Visiting the Relatives

North of Plymouth Rock

It’s about 78 miles from Plymouth Rock to this other rock in Gloucester, Massachusetts, by car—but shorter by sea. I’ve read that Anthony Day, my great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather probably sailed from one rock to the other around 1642. He was one of the earliest white settlers of the area, and not surprisingly, he was from Gloucester, England. He moved around on Cape Ann from Gloucester to Ipswich to Salem and then back to Gloucester. From an old book: “Anthony Day died in Gloucester, April 23, 1707, aged ninety-one years. He did not settle permanently in Gloucester until 1657, when he bought a house and lands in the town, formerly in the possession of Charles Glover, having the rocks called the Poles on one side.”

This boulder is up on Poles Hill, one of a number scattered about on the bald, rocky hilltop. It’s said that Native Americans used this barren hill and these peculiar, isolated boulders, close to shore of the Annisquam River, as an observatory of the sky and seasons.

Day is probably my earliest immigrant ancestor, and he faced a lot of hardships, I’m sure. I can’t imagine how he survived the weather. On the day of my drawing the sun was bright, but the wind off the Atlantic was fierce. I had originally hoped to draw at the shore but that was impossible. Sitting there, however, I couldn’t help but think that the arrival of my ancestor and his fellow “settlers” closed this observatory of the original settlers down and drove away what the old book called the “savages.” Sadly, we stepped into the story of America by kicking the natives aside.

Gun Factory

It must have been an odd transition for the Lynches to relocate from farming the oceanfront bog lands of Cahersiveen, Kerry, Ireland, to the factory life in the small industrial city of Norwich, Connecticut, in the 1800s. Among the places that my ancestors worked, was here, at the big now-empty firearms factory downtown. Connecticut has a long history of gun manufacturing—Colt, Winchester, Smith & Wesson, and Sharps are some famous examples. In Norwich, John Lynch and his son Jeremiah worked for the fast-growing Hopkins & Allen Company for many years. According to town directories, John worked in the “pistol shop” as a molder. The gunslinger Jesse James owned a Hopkins & Allen revolver, but it was made before my Irish ancestors got involved. Back then, there were a number of firearms companies in Norwich, so you could say there were guns all over town—perhaps especially in 1905 when this factory’s entire inventory was stolen from its warehouse.

On the Job

29 Cottage Street, New London, Connecticut

Sitting outside the former home of Margaret Lynch Scott in New London, Connecticut, I feel odd, but dedicated to the mission. A large middle-aged man passes me on the sidewalk, glancing over at what I’m up to, as the bells of St. Mary Star of the Sea Church chime “Oh Come All Ye Faithful.” It’s late January, and I’m sitting on a collapsible stool, hunched over my sketchbook on a sidewalk in 50-degree weather, drawing an ordinary house, on an ordinary street. As I sit and draw, a man comes out of the house to get something from his pickup truck and double takes at me. That’s not uncommon. I wish to be invisible, but I’m not. A week earlier, a kid passed by me twice—the second time looking down and saying “That’s sick.” in reference to my upside-down drawing. Thankfully, nowadays that’s a compliment.

In this series, I’m finding, and visiting, and drawing the sites of my immigrant ancestors. I had no idea there were so many. And I’m being taken to places I’ve never been, even within areas where I’ve lived. Sometimes much has changed in a century and a half, and other times very little. I often find new immigrants living in the exact places my ancestors did, starting out just like my family—at the bottom.
The large man returned a little later with a big bag of fast food under his arm. As he passed, he sang out “Artist on the job!” I like that. I sing it now and then to myself when I’m working in strange places.

1956 New London Directory, Margaret (Lynch) Scott

Mill Workers

I grew up in a mill town. Massive red brick structures like this one sat abandoned along the Blackstone River in Cumberland, Rhode Island. They were the beached whales of the Industrial Revolution. Nowadays, some have been converted to condominiums with wonderful loft spaces. Some are scrappy artists’ studios. Others wait and rot.

Norwich, Connecticut, feels very much the same. Along the swift moving waterways, many textile mills were built in the 1800s. Among them was this one—the Falls Mill, built in 1855 on the Yantic River. In 1860, 350 women and 125 men worked in this place. It’s located at a beautiful and historic spot, next to a loud, misty, tumbling waterfall called “Indian’s Leap.” A number of my immigrant ancestors from Ireland—the Lynches—worked in this factory in the 1880s and ’90s, living within walking distance. James, Maggie, Julia, Jeremiah, Katie, and Delia—they all worked in this mill or the one nearby.

Sitting and drawing, I feel a bit of nostalgia. I’ve always found these hulking giants by the river to be appealing. And yet, I must remember the differences between the Lynches of the past and of those today. For my ancestors working here, the days must have been long and grueling. Looking at an 1880 census, I can see that three Lynches working a nearby woolen mill were ages 14, 12 and 11 years old.

My work, by contrast, consisted of a two-hour session of drawing onsite, followed by more drawing and writing back in my warm home studio. I like my factory better than theirs. I hope my work can draw attention to theirs.

Deported

83 Locust Street, New Bedford, Massachusetts

On May 29, 1884, a huge ship named the Furnessia, pulled up to the little island of Valentia, on the western coast of Kerry, Ireland. It was far too big to meet the shore, as Valentia hosted only little fishing boats. Waiting ashore were hundreds of locals who were leaving for America. A British charity was sponsoring their trip to a new life in America. In exchange, they were relinquishing all holdings in Ireland—abandoning one life for another. This was the third boatload in two years from this place, and boarding were my ancestors, the Lynches. They travelled in the steerage with their neighbors for a week-long Atlantic crossing into the unknown. Fearing another famine, the charity had created what they sometimes referred to as a “deportation” to remove these desperate citizens, rather than worry about them later.

Michael Lynch, my great grandfather was 18 when he left Ireland on the Furnessia, and was 31 when he rented this house in New Bedford, Massachusetts. He had just started his family. His wife, Theresa O’Day, was an American-born woman from Manhattan—the daughter of an Irish immigrant, as well. Rumor has it the O’Days were not pleased that she had married a new immigrant. They had wished to move on, and move up in social status.

There are newspaper articles which can be found online describing the immigrants departing the very ship that took the Lynches to New York. From the Morning Journal, June 5, 1884: “England’s Pauper Poor: Still Being Landed in this Country By the Hundred – And They Are Almost as Rapidly Being Sent Back.” The article goes on to say, “Superintendent Jackson told the reporter that any or all of the assistant immigrants who had no friends in this country would be sent back at the expense of the line that brought them. A year before, immigrants from the same place were described in the New York Herald as “…of the class that should be prevented from living here.” Somehow, the seven Lynches made their way to Norwich, Connecticut, joining family and neighbors from previous trips—starting a new life of hard work in textile mills and service jobs.

Dirty Work

154 Durfee Street, New Bedford, Massachusetts

This is the home of a chimney sweep. A truck out of view said so. Long ago, this was the home of my great-grandfather, the Irish immigrant Michael Lynch. In the New Bedford Directory of 1896, he was listed as a “stonecutter” living at this address. In records he was described throughout his life as a laborer, a stonecutter, a granite cutter and a concreter.

Not far from this house is where Sullivan Ledge was – a granite quarry. Perhaps that’s where he worked for a couple of years while he lived in this town on the southern coast of Massachusetts. Back then, working in a quarry was a dangerous job. The workers were hurt often and they inhaled huge amounts of dust and particles. In 1912 Michael died in what we believe was a work accident near Boston. He was 46 years old. On a death form, it says: “Cause unknown, fractured skull, inter-cranial hemorrhage?” The story goes that one day, he didn’t come home from work. The family learned of his death a few days later.

Not long after the Sullivan quarry closed in 1932, it became a dumping place for toxic industrial waste. What was a dangerous hole became in time, a dangerous field. The EPA has declared it a Superfund Site. Someone will have the dirty job of cleaning that up.

Cold Memories

“Hey, if you need to warm up, you can come in to the office.” That’s what the nice guy at Columbus Square Auto (New London, CT) said to me when he found me drawing on his sidewalk. First he had asked if I was waiting for the bus. Then I told him what I was up to—drawing the house across the street because it was once my ancestors’ home.

He said a woman died not long ago who lived there. She must have been 100 years old. The house was her family’s. Maybe she knew my relatives? I guess it’s possible. John J. Lynch was living here when he died in 1952. His 77-year-old sister, Margaret, lived there, too, with her son, Kenneth, a house painter, staying on a few more years. Both John and Margaret were born in Kerry, Ireland, and had been widowed for decades. John worked in factories for much of his life. His younger sister was a retired nurse. With the old lady gone across the street, it’s likely I’m the only one keeping their memories alive now.

When it was too cold to continue drawing, I retired to the library instead of the auto body office. I feared that I had wrecked the drawing, but after some repairs and touch-ups, the picture looked a lot better. Good enough to share with the nice man. So, I sent a message with the image through their Facebook page. Someone messaged me right back: “looks nice.” It’s been a couple of weeks since I drew there. I wonder if I’m remembered.

1950 New London City Directory, Mary (Lynch) Scott

Waves

St. Lawrence Church, New Bedford, Massachusetts

This is a small piece of a very large stone church in the seaside city of New Bedford, Massachusetts. This small city is known for its big fishing fleet and as the setting for Moby Dick. St. Lawrence the Martyr Church is where my grandfather John Joseph Lynch was baptized in 1895. His Irish-born father started his family here—not as a fisherman, but as a stonecutter. They stayed for two years before moving on to Providence, Rhode Island. Interestingly, the designer of this church was foreign-born Patrick Keely, also from Ireland.
The city the Lynches left behind, and the neighborhood the Church serves, still belongs to the working class. Twenty-one percent of New Bedford’s population is foreign born. In 1900, the percentage of immigrants was about the same, with the big groups being French Canadians, English, Portuguese, and Irish. The wave of immigrants is of Hispanics and Asians.

As I drew, what started out as a mild day, swiftly turned windy and raw. Seagulls screeched in the distance. Across the street, I saw the image of Mother Teresa on a house that I learned was a convent for her religious order. The church bell high in the tower tolled the wrong hour. Shivering with my pencil, I knew it was time to leave.

Later, my wife and I were warmed by a dinner of scallops and scrod, washed down with rum and dark beer. You can call me Ishmael.

By the Tracks

27 Ashburton Street, Providence, Rhode Island

My current project is to draw where my immigrant ancestors lived. In most cases, the houses still stand long after my family members moved on. But other times, things have changed, sometimes dramatically. Often, I find the locations to be by factory buildings and railroad tracks. If a house is gone, it is now likely to be an empty lot, a parking lot, or a highway.

Which leads me to where Mary O’Keeffe and her husband, James Kerrigan, lived in 1900 in Providence, Rhode Island. With my back to the railroad tracks, I found myself drawing in the freshly-paved parking lot of a recently refurbished factory building. To the right was Route 95, the highway that runs up and down the east coast of the United States. Across the street was a parking lot for a billiards sports pub; that is the spot where the young couple lived and began their family. I’ve driven along this short connecting road thousands of times, never realizing it once had houses or residents.
Mary O’Keeffe came to Providence in 1890 from a little town in County Cork. She married another Irish immigrant two years later, but died in 1904 at the age of 37 from typhoid fever. Her husband raised their three children by working at the big screw factory, a short walk from here.

1892 Providence marraige of Mary (O’)Keef(f)e and James Carrigan (Kerrigan)

Upstairs Downstairs

This is not the mansion where Mary Lynch worked and lived in 1900 in Norwich, Connecticut. That was down by the other end of Sachem Street, on broad beautiful Washington Street. This is the multi-family house where she died in 1938. Mary was living at that time with her retired, widowed brother John, her widowed sister Margaret and her nephew Kenneth. She was then described as a “retired domestic.” She was single and 68 years old.

Years before, Mary was one of twelve persons living in the mansion of James and Catherine Shannon. The Shannons had five children and five live-in servants. It seems that everyone on Washington street had servants for their Guilded Age homes. The neighbors, the Osgoods had seven servants for just the Mr. and Mrs.. Mary, listed in the census as the cook for the Shannons, was an immigrant from Ireland. So was Dorothea Byrne, the nurse, and Michael Sullivan, the coachman. The teamster, Frank Ryan’s parents were from Ireland, as were Abbie Clifford’s, who was the “waitress.” That said, to be an immigrant wasn’t always to be a servant in the Shannon house or on the street. Catherine Shannon was born in Ireland. Her husband James Shannon was the son of Irish immigrants, too. Looking next door, one can see a similar situation. Two Swedish-born servants worked for wealthy William McMullin, the steel manufacturer, who was himself an Irish immigrant. Whether upstairs or downstairs, they shared the same new home away from home.