192 Regent Avenue, Valley Neighborhood, Providence, Rhode Island
In 1910, the O’Connors came to Providence, Rhode Island, from Chelsea, Massachusetts, and found an apartment here, in the Valley neighborhood. Daniel, my great-grandfather, was taking a mill job with the big US Rubber Company. He had previously worked at a rubber mill in Chelsea with his brothers Frank and Bernie. The O’Connors were immigrants from the city of Cork, as was Daniel’s wife, Kate (Holland). Chelsea and Providence were heavily industrialized in those days, and immigrants did much of the dirty work. Three children of the family also worked at some point in the rubber mills. During WW2, US Rubber employed 3500 workers in a complex of 29 buildings over 23 acres by the narrow Woonasqatucket River. In 1915, two thirds of the population of Providence was foreign-born or children of the foreign-born. The O’Connors contributed quite a bit to that count: two immigrants with ten children.
On the front door of this house in South Providence are a bunch of political bumper stickers. One says, “We Were All Immigrants Once.” It’s fitting, considering my Irish immigrant ancestor Thomas O’Keefe lived here just before he died in 1919. Another sticker says, “I Support The Campaign for Immigrant Rights.” However, in black marker, “Rights” has been crossed out and “No” has been scrawled in, twice.
I made this drawing with my back to the big, empty, handsome synagogue Temple Beth-El, built in 1911. It served the large population of Ashkenazi Jews in this area at the time, as the home of the Sons of Israel. It changed hands in 1954 to another congregation—Shaare Zedek. Then, in 1984, a fence was put up facing busy Broad Street. Twenty years later, the building was left vacant. Now it’s water-damaged, vandalized, and on a list of Providence’s “Most Endangered Buildings” from the Providence Preservation Society.
The Jews and the Irish have moved out, but South Providence remains a busy, heavily-populated immigrant enclave (as well as an African-American one). Despite my family’s history here, it is completely foreign to me. I know nothing about this place and I’ve worked nearby for decades. I live in a different world while only a mile away.
Wickenden Street Pub, Wickenden Street, Fox Point Neighborhood, Providence, Rhode Island
An unsettling, tragic story from family – about my great-grandfather, Michael Lynch, an immigrant from Kerry, Ireland. The story passed down, was that the young father of four children and husband to a pregnant wife, died in a work-related accident. My research uncovered quite another story which was lost, or more likely, hidden.
Dies Two Days After Arrest
Man Taken Ill at Police Station: Autopsy Shows Skull Fracture
Michael Lynch, 49 Groton Street, who was arrested by police of the Third Station on Aug. 14 and sent to the Rhode Island Hospital for treatment, died there yesterday afternoon of cerebral hemorrhage, probably caused by a fall.
Until late last evening he was unidentified, though it was thought that his name was Michael Lynch or Leach. Immediately after his death the police of the Third Precinct were asked to investigate, and a short time later Lieut. J.J. Toole received a phone call from Mrs. Lynch inquiring about the man. She later called at the hospital and identified the body as that of her husband.
Medical Examiner C.H. Griffin was called and after viewing the body, ordered an autopsy performed. This disclosed the fact that Lynch had received a skull fracture at the base of his skull. In the opinion of the medical examiner the man probably fell while under the influence of liquor, and the fracture received caused cerebral hemorrhage.
Lynch was arrested on Wickenden Street Aug. 14 by the police of the Wickenden Street Station and locked him up on a charge of intoxication. He became ill in the cell and Dr. Griffin, Police Surgeon, was called. He found evidence of cerebral hemorrhage and ordered the man removed to the hospital. The patient never fully regained consciousness, but at one time he mentioned the name Michael and at another, while partially conscious, gave the name Lynch or Leach.
The man was shabbily dressed. No one about the Wickenden Street Station knew him or remembered having seen him before he was taken in charge.
-from the Providence Daily Journal 8/30/ 1912.
1912 Providence Bulletin1912 Death, Michael Lynch1899 Providence Directory, Wickendon Street
106 Pleasant Street, Mount Hope Neighborhood, Providence, Rhode Island
This is a long lost and forgotten tragedy from my family’s immigrant past. (My 84 year old mother had never heard of it.) The story was remarkably told in the local newspaper, which I found to my our despair.
Michael O’Keefe’s Deed Discovered When Nephew Finds Revolver July 2, 1912 The Providence Daily Journal
“See what I found in Uncle Michael’s room,” exclaimed 11 year-old James O’Keefe, to his father, Daniel (my great-grandfather), as he ran into the sitting room of the O’Keefe’s home, 106 Pleasant Street, shortly after 9 o’clock last evening and handed his father a revolver.
Startled, Mr. O’Keefe sprang from his chair, and with his wife (my great grandmother) hurried to his brother’s room. Michael O’Keefe lay stretched on the bed, motionless and apparently lifeless. His brother could see no evidence of a wound on the body, but he immediately notified Lieut. H. D. Robbie of the Chalkstone Avenue station. The latter, after calling an ambulance, hurried to the house in the patrol wagon.
The surgeon accompanying the ambulance from the Rhode Island Hospital needed but a glance to see that Michael O’Keefe was dead and said the man had been dead probably several hours. Medical Examiner Clifford H. Griffin, who was called, found that a bullet from the revolver found on the floor by James O’Keefe has penetrated Michael O’Keefe’s heart. Dt. Griffin thought that death was probably instantaneous.
Michael O’Keefe was 24 years of age and a blacksmith by occupation. He had not been working for about a week owing to an injury to one hand. He remarked to a brother-in-law yesterday that he was discouraged and would “end it all,” but little heed was paid to him, as it was thought he was joking.
The young man boarded with his brother Daniel. He reached home between 5 and 6 o’clock yesterday afternoon and as he walked through the kitchen on the way to his room his sister-in-law said she would have supper ready for him in a short time.
A few minutes later Mrs. O’Keefe heard a pistol shot, but pain no attention to it, as boys in the neighborhood have been starting their celebration of the Fourth (of July) by letting off powder crackers and cap pistols.
Even when supper was ready and Michael did not appear, little attention was paid to the fact, for the other members of the family thought he had fallen asleep and did not care to disturb him. It was not until Michael O’Keefe’s nephew, James, who slept with him, went to the room to go to bed and found the revolver that the discovery was made. The shot heard by Mrs. O’Keefe was probably the one fired by the young man almost as soon as he entered his room after reaching the house.
-reporter unnamed.
July 2, 1912 Providence Bulletin1910 US Census, Providence, Rhode Island
8 Huntington Avenue, Bean Hill Neighborhood, Norwich, Connecticut
President Millard Fillmore (1800-1874) and I are related. It’s true. Really. The 13th US President’s great-grandfather, Captain John Fillmore II (1701-1777), who lived in this house in Norwich, Connecticut, is also my great-great-great-great-great-great grandfather. It’s that simple. Captain John II was the son of an English immigrant, John Fillmore, who came from Manchester, England and settled first in Ipswich, Massachusetts, and then moved down to Connecticut.
I guess I should say that President Millard Fillmore is regularly rated by historians as one of the worst five presidents in history. But, we were never that close a family anyway—Millard’s family obviously stayed in the US (he was from Upstate New York), while my wing of the family went to New Brunswick, Canada, in 1760 following the French & Indian War to take advantage of land that had switched from French to English control. It was in 1888 that my relation to the Fillmores (my great-grandfather Clinton Colburn) reconnected with the US as a Canadian immigrant to Providence, Rhode Island.
105 River Avenue, Valley Neighborhood, Providence, Rhode Island
The O’Connors of the Valley section of Providence were an odd bunch. Big drinkers, I’m told. Or, at least that’s what my mother and uncle said. They should know—they’re O’Connors. My great-grandfather Daniel was an Irish immigrant from the city of Cork, as was my great-grandmother Catherine McMahon. They moved their big family down to Rhode Island from Chelsea, Massachusetts, for work in 1911, and squeezed their ten children into this little rented house in 1925. Their rent was $25 a month in 1930. Daniel worked in the huge US Rubber factory a short distance away, where they made tires. A number of his children eventually worked in the mill, too, before moving on to other jobs, like truck drivers and bartenders and telephone operators. Daniel died of pulmonary tuberculosis in 1932 at the age of 61. The family clung together in the neighborhood for years.
The day I drew this, a man parked right by where I sat. He paid no attention to me, and then crossed the street to enter the house of my ancestors, but not before reading the mail in all four mailboxes by the front door. He and I were doing some investigating.
454 Atwells Avenue, Federal Hill Neighborhood, Providence, Rhode Island
Federal Hill is the “Little Italy” of Providence—the center of Italian food and culture for Rhode Island. But earlier in time, it was an Irish neighborhood with immigrant families from the northern part of Ireland, such as Counties Tyrone and Monaghan. They lived here for a couple of generations. As the 19th century turned to the 20th, the ethnic identity turned as well.
In 1909, the towering Church of the Holy Ghost was built for the growing Italian community. The church and its vast parking lot replaced a small neighborhood which housed my ancestors who were here in 1903. My great-grandfather Michael Lynch, however, had no real connection to this neighborhood. He and his wife Theresa’s families were from County Kerry, in the southwestern corner of Ireland. His extended family and neighbors emigrated to the mill towns surrounding Norwich and New London, Connecticut. Theresa was from southern Manhattan. These Lynches were simply passing through Federal Hill on their way to Providence’s West End, where they would continue to bounce from apartment to apartment.
23 Newark Street, Valley Neighborhood, Providence, Rhode Island
Michael Lynch kept moving. Every year he lived somewhere else. In 1902, he was here, although the house is gone now.
Michael was my great-grandfather – an Irish immigrant with a young and growing family. He alternated between working in factories, and in granite quarries. Why he moved so often is unknown. Maybe it was his inability to find a job, or to like a job, or to keep a job. In sixteen years between the time he married Theresa O’Day, and the time of his untimely death, he lived at eleven different addresses, at least. They never owned a residence. I know this by tracking him with old city directories of Providence, RI and New Bedford, MA. Those books are invaluable, and you find them at city libraries and historical societies. As for me, I’m hard to move. I’m also fortunate to own a house with my wife. In 27 years of marriage we’ve moved once, from a rental to our home.
16 Porter Street, East Cambridge Neighborhood, Cambridge, Massachusetts
The stereotype of oversized Irish Catholic families proves true in my ancestry. Ellen O’Connor, for instance, was one of ten children born in the city of Cork, Ireland in 1863. She and a handful of her siblings came to the US in the late 1880s and started out in Chelsea, Massachusetts (next to Boston), where they grew their own big families.
Ellen had married Patrick Murphy back in Ireland and crossed the Atlantic with their two children. They then had ten more children as they flocked from apartment to apartment in the crowded neighborhood of East Cambridge. Ellen died at age 44, leaving all those kids with their father, a laborer by profession. The youngest was five. In 1902, the Murphys shared this little house (centered in the picture) with Patrick’s brother, I believe. How big the other family was is unknown… and scary to think about.
1900 Map of East Cambridge, Massachusetts1910 Death Certificate of Ellen O’Connor Murphy
17 Grant Street, Federal Hill Neighborhood, Providence, Rhode Island
It’s not easy to draw what isn’t there anymore. That’s what tracing your immigrant ancestors can lead to. In this case, the house where Irish-born Michael Lynch and his family lived in 1909 is gone. What’s left is a parking lot for the Grant Mill Condominium across the street. Grant Mill used to be enormous—part of a group of mills creating Fruit of the Loom branded cotton products. I don’t think Michael worked there. I think he worked as a granite cutter at a quarry in a neighboring town. He changed jobs frequently—the family moving from apartment to apartment—many of which were next to factories, like that of many of my ancestors. Factories or railroad tracks, usually. Providence, where many of them lived, was a busy, polluted industrial town then (at the turn of the last century)—such a contrast for Michael Lynch, who spent the first eighteen years of his life on a small patch of green land in rural western Ireland, on a cliff overlooking the Atlantic.
Visiting the Relatives 