all in all it was a good day, but even a bad day at the archives is better than a good day at work.  I will try to sort through the rest of the stuff I found and go back to the interview with Aunt Florence cause I think there is more stuff that I didn't mention yet.

An Interview with Aunt Florence Part II

I just read over my last post before writing the second part of my talk with Aunt Florence, and I found a mistake.  When Johanna and Mary Ann came to America after the death of their father, the people that they stayed with were Annie and Willie Wharton (spelled the last name wrong, and it may still be wrong, but I think it is at least closer).  Anyway, I was told that Mary Ann Sullivan married a man and it was not the perfect union.  Mary Ann died young in 1894 and was buried in a potter's field in Hoboken, she was only 26 years old.  I don't know how she died, or if it was because of the husband, but when she was buried in potters field it was like a stain on the family name.  Her sister Johanna and her (Johanna's) husband went deep into debt to have her removed from potters field and given a proper burial in a proper cemetery.  I think the potter's field was Snake Hill in Secaucus, which was also the Hudson Burial Grounds.  Potter's Field was a place for street people with no family to care about them to be buried.  They were filled with street urchins, drunks, prostitutes, and people with no money for a proper burial.  No one wanted a loved one buried there in the 1890's.  I think that Mary Ann was reburied in Holy Cross Cemetery in Brooklyn.  I called the cemetery to confirm her burial, but they do not have a Mary Ann Sullivan buried there in 1894, but I'm not sure that was her last name when she was buried (she is probably buried under her married name, whatever that is).  This is the same reason that I cannot confirm that she was once buried in Snake Hill.

Another person that Florence talked about was my mother's aunt Alice (named after Lady Alice, and we called her EeeHee)    This is a portrait of her in 1939, well before we knew her.  Alice was born in 1909, and long before we came along, she married on 4 July 1930 at 3:30 PM in St Aloysius Church in Jersey City to Charles E. Maloney.  I found a record of this marriage in the NJ State Archives on one of my days off.  The witnesses were John Maloney and Florence Gallaher (Gallagher?).  Florence told me that  Maloney had been a student in St Peter's Prep, where he was a big football star.  One day while riding the trolley in Jersey City the trolley went up on a trestle between Journal Square and Union City.  The trolley left the track and crashed, he lost his leg in the crash and spent a long time recuperating in the hospital.  While he was there, his friend would visit and bring him liquor, and he became an alcoholic in the hospital.  Alice married him, against her father's wishes, and he was apparently a violent drunk.  Mom told me that he would put out lit cigarettes on her legs, and Florence told me that he actually cut her throat.  She did not tell anyone, but her sister's always wondered why she wore outfits with high collars.  She wound up getting a divorce, which was not easy back then, and she retained her maiden name.  Florence said that she met a man later, possibly a Dentist, who had a lot of money and she fell in love with him.  She didn't marry him because the Church would not allow her to remarry in the church.  Ya gotta love that Catholic guilt.

When her sister Catherine (my grandmother) died in 1939,  she and her parents had my mother moved in with them so as not to have her live in a house full of men, where she may end up cleaning and cooking for them like domestic help.  Mom lived with Alice until she married dad in 1948

One last thing I 'd like to talk about is my grandparents, Edward L Bergen and Catherine McConville.  I was still a Policeman at the time and had been researching for a few years, mostly on my father's side cause I had mom to tell me anything I wanted to know about her family and dad didn't talk about his father and his family at all.

So I took a day from work to go to the NJ State Archives and I intended to try to find some stuff about mom's family, cause I really didn't look into them cause I had mom.  So I asked her when her parents were married because I would try to find their marriage certificate.  Mom says " you know I never knew when their anniversary was".  So being a good son, I intended to find out for her.   I figured that their oldest child was my uncle Bill, born 31 Dec 1919, I knew the year because I knew he was older than my father, who was born in 1920.  So I figured I would check marriage licenses from late 1918 into early 1919.  That was my plan because I knew that the first child was usually born within a year of the wedding back then.  So I checked and late 1918 turned into early 1919, then early 1919 turned into mid-1919, then I found it.  They were married in Jersey City 27 Aug 1919, oops, stuff happens.  Now I'm no math whiz by any stretch of the imagination, but even I can figure out that 27 Aug to 31 Dec does not equal nine months.  Well, I quickly found some other stuff, I figured I might need it to soften the blow when I got back home and showed mom.  So I found Grandpa's World War I service record.  It is kind of an unofficial New Jersey document.  That's another thing, mom had recently told me that her father was in the Navy in WWI, I never knew that.

So I leave the archives and head home with a WWI service record and an unexploded bomb from 1919.  When I get to mom's house, my sister Teesh is there so I figured this was a good thing.  I show mom her father's service record and she is impressed.  Then I show her their marriage certificate and she really likes it, until I asked her "When was Uncle Bill born?"  Her answer is 1920, but then I remind her that he is older that dad and dad was born in 1920.  Then it dawns on her and Teesh realized it too.  Teesh says "Yeah, you go Catherine".   I think that softened the blow. Thanks Teesh, cause as soon as I reminded mom that Bill was born before dad, I immediately regretted it.  I always felt bad about breaking that news.  Sorry Mom.

An Interview with Aunt Florence

Last July, I drove to Atlantic City and talked to my Aunt Florence about my mom's family: who they were, where they came from, and where they went.  Growing up, we always called her Aunt Florence, but I know that she is my mother’s cousin, which technically makes her my first cousin, once removed.  I think that her children are my second cousins.

Anyway, here are some of the things that I learned from Aunt Florence.  First off, she said that our great grandmother, Johanna Sullivan McConville, was born in London, England in about 1866.  Her father was Michael Sullivan, who was a tailor to the Ladies of the Court at Buckingham Palace.  Johanna and her sister, Mary Ann, went to a private school near the palace, possibly St. Mary’s, because there is a St. Mary’s church on the palace grounds.  They were able to play on the lawn of Buckingham Palace, and were very well read and educated.  When their father died, they were sent to America to live with cousins, Willie and Annie Waters(?) who had a bunch of kids in Brooklyn, and they were going to be nannies to the children.  I am not real sure what happened to their mother, Mary Dunn Sullivan, but that’s a good question to Aunt Florence next time I see her.  Johanna came over when she was about 14 years old, which would make it about 1880.  Florence said that Johanna did not speak well of her American cousins, because she enjoyed her time in London.  While she was in London, she and Mary Ann were in the wedding of Lady Alice at Buckingham Palace and they were very fond of Lady Alice as she treated them very well.  They liked her so much that Johanna named her daughter, Alice, after her. When my mom's mother died in 1939, she went to live with Alice and Momma and Poppa Mac and they raised her from age 13. 

Here is a photo of Johanna Sullivan McConville (Momma Mac) and Edward Sylvester McConville (Poppa Mac).  The occasion is their 50th Wedding Anniversary and the picture is dated 1939.

Johanna lived in Brooklyn and married our great grandfather, Edward Sylvester McConville in 1888 (or more probable, 1889) in Brooklyn, possibly Red Hook.  They had eight children: Edna, John, Catherine (our grandmother), Florence (Aunt Florrie, who is Florence’s mother), Edward, James, and Alice (EeeHee). 

Edward Sylvester McConville, who everyone called Ted, worked at the Mathison Cooperage.  Mom said that he worked outside of the Holland Tunnel (in Jersey City I guess) and he was so loyal that he named his son James (Mathison) McConville after the company.  He said the company gave great Christmas bonuses.  They all called James by his middle name “Matt”.

“Ted” and the family lived near Holy Name Cemetery near West Side Ave and he used to walk around the corner to an Irish Pub and they would say to him “Sing us a song Ted” and he would usually sing “Paddy McGinty’s Goat”.  Florence said that he could play any stringed instrument ever made.