Reader Comments

I know its been quite a while since my last post, I've been busy lately.  No excuses, but we have been working on the house and the family.  No additions to the house, but we have had a few additions to the family.

I have recently been inspired to talk about my Bradleys in Schuylkill County. Through marriages the Bradleys have added surnames of Murtha, Campbell, Versavage, Leary, and more that I can't think of right now.  I received several comments about them, which caused me to take another look and see if I could discover more about them.  All of the comments came from Margaret M., who must be a cousin that I didn't know I had, but I am grateful for the information that she gave me.

I love the little things that Margaret said about her grandmother, Mary Cecilia Bradley Murtha.  First off, I didn't know her middle name was Cecilia, but the other thing is that she would never tell her age. Most of the documents I found say that she was born in 1881, but to find out that she was actually born in 1875 is amazing, and it makes you feel like you are family to know the secret.  After all, only very few people knew the truth (until now that is).  Just so you know, Mary was my great grandmother, Madge's (or Maggie's) little sister.  I also didn't know that she is buried in No. 3 St Patrick's Cemetery in Pottsville.

Margaret also left me a message about Francis Pepper.  She says that Francis Pepper was the first son of Patrick and Margaret (Madeline) Pepper.  This makes Francis the older brother of Annie Pepper Bradley.  Annie is the mother of my Great Grandmother Madge (Maggie) and Mary Cecilia Bradley Murtha.  Francis and Annie were born in New York and moved to Mine Hill, near Ashland, PA.  Oddly enough, I actually found a headstone for Francis Pepper, I think it is in St. Joseph's Cemetery in Ashland. I figured he was related, but didn't know how.  Now I know.

I also got some information about Susan Bradley Campbell.  Margaret's grandmother said she was a wonderful woman and her children always stayed close to her, calling her "Aunt Mame".  But thanks to Margaret talking about Sister Miriam Delora (and telling me that she was Catherine Campbell before entering the order) I found this picture of her at her Golden Jubilee.

This is from the Evening Herald, Shenandoah, Pa. on Tues 16 Jul 1974, page 6.  That is her on the top left.  This is great stuff.  So Margaret, thank you so much for your comments.  It is very nice to hear the little things about my (our) family that makes you feel like you are part of it.  This is why I write this blog.  So thanks again.

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.

Up in Nanny's Room Behind the Clock

When we were kids and asked our dad "where is my (insert favorite toy, article of clothing, school work, etc...)", dad's reply was "up in nanny's room behind the clock".  This reply was in lieu of the typical "I don't know", and the ensuing lecture about how you should keep track of your own things."

I'm pretty sure that one of us kids (there were seven of us) must have mustered up the guts to ask " Who is nanny, where is her room, and how big is this clock that she can hide everything we need behind?"  I have no recollection of his answer.  But in Dad's defense, if I had seven kids always asking me to keep track of their belongings, I would try to find a way to fend them off too.

The mystery of Nanny and her clock contined, even for my children.  I followed in my father's tradition even though I had no idea what I was talking about.  They say that parenting does not come with a manual, so I stole a page from my dad's manual.  If you're gonna plagiarize, get a good source.  So my children were also stymied by Nanny and her clock.

Fast forward to last week, my sister Joan was visiting, and we were talking about when we lived in Jersey City.  Joan was on her Surface tablet and found a picture of our old house at 422 Bergen Ave on a real estate web site.  She was saying how the house looks nothing like it did in the fifties, but 424 looks  somewhat familiar.  She went on to name the families who lived on either side of us and some things she remembered about them.  That's when the story of "Nanny" came up.

Joan told me about the people who lived at 424, and how the children's grandmother lived with them on the upstairs floor.  The grandmother, Nanny, (which is what her grandchildren called her) did not speak English (that we know of) and had a beautiful garden in the backyard that no one was allowed in.  So in our eyes, Nanny was somewhat mysterious.  She was real mysterious to me, so mysterious in fact, that I had no idea that she was a real person until last week.

So our old neighbor's grandmother turned out to be the elusive and mysterious "Nanny" who had been hiding all of our treasures all these years. I wonder if she has the term paper I "lost" freshman year at Seton  Hall.

The Jersey Journal

Funny thing happened after I wrote my post about newspapers from Scranton last night. I went back to genealogybank.com and I looked at the Jersey Journal. It seems that genealogybank.com has added more content, specifically to the Jersey Journal.  They now have the Jersey Journal from 1867 through June of 1977.  My wife and kids won't be seeing much of me for awhile.

I have been searching through the Jersey Journal looking for tidbits about my family, who have been in Jersey City since the early 1900s.  My dad's family, particularly his mom's side (O'Dea and Sterling) have been in Jersey City since about 1890 or so, and his father (Brady) came to Jersey City from Scranton shortly after 1910.  On my mom's side, both parent's families (Bergen and McConville) have been in Jersey City since the late 1800s.  So there is lots of blog fodder in the Jersey Journal

I found your standard obits and marriages, which will always give you information, but I found some things that I wasn't even looking for.  Like this:

I know that you can barely read this, but it is my mom's engagement announcement (to my dad, obviously).  Even though it is very poor quality, I had to add it.  It was published 6 Mar 1948, five days before mom's birthday, and exactly one year before the birth of my sister  Phew! That was close.

Then I found more articles about my dad and his brothers, Jim and Frank, returning home from WWII.  Jim and Frank were both in the Army Air Corps and were both shot down and taken prisoner, months apart.  They wound up in the same POW camp and escaped / were liberated together.  They spent time in a hospital in England before being shipped home.  Dad was in an anti aircraft battalion in Italy when my grandmother was notified that they were safe, dad was also a veteran of the North African invasion.  Can you imagine being my grandmother and sending three of your four sons to war in Europe.  They were overseas for years before coming home.  Six years later she would send her fourth son to fight in Korea, and there is an article about my Uncle Paul coming home that I found in the Jersey Journal.  So all four of her sons went off to war and made it home to live their lives.

That's enough for tonight, and I am sure I will find more interesting items as I keep searching.

Newspapers in Scranton

It has been a while since my last post - like about four months - but I have been busy with living relatives lately.  But enough excuses, lets get down to business.

I have had a subscription to genealogybank.com for a while now, and I liked it because it had the Jersey Journal from Jersey City, but only until about 1922. I found a few articles on this site, including marriages and obits, which have been very helpful.

I recently got a subscription to Newspapers.com, mainly because it had the Scranton Republican 1889 - 1936.   I found lots of great articles about my Scranton Bradys, including weddings, deaths, and just everyday life.  It is really quite fascinating to find articles about your family - especially since I never knew any of them.  Even the most mundane happenings appeared in the newspaper back in the day, not like today when everything is sensationalized.

I found articles connecting my Brady ancestors to my Conveys and Davis's.  It has really helped me make connections between families that help everything to make sense.

Some of the articles are odd, like those of John Brady's house collapsing into coal mines that run beneath the property.  This apparently happened several times to John, as well as to his neighbors. The people in the neighborhood had to fight the coal companies for compensation.  They got together and formed the Surface Protection Association.  The association got the mine owners to agree to move families to a safe place when their homes were on the verge of collapsing into mine tunnels.  The families were returned to their homes when the area was safe and repairs had been made - all at the expense of the mining companies.

Or articles about chicken thieves in the area getting into the henneries of John and his neighbors.  I never would have guessed the John Brady and his family raised chickens, but now I know.  It just gives you a little insight into their daily lives.

Then there are articles that are absolutely heartbreaking, for example:  The death of Joseph Convey age 19, of typhoid fever.  Joseph is the son of John Convey and Bridget Brown,  John Convey (I am pretty sure) is the brother of my great great grandmother Bridget Convey Brady.  The original article says that he died of typhoid fever, but the next day it turns out even more tragic.  He was making a recovery, when his mother mistakenly gave him a dose of carbolic acid, thinking it was citrate of magnesia ( both bottles were similar in appearance).

I have found deaths and marriages that have connected families that I always suspected were related, and then were were articles such as this one:

This is from the Scranton Republican in February 1904.  You may remember the Davis family of Gordon, Pa from when the Bradys lived in Gordon.  I have mentioned that there was probably a family connection between them.  Well here they are again, only now I already know that they are related, and how.  Mrs Patrick Davis and Mrs Thomas Brady are sisters: Catherine and Bridget Convey.

As you can see, newspapers can be a very big part of genealogy research.  Some of the things that you can learn really give you an idea of what life may have been like for your family.  Life was alot different back in the early 1900s.  Some things may have been better and some worse, but thanks to their perseverance, we are here today.

Scranton, PA

Last weekend, I went to Scranton, Pa to do some more research.  I went up early on Friday morning and one of my goals was to find more about when the Bradys arrived in the "Electric City"

Just in case you're wondering, the nickname "Electric City" was bestowed on Scranton because the nation's first successful continuously operating electrified streetcar "trolley" system was established in the city in 1886.  The line is no longer operating, but the nickname is.

When I got to the city, I decided to check on property records.  John Brady, my great grandfather James' brother lived at 522 Ripple St in Scranton since somewhere around 1900.  I have found a Brady or two living at that address from the 1900 - 1940 census records that I have found on line. I know that there are still descendants of John Brady living in that house.   I met John's grand daughter Mary Getz in about 2007 in Long Branch, NJ.  She told me that she lived her entire life in that house, but that is a story for another day.

I went to the Recorder of Deeds on Jefferson Ave and asked one of the clerks for help tracing ownership of the property.  Instead of sending me off to a computer with a lot and block number, she asked what the address was and asked me to wait a few minutes while she did some checking.  Within a few minutes I was handed ownership changes of the property back to the date that John Brady purchased it from the Meadowbrook Land Company.  The date was 26 Dec 1897, and the price was $450.00 lawful money of the United States.  The property is described as being 40' X 130'.  On 7 Dec 1906, Annie Brady, his wife, is added to the deed.  In 1924, the property is sold to their daughter Agnes and her husband.  Years later, it is sold to Agnes' daughter and her husband, and so on, until it was purchased by the current owner.  So, John actually owned this property when the Chicago Cubs won the World Series in 1908, and the property is still in the family when the Cubbies finally broke their curse, and won the series again in 2016.

I was obviously very proud of myself for this discovery, even though the very helpful clerk did all of the work.  Then I realized that Dr William Brady married Hannah Casey in Scranton in 1893.  So they were probably in Scranton earlier than when John bought the property in 1897. Since there is no 1890 census, what do I do to find them between 1880 and 1900?  Then it dawned on me - City Directories!!

I'm pretty sure that I talked about City Directories before, but just in case I didn't, the main thing to know is that City Directories were like a telephone book when not many people had telephones.  Names of city residents were listed with their home address, occupation, and spouse's name (in parenthesis).  Sometimes is a woman is head of house and is widowed, it will have (wid and her husband's name).  The came out every year in some cities, and every other year in others.  Residents were listed in alphabetical order, like a telephone book.

I checked and found that ancestry.com had city directories for Scranton in1890-1892.  I found Thomas A. Brady living at 1033 Lackawanna Ave in 1890.  In 1891, he is listed at308 N Wyoming Ave, occupation is watchman.  Then in 1892, he is back at 1033 Lackawanna Ave.  None of these listings adds a wife, but in 1890 and 1892, I find William, Andrew, and Michael all living at 1033 Lackawanna.  I am thinking that the watchman may be his grandson (John's son).

I think that the bright lights of the "Electric City" must have drawn my ancestors away from Schuylkill County like a bug light.  The electric trolley was in full swing by the time they arrived and so was the railroad.  It looks like there were a lot more opportunities in the big city.  Scranton in the 1890s, was becoming a modern American city, with electric lights, paved streets and industry.  The iron and coal industry was booming and the city's population was pushing 100,000.  By 1900, the population was over 102,000.  Sounds like Scranton was the place to be and my great great grandfather had the same opinion, so he acted on it.

Susan Bradley Campbell 1863 - 1945

Susan Bradley was born on 24 Mar 1863 to James Bradley and Annie Pepper in Minersville, Pennsylvania, which was about three months before the Battle of Gettysburg raged about 95 miles from the family home.  She was the oldest child of the Bradleys seven children.  She was two years old when President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C.

When Susan was about 19 years old, times zones were introduced the the US for the first time.  Prior to this, most local towns rendered time based on "high noon" - no, not the movie, but when the sun was actually at its highest point.  As railroads made faster travel and commerce between distant locations, a lack of standardized time zones led to confusion with regard to arrival and departure times for train service.  So Railroad Companies created times zones in 1883 to make travel and commerce more organized.  This was very successful and well received.  Within a year, international time zones were established and helped organized world navigation.

Susan married Charles Campbell in about 1884 in Gordon, Pa.  Her husband was born three months after Susan, on 24 May 1863 in Gordon, Pa, to John Campbell and Alice McEwen.   He would go on to become an engineer on the Reading Railroad, where he would be employed for 55 years.  By the time Susan and Charles married, views on marriage were changing.  Prior to to this time, most marriages were prearranged or negotiated ahead of time, but as America expanded and became more of a melting pot, views on marriage began to change.  Love became the guiding principle for most relationships. Previously marriage was more of a civic event, but as people brought their faiths to the states throughout the 19th century, religious ceremonies became more common.

While Susan and Charles were married and living in Gordon, they had 11 children, yeah you read it right, 11 children: Charles S, Raymond, Leah F, Mary M, Vincent J, Paul A, Rosella, Catherine, Marie, Alice, and Marcella.   Two of their sons, Raymond and Vincent, went on to become Catholic Priests and two of their daughters, became Catholic Nuns.  The funny part is that I am trying to figure out which daughters are nuns, but its tough since they change their names when they enter the Order. I can rule out Rosella, because I found her obituary, and she was a bookkeeper for the Vallish Furniture Company in Mount Carmel. I can also rule out Alice, because the same obit says that she is an RN in Gordon.  That's as close as I can get to figuring it out, so far. Here is Susan's obit from the Mount Carmel Item 9 Mar 1945.

If you can figure out who Sister Miriam Delora, from St. Joseph's Convent and Sister Mary Narcissa are from the list of children I gave, let me know.  I am not being sarcastic, I would really like to know.

The last thing I would say about Susan is that her life spanned from the American Civil War to nearly the end of WWII.  Not to mention travel changes: from horseback and trains to cars and Airplanes.  Quite an amazing time to be alive and so many changes and advances in science to witness.  The other thing thing that I noticed is that she spent this whole time is Schuylkill County PA, namely Gordon and Minersville.  Two small towns about 11 miles apart, about 17 minutes travel time today by car.  I wonder what she thought about all of these scientific advances, if they affected her at all in this small town.  I know that today, we take all of these things for granted.  We fly across the country because it is faster and more convenient than driving.  Then we complain about how long it took or how much it cost us.  I just wonder what those who came before us would have thought while all of these advances were being made.