Sailor Man

Daniel O’Keefe came to America in 1908 and had tattoos—like Popeye—on both forearms. He had served as a young man in the Irish Navy on the HMS Howe in Queenstown (now Cobh) not far from where he grew up on the southern coast of East Cork. His father was a shoemaker, and his brothers were

Blood (Meridian) Relative

Cormac McCarthy slept here — at least for a nap or two. The award-winning author of The Road, No Country for Old Men, Blood Meridian and All the Pretty Horses writes of America’s West, but was actually born in the East. This was his grandparent’s house in Providence, Rhode Island. How do I know this? Or, more importantly, why

Long Wharf

Boston’s Long Wharf used to be longer and its history goes way back. It was built in the 1710s and, looking at old maps, one can see that it extended for a half mile — from where I stood to the Custom House Tower (the pointed building a few blocks away) on State Street. Over

Military Heart

Thomas O’Keeffe had a bad heart, but he loved the military life. A seemingly restless man, he was my great-grandfather’s younger brother, born in 1877 in the little Irish town of Churchtown South, in eastern County Cork. Not long after immigrating to Providence, Rhode Island, he joined the US Army. That was in 1899, soon

A Gold Plated Life

Robert Anthony Lynch worked in jewelry factories his whole life. In 1915, at the age of 16, he was an “errand boy.” By 1930, he was a “gold plater,” which was considered a good skill to have at the time in Providence, Rhode Island—the Jewelry Capital of the world. Gold plating was actually invented in

Tapping

This is a noisy place, and it must have been even noisier back in the 1960s when James (Jimmy) and Alice O’Keefe lived here. From their doorstep, they could watch as the city was ripped in half by the massive interstate highway project—the construction of US Route 95. Their neighborhood was wiped away. As I

Olneyville

Olneyville is a neighborhood of Providence, Rhode Island, which holds many remnants of an industrial boom long gone. Big and small brick buildings line the tangled streets in differing conditions of preservation or decay. It’s a poor area, but rich now with Hispanic culture. A hundred years ago, my immigrant ancestor Mary Ivers from rural

Last Stop

My great-grandfather Daniel Joseph O’Connor lived here last—an apartment in the Mount Pleasant neighborhood of Providence, Rhode Island. He died in 1932 at the age of 61 from tuberculosis after two years of sickness. From the time he immigrated from Cork, Ireland, in 1892, he had always worked in rubber factories. He started out in

Working Class

This is the house into which my mother was born in 1936. Her father, James O’Connor, was a truck driver for the Providence Journal Bulletin newspaper. Her mother, Helen (O’Keefe) O’Connor, was not working when my mother was born, but did work most of her life as a sales clerk. My grandparents did not graduate

Canadiens

Clinton Colburn and Alberta Ripley, my great-grandparents, came from rural northern Nova Scotia, Canada —specifically, the little farming and timber town of River Philip. Settled in the 1770s, the town is still populated by its immigrant families. They were Methodists from Yorkshire, England, who acquired land grants to settle this “wild” area. The two 21-year-olds