Expanding my Sterling line

My Sterling relations are mostly cousins, because my great grandfather, Mike O'Dea's sister Mary, married John Sterling.  So Mary O'Dea is actually the start of my Sterling cousins.  Now I would love to take credit for investigating and finding all of these relatives, but I can't do it with a clear conscience.  A few years back, when I first realized that Mary O'Dea married John Sterling, I found a woman on line who was checking the same Sterling-O'Dea marriage.  The difference was that her great grandfather is John Sterling's brother.  So we wound up investigating the same areas, and people.  Sometimes I would email her with stuff I found, and sometimes she would email me with stuff.  Lately it has been a little one sided, with her sending me stuff.  Such as:

Yes, this little beauty.  Katherine Sterling is the daughter of John and Mary Sterling, born in Gulf Summit, NY 27 Jul 1880, and this is her obit.  She died 1 Oct 1964 in Jersey City, at the age of 84. But this obit gives me info that I did not know.  I knew that Katherine had a sister Susan, but I did not know that she had married or to whom.  Now I know that she married a man named Dauth.

She is also the Aunt to Mrs. Leona Pallander - sound familiar?  Well, it took me a minute, until I saw the next article she sent me:

Do you see that last name? Helen Willard - that one really helped.  The only thing that took me a few minutes was this.  I couldn't think of who had a daughter named Leona.  So I went to my family tree and that's when it hit me.  Katherine and Susan had another sister named Mary (but they called her Minnie)  I'm not sure, but it seems to me that "Minnie" is a nickname for a daughter who was named after her mother - the same as calling a son with his father's name "Junior".   Anyway Mary married Michael Sheehan, a Jersey City Police Officer, and they had a daughter Leona. - So that's how they're related, and that would make Leona a niece to Katherine.

Now, it is all becoming clear.  Through all of my investigating, I have come across Leona Pallander's name several times.  Usually as an informant on death certificates for my Sterling relatives, and (if you remember), she was the witness for Helen Keogh's marriage. I know from some of the death certificates that I got from the Archives, that she had listed her address as 162 Carteret Ave in Jersey City (the same address given in Katherine Sterlings obit above).  So I checked the RCAN website to see if Leona Pallander is buried in any of their cemeteries.  The only burial I found is for Michael F Pallander, who was buried on 13 Feb 1991 in Holy Name Cemetery in Jersey City.  So I checked for Michael F Pallander in ancestry and I found an entry from the Social Security Applications and Claims Index:

This gives his full name as Michael Francis Pallander, and date of birth is 3 Aug 1936 and date of death if 10 Feb 1991.  But the best part is, once again Father: Francis Pallander and Mother: Marie Shennan.  Okay, so I can see that Shennan could be a confused spelling of Sheehan, but Marie is no where close to Leona.  Up to this point, I could not find a Leona Pallander in Ancestry.com, mostly looking in census records and knowing that at some point she lived on Carteret Ave.  So I gave Marie Pallander a shot and BINGO.

I found her in the 1940 census, living at 164 Carteret Ave with her husband, Frank, age 40, born in Finland, Marie is listed as 37 years old, born in NJ, and there are three children: Mary age 6, Michael age 3, and Frances age 1.  By the way, Frances is a girl. (in case you couldn't tell by the spelling).

Just so you know, on the next page of the census are more Sterlings. Mary, Catherine and John living at 162 Carteret Ave, and Susan and Frederick Dauth, also at 162 Carteret Ave.  It always pays to check the next page of the Census.

Last, but not least, I also found that Marie L. (Leona?) Pallander died in Rochelle Park, Bergen County, NJ.  The Social Security Death Index lists her birth date as 18 Aug 1902 and death as 1 Aug 1995.  Two and a half weeks shy of 93.  Not too shabby.

The Jersey Journal and my Sterling relatives

So, in my last post about Helen Keogh, I told you about how I found out that she married and had children.  Well, since that post, I have found out a whole bunch of stuff.  Enough to keep me posting for awhile, which is good because I haven't posted anything for over a month.

So I went to the NJ State Archives and I found a marriage license for Helen Keogh and William Willard. They were married on 16 Sep 1930 at 4:00 PM. This took place at St. Patricks Church  at 492 Bramhall Ave, Jersey City, and the witnesses were William Gilane and Leona Pallander, who we will learn more about in my next post.  The Certificate of Marriage also lists Helen's parents as Margaret Sterling and Thomas Keogh, her age as 30, and her address as 161 Carteret Ave.  William is 28 years old, employed as a clerk and his parents are listed as William Willard and Carrie Tyler. William lives at 125 Audubon Ave, both in Jersey City.  You can really learn alot from a Certificate of Marriage.

My next stop was the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Newark website to see if Helen is buried in one of their cemeteries, with everybody else.  I found that she was buried in Holy Cross Cemetery in North Arlington on 27 Aug 1964. Then I decided to look for William, her husband, and found his burial in the same plot on 8 May 1965.

With this information in hand, I checked genealogybank.com, which is a collection of digital newspapers, that I have used in the past.  I searched their database, narrowing the search to 1961 through 1965, and Jersey City.  I found this item first:

This is the obit for William Willard living on Seventh St in Secaucus, NJ.  You can see that it mentions his wife Helen Willard, who passed away the year before, and two children: Joan Zaremba, who's death sent me down this road, and a son: William Willard.  There are also two grandchildren, who are not named, so I don't know if they are Zarembas or Willards.

The next article I found was this one:

Yes, this is Helen's obit from the previous year.  This gives basically the same information, but includes "interment Holy Cross Cemetery, North Arlington.  So I learned that there are at least two grandchildren here, that I may have to try to find.

I checked Helen's granddaughter, Joan Zaremba in the search engine, and I came across this article, which threw me for a loop:

WHAT? Friedenenberger - where did this come from?  After reading this one a couple of times, I realized who this was.  If you read it closely, it says Carrie (nee Tyler).  Remember the Certificate of Marriage for Helen and William?  It gives William's mother's maiden name as Carrie Tyler.  So this is William Willard's mother, who must have remarried to Frank Friedenberger.  I don't know what happened to William's father.  He either passed away or they divorced, either way Carrie remarried.

So I learned alot from these articles and the Certificate of Marriage, and I've added some new names to my family tree.  But it all started in Holy Name Cemetery, when I checked to see if there was a headstone for Margaret Keogh, after being told that there probably was not.