Another trip to Schuylkill County

As promised, I went to Ashland, Pa on Friday and searched for my great grandfather's final resting place, which I thought would be St. Joseph's cemetery.  Once again, I came up empty.  But the good news is that at least this time I found the right cemetery.  Apparently the first time I went there with my sister we were actually in the wrong cemetery.  This time - after searching for a while - I actually had the sense to ask someone.  I recently heard a talk and the speaker was talking about searching cemeteries and how she found the grave she was looking for.  Checking at the office was not the answer - her secret was to look for the guy with the shovel.  In this case there was no office, and no guy with a shovel - so I had to rely on a lady walking her dog - and she pointed me in the right direction.  She told me "there are a lot of Catholics buried beyond those trees.  We drove over and found a cemetery.  Then I found an older man walking a dog (apparently cemeteries are like dog parks in PA), who said that there were two different cemeteries.  There was St Josephs, which was for the Irish Catholics and there was St Mauritius to the far west, which was for German Catholics.  There was no physical separation like a fence, just a dirt path.  He told me that back in the day, the churches were very ethnic, so you had German Catholics, Irish Catholics, Italian Catholics,etc... So after searching for a while and not finding what I was looking for, the man saw me again and told me to check with the Ashland Public Library, because they had some funeral home records.

Next stop, Ashland Public Library.  I checked in the library and found that they did not have the year I was looking for, but they suggested that I call Mt Carmel Public Library and the Schuylkill County Historical Society, whom I have called before for this and other reasons, without much success.  Just in case you're curious - here is James E Brady's death certificate from the PA Dept of Health

Even the folks who buried him were secretive, all it says for place of removal or burial is Ashland, PA.  I called Mt Carmel and Schuylkill County Historical Society for Funeral Home records, with no success, but Mt Carmel Library called me back and said that they will mail me a list of burials for Bradys and Bradleys in the time frame I am looking for.  They were very helpful and sent me a large manila envelope of burials in the Tri-County area, but so far I have been unable to locate James.

I know that I did a whole post on my Great Grandfather James E Brady with a wanted poster and everything, but I never included his death certificate.  If you read it, you can see that the informant is Mary G Brady of Scranton - his sister.  She is the one who let the secret birth place of her parents out of the bag - Swinford, Ireland.  It also says that he was 54 years, 9 months, and 19 days of age - YIKES - that's younger than me.  He died of Cardiac Failure and myocardial degeneration.  All the papers I have seen for him list his occupation as Fireman on the railroad, but this just says laborer.  Maybe that was just a generic term for railroad worker.

The thing that I always wondered about (and I know I have mentioned it before) is the name of the doctor who signed the death certificate: Thomas McCutcheon of Gordon, PA.  Not his brother William, who was a doctor in Scranton.  Now that I am thinking about it, and after driving from Gordon to Scranton last week it took me an hour and change.  So back in 1914 it must have been a long trip - even if you had a car.  So anyway I looked up Dr. McCutcheon in the 1910 census, and I couldn't find him - until I used a wildcard search in Ancestry.com.  I searched McCu* for a last name and found his name spelled McCutecheon, living on Biddle St in Gordon, he was 31 years old, born in Canada (Eng), single and came to the US in 1902, and was still a Canadian citizen at the time.  Funny thing is that the next family in the census is Guy Hubler, his occupation is listed as Druggist.  Just thought that was interesting - Birds of a Feather and all that.

So after my trip, I still don't know any more about the Bradys in Schuylkill County, but not because of a lack of trying or helpful librarians and historians.  I just think that they don't want to give up any secrets yet.