My other great grandfather is buried in the Bronx without a grave marker. I was in New York for a work trip and I wanted to visit his grave. So I checked on the wall, inside, a true necropolis, Saint Raymond’s. When you stand in the middle of it, all you see is tombs and graves. You are in the Bronx and you don’t see any buildings. Imagine how big that place is.

I just realized that two of my great grandfathers died in 1918 in separate bizarre accidents. My one great grandfather, that I was just talking about, Patrick Keenen, was electrocuted repairing an elevator, in Brooklyn in 1918. That is my father’s mother’s father, And then my father’s father’s father was crushed in 1918 by a train in Dallas Texas while working on the railroad. 1918 wasn’t a good year. At least the flu didn’t get him.

The guy who was crushed by the train, Jack Francis Jones, his eldest son was either named Morris or Maurice, and he was involved in the same accident and he died too. That’s what we were told, by a cousin of one of my grandfather’s brother. I semi confirmed that by finding the death certificate of Morris or Maurice, can’t tell which, because it only says M.T. Jones and the mother is Cora Shelby, which is my great grandmother. So it has to be him. I have not been able to find the death certificate for my great grandfather.

[Michael here references census reports he checked.]

My great grandmother Cora then appears at one location listed as a housekeeper. Her son Charlie, the youngest, was listed as a border at a farm. Jack Francis Junior is listed as a hired hand at a farm, and my grandfather is listed as a hired hand at a farm at the tender age of 13! His name is Rex Jones. We know that soon after, he lied about his age and joined the Merchant Marine after the 1930 census, in the early 1930s. This is an interesting coincidence, because my grandfather, Robert Pitt Junior also joined the Merchant Marine. They were both in the Merchant Marine during WWII—a lot of coincidences between my two separate families.

Any questions? I know I went off on a tangent with the paternal family.

I don’t know if you have ever seen this [takes gold framed picture out of cabinet] this is Alice Virginia Seibel, Grandma Jubb. [1] she married, she first married William hood, then she divorced William Hood and married James Jubb, and Lillian, our Great Grandmother Quaid, who you wrote about with her shawl being stolen in the old age home. I remember toddling down the street on Grendon Avenue, where my grandparents lived and Grandma Quaid was chasing me with her walker telling me to come back and I said, “No” and she called me a ‘sassbox.”

That is my only memory of her except as a presence upstairs on Grendon Avenue. Before they put her in an old age home they rotated her among the sisters. I loved that memory, so typical of me being a sass box and am so happy that I have one memory of her. So many pictures I have of her she has a cigarette in a hand.

My grandmother’s mother was Lillian, born Jubb, married Quaid. Her mother was Elizabeth, born Seibel married Jubb. Her mother was Wilhemima Seibel and her husband immigrated from Germany. He had a political appointment as the night watchman of the post office in Baltimore which was announced in the newspaper. Of course being German they were Lutheran. My mother remembers when everyone else was going to the catholic church near the house on McQuin Avenue she went to a Lutheran church even though she married into a catholic family. I am so glad Grandma Quaid did not live to see what a shit hole her neighborhood turned into. [2]

Of course that is that old Catholic church on Old York Road, its in a horrible neighborhood now. I have a hilarious memory of you, that you referenced in one of your blogs, which was confirmed by that blog. You were discussing the fact that as a boy you used to read the TV Guide. You took us for a walk in the woods and showed us your stash of TV Guides! It is such a great memory, because normally, when an older cousin takes a younger cousin out to the woods and shows him a stash of print material, its porn.

The name of the catholic Church is Blessed Sacrament. The building is still there and it is still listed on the archdiocese website, they still have mass on Sunday. It’s probably where my grandmother was baptized. I can’t imagine when your grandmother was baptized, since the great age difference. It still blows my mind that Aunt Mary’s oldest son [my Uncle Fred Kern] was born within a month of her mother’s youngest daughter, Aunt Ann.

[It was at Ann’s funeral, in 2014, when I found out about Michael’s initial research into family history and our discussion about Uncle Robert.]

Mary was born in 1918 [3] and Ann was born in 1936, 18 years later. Grandpa Robert, [the center of this inquiry by the writer], was born in 1918 as well. Mary was born in October at the height of the plague, Mary Lillian, she had her mother’s middle name. [4]

…

Notes

-1. I recall another photo of Grandma Jubb and know her by no other name, often not knowing the first names of older family members.

-2. My clearest memory of Great Grandma Quaid was of her at Aunt Elizabeth Barringer’s house in Waverly, sitting in the dinning room, over the back yard where the big black German shepherd barked at similarly opaque humans waling bye, pointing to a bowl of black licorice candies on the kitchen counter and saying, “Jimmy, bring me some niցցer toes.” I was horrified having just learned about the ‘n’ attribution and being stricken by the idea that our elders ate their candied toes.

-3. My Grandma Mary, Grandma Quaid’s oldest daughter, told me in the late 1990s that her mother had told her that when she gave birth to her in Mercy hospital in 2019, where I was later born, that bodies were stacked in the lobby.

-4. Grandma Quaid’s children, Mary, Elizabeth, Joe, May, Alice and Ann are gone. Fred, Ann’s age, is still with us in Illinois.