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| St. Aeden's Roman Catholic Church |
This interested me because just recently I found (and promptly lost) my mother's baptismal certificate. It says that she was baptized at St Aeden's Church on 28 Mar 1926. Her sponsors were Florence Markey (who was her mother's sister) and Harry Belton. I have no clue who Harry Belton is, I have never heard the name before. I did put in a call to my McConville-Bergen expert, Aunt Florence (who is actually Florence Markey's daughter) to find out who Mr. Belton is, but no one was home.
St. Aeden's was actually the last stop on the tour, and it was just huge. The communion rail is about 96' across, and the large dome in the picture above is 108' from floor to ceiling and 60' in diameter. Very impressive. The floor and pillars inside are marble and the website says that it cost a million dollars to construct. (Dad always said that the Catholic Church is the best run business in the world, apparently he was right again).
Although the corner stone says 1912 and after taking pictures inside of the Baptismal Font and where mom would have been baptized, I read on their website that the church was not built in 1912. Apparently the Priest felt that they needed a school more than a church, so they built the school first and while they were building the church, they used the first floor of the school as the church until the church opened in 1931. Ergo, my mother was not baptized in this cathedral, but in a temporary church on the first floor of St Aeden's School.
Before getting to St Aeden's, we walked around Bergen Square and came across Newkirk St. I have a copy of my mother's birth certificate (I made several copies and have not lost it yet), and it says that she was born at 131 Newkirk St. Well, half a block north of Bergen Ave I found three row houses, and the last one before coming to a large commercial building with a Bergen Ave address was number 129, then there is an alley before the commercial building. Apparently I was too late to get a picture of her house, but I got a picture of the houses next door. While on Newkirk St, I saw a sign for Dick St. I remember seeing that name on a McConville death Certificate. It was Edward McConville, born 7 Jan 1902 and died 24 Dec 1925, Merry Christmas... again. But the death certificate said that they lived at 25 Dick St. Dick St today is just an alley, and it doesn't appear to have any houses on it. Going on this tour now tells me that the McConvilles lived only a few houses away from my mom. Actually, he died only three months before my mom was born. So my grandmother was six months pregnant when her brother died, that's gotta suck.
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| 123 through 129 Newkirk St Jersey City |
After the tour, Katrina and I decided to take a tour of our own, and we drove to the address where we lived in Jersey City when I was born: 422 Bergen Ave. We took a picture of the current house, and I say that because I don't think it is the same building we lived in. I seem to recall old pictures of a large house with a big front porch.
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| 422 Bergen Ave Jersey City |
Last, but not least, we continued down Bergen Ave, mainly because I couldn't figure out where we were and how to get to the turnpike, and we came upon Armstrong Ave. We hung a right and drove past 343 Armstrong Ave, the house where my mom lived for a while after her mother died. There was a group of people on the porch so we decided not to take a picture. So I guess this was actually alot about my mother's days in Jersey City.
When we got home, I remembered that on my Dad's discharge papers after WWII, his address was 159 Bergen Ave. I have to go back and photo that one, as well as All Saints Church, where he was baptized and later married my mom.
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