Chelsea Landing

Life in America for the O’Connors started here on Library Street, back then called Matthew Street.  Daniel O’Connor, my great grandfather, arrived in the US on January 11, 1892 on the SS Umbria which landed in New York. He was joined in his voyage across the Atlantic by his younger sister, Maggie. She was eighteen

New Boxes

Library Street in Chelsea, Massachusetts has two very different sides of the road. One side has old multi-family homes which have weathered a lot of changes in this former industrial neighborhood. The other has a brand new housing development called The Box District. In 1901, Irish immigrants Daniel and Kate O’Connor, (my great grandparents) lived

A Church Reborn

I met a man across the street from St. Rose Church on Broadway in Chelsea, Massachusetts, while drawing, who smiled when I told him that my grandfather was baptized in this church. With his Hispanic accent, he said that he was going into the church just now to prepare for today’s baptisms. He told me

Chain Migration

It wasn’t long ago that I pictured my great grandparents facing the complete unknown when they came to America in the late 1800s and early 1900s. But my research has largely proved that wrong. The O’Connors and O’Keefes followed others from their families and hometowns that came before them. No doubt, what they did took

You Must Ask

Often when I’m drawing, I think I’m invisible. People usually treat me that way, too. People don’t tend to interact.  Where the O’Connors lived in Chelsea, Massachusetts, in 1908, no one lives now. At the address is a car repair shop as well as a taxi business, surrounded by a tall chain link fence. The

Moving, Moving

This is the house where my grandfather James Victor O’Connor was born in 1906. He and his young family lived here in an apartment in Chelsea, Massachusetts, for a couple of years, and then moved around the corner. I’m noticing through my research that my relatives moved around a lot. This immigrant family were renters

Old and New Immigrants

When investigating my long-gone immigrant ancestors, I often find more immigrants living in the same houses, and filling the same neighborhoods. In this American drama, the set remains the same – only the cast changes. In the small, crowded city of Chelsea, Massachusetts (near Boston), the working class immigrants that were mostly Irish and Russian

Rubber Workers

The house where my great grandfather first lived in America is gone. It’s a parking lot now, overlooking the ramshackle remains of a once-booming rubber factory on the other side of the train tracks. As I drew the view from what would be the back of the house, I tried to imagine the first impression