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.