The Murtha girls of Pottsville PA

My Great Grandmother, Maggie Bradley Brady gave birth to my grandfather, Thomas J Brady in August 1891, in Gordon, PA and she died the following year.  Maggie had four sisters and two brothers, one of those sisters was Mary Cecelia Bradley, born 25 Nov 1881.  Mary married a man named Nicholas V Murtha, they went on to live at 549 East Market St in Pottsville and had four daughters. (the aforementioned "Murtha Girls").  That makes these ladies my first cousins 2X removed.  This is what I have been able to piece together from a variety of sources.  First some pictures:

Pottsville HS 1929

Pottsville HS 1925

Mary Murtha
Pottsville HS 1927

Wow! I'm getting good at this.  I found Margaret and Mary on Ancestry.com and you might want to sit down before I tell you about Anna's picture.  I found it on a website called "Deadfred.com".  I know, it sounds morbid, but whatever works.  I was not able to find a picture of Dorothy, the youngest, but I did find her obituary from 2013, and that was a tremendous help keeping me on track. So here we go.

Margaret aka Peg, was born in about 1908, attended Pottsville High School. By 1929 she is married and living in Baltimore Md with her husband George D Savage, according to the 1929 Baltimore City Directory. George is a laborer and they live at 1226 W Lafayette.  Next I see of Margaret is her obit in the Philadelphia Inquirer 4 Dec 1944.  There is no mention of children and it says that she lived in Baltimore.

Mary was born Jan 1910, also attends Pottsville High School and is listed in the 1939 City Directory as living in Pottsville with her widowed mom and sisters, Anna and Dorothy. She is a stenographer for the Necho Allen Hotel in Pottsville.  I found an old postcard on Amazon and it looks like a very fancy place.  Mary will marry a man named Holihan and have at least two children.  She will die in 1980 at the age of 70.

Anna was born 25 Nov 1911, also attended Pottsville High School and is listed in the 1939 City Directory as a clerk for Bell Telephone. 26 Oct 1940, she marries John J Conway in Schuylkill County.  They will live in Pottsville and are listed in the City Directories from 1948 to 1969 at 1207 W Norwegian.  John is a loan officer with the Miner's National Bank.  John dies in January 1984 and Anna passes away in June 1996. they are buried together in Calvary Cemetery in Mt. Carbon, Schuylkill County.  They left behind two children.

Last, but not least is Dorothy.  Dorothy aka Dottie, was born 22 Aug 1914 and graduated Pottsville High School in 1932.  It does not appear that Dottie ever married and she retired in 1979 from her position as office manager for Met Life Pottsville office, after 43 years.  She was very active with her church, St. Patrick's RC Church in Pottsville.  She left me a very informative obit which detailed when her sisters died and their married names, as well as, surviving neices and nephews.  She died 20 Apr 2013 at the age of 98 and is buried in St Patricks #3 cemetery, Pottsville.

That's what I recently learned about the Murtha girls.  I got a lot of info from ancestry.com, but I also used Findagrave.com, Newspapers.com, and Deadfred.com. I also had some stuff from a previous trip to the Schuylkill County Courthouse and the Pottsville Library.  I had little bits of info in different folders and notebooks, but I didn't pull it all together until I wrote this post.  But that's fine, cause that's why I blog.