Visiting the Relatives

Janitoress

State House, Smith Hill Neighborhood, Providence, Rhode Island

The Rhode Island State House sits like a beached white whale on a hill overlooking downtown Providence. It is massive and relates to none of its surroundings on Smith Hill. Completed in 1904, the magnificent marble building makes a big impact from every angle. Its dome is the fourth largest of its kind, behind Michelangelo’s St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, the Taj Mahal, and the State Capital of Minnesota. At night, it’s bathed in bright lights.

I grew up with some exciting tales about my family’s connections to the landmark. There was talk that my great grandfather, Clinton Colburn (an immigrant from Nova Scotia), could have participated in the topping of the dome with its famous sculpture, the Independent Man. He was, after all, the Providence building superintendent for a period of time. However, my records show that he had that job 20 years too late for that event. As a builder however, he could perhaps have worked on the construction of the building. And maybe another great grandfather—Irish-born Michael Lynch, a stone worker by profession—could have worked on the vast marble project. We just don’t know.

But beyond speculation is proof of one immigrant ancestor who indeed walked the esteemed halls of the State House. She was the childless widow Johanna Cashman Ivers from East Cork, Ireland. In the censuses of 1915 and 1920, it is stated that she held the positions of “janitress” and “house cleaner” at the State House. I trust that she served her constituents well.

A Church Reborn

Santa Rosa Church, Chelsea, Massachusetts

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 he is a deacon who has been involved with the church for many, many years.

In 1904, my grandfather was baptized here, along with four other children of Daniel O’Connor and Kate McMahon. The immigrant couple from Cork City were married there too, in 1901. That was nine years after Daniel came to America, and three months after he became a naturalized citizen. Kate, from the same parish back home, had arrived a year before their wedding. Daniel’s brother Frank O’Connor was married in St. Rose Church too, and his children were baptized there, as well.

In 1908, a terrible fire swept through Chelsea, destroying much of the city, St. Rose included. But parishioners rebuilt. Today, the church looks the same, but the community has been rebuilt. Santa Rosa, as it’s also called now, offers six services every Sunday—three in Spanish, two in English, and one in Vietnamese.

On a recent Sunday, I revisited to draw some more, and stepped into the church when I noticed a service was starting. I was curious to see the inside. Upon entering, I was struck by the joyful brass band blaring from the altar, and the parishioners rhythmically clapping as the priest entered the room. I stood wide-eyed with my back to the wall. Like the stained-glass window next to me, which was dedicated to the “Deceased Members of the Ancient Order of Hibernians,” I was there representing the past.

1901 Marraige of Daniel O’Connor and Kate McMahon, Chelsea, MA

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 great courage (more than I have), but they had connections.
When looking at old censuses, I found other family members not just in the same cities, but sometimes on the same street. The more I dug into old documents, the more I uncovered a web of associations. Many immigrant ancestors started out by living with relatives upon arrival. Just like we see today.

When walking through the oldest Irish immigrant cemetery in Providence, I was stunned to find the small town of Cloyne, Ireland, on a tombstone from a generation before my ancestors came from there.

Chain migration is a term used by scholars to refer to the social process by which migrants from a particular town follow others from that town to a particular destination. The destination may be in another country or in a new location within the same country. -Wikipedia

This was the home of my great grandfather’s (Daniel O’Connor) older brother, Frank. He arrived a couple of years before Daniel, and hosted him in his first apartment down the street. Frank moved here in 1902 and started his family. A renter, he moved to another place in 1905, then another in 1907, then across Boston in 1910. He, like Daniel, worked in rubber factories. His descendants probably branch out all around me now. I never knew they existed before this project.

Today, this house in Chelsea, Massachusetts, is in tough shape. It houses a couple of apartments with Hispanic names on the mailboxes. While I sat and drew, a man came by and asked if I was selling the place. I assume from his perspective I looked more like a landlord than a tenant.

1902 Death of Jeremiah O’Connor, Chelsea, Massachusetts

You Must Ask

190 Crescent Avenue, Chelsea, Massachusetts

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 property sits on a street of light industry by the railroad tracks. Visiting, I was immediately interested in drawing the old cab with four flat tires by the entrance. However, the fence was closed and locked. Returning another day, the gate was open, but a nicer taxi blocked the view of the one I wanted to draw. A third time, the lighting was terrible, with the sun behind dark clouds. Being persistent, I returned a fourth time and stepped just inside the now open front gate and sat to draw with pleasure. I had caught my prey.

However, not long after I was settled in, a truck pulled up from across the long parking lot and a gruff voice called out to me.

“Excuse me!” called a man in the truck with what I guessed to be an Eastern European accent.
I popped up and swiftly walked over with my sketchbook to show him what I was up to. I was sure he’d be flattered and interested.

“I’m an artist and I’m making a drawing of this place where my immigrant ancestors lived back in…” I blurted out, into the open passenger-side window.

The man cut me off mid-sentence with an “I don’t care what you are doing.” He made no eye contact, he looked straight ahead out the windshield.

I tried again, “…my family came here long ago and I’m drawing to…”

“This is my property.” He sternly told his steering wheel.

I quickly turned the page of my sketchbook to my drawing of the local church and told him that I was drawing all around the neighborhood. He turned just enough to see the church drawing.

“You must ask.” He said. “You must ask to do things on my property.” It was his place now.

Beginning to feel uncomfortable, I then apologized profusely, and asked politely if could stay, and told him that I meant no harm.

He barely nodded and said “You must ask people.”

I thanked him and he drove back out of the lot. Not once had he looked at my face.

I should have asked.

I drew on with less pleasure, but with just as much interest.

Leaving, I stopped and thought about how my ancestors, according to old maps, would have overlooked a busy industrial railroad across the street back in 1908. I wondered what it was that was across the street now—this nondescript building that attracted such busy traffic by car and by foot. People coming, people going. Three young women passed by, one griping of “false positives.” Searching online, I found that this building is a methedone clinic.

1908 Katherine O’Connor birth, Chelsea, Massachusetts

Moving, Moving

39 Spencer Avenue, Chelsea, Massachusetts

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 their entire lives. Seemingly, three Hispanic families rent here now. Why my ancestors moved so often can only be guessed. However, it does present a seemingly endless number of locations for me to draw.

James O’Connor, Birth Registry, 1906 Chelsea, Massachusetts

Builder

194 and 196 Ohio Avenue, Washington Park neighborhood, Providence, Rhode Island

My great grandfather Clinton Colburn built both of these houses in the Washington Park section of South Providence. He built the one on the right, and lived there while he built the other on the left—his eventual home for the rest of his life. He described himself as a carpenter when he was a young immigrant, and later as a builder. For a period of time, he served as the building inspector for the City of Providence. In a much shorter time than my other immigrant great grandparents, he had established himself in middle-class America.

The Colburn side of the family always seemed so far away to me, although they lived in the same city as all my other ancesters and at the same time. Unlike the Lynches, O’Connors and O’Keefes, the Colburns were not from Ireland. Clinton Colburn emigrated from northern Nova Scotia in 1889 along with his future wife, Alberta Ripley. They were the children of huge rural families whose roots in North America went back for generations.

The Ripleys came to Canada as part of group referred to as the Yorkshire Emigration. They were granted land to settle in Nova Scotia, and arrived in 1774. Coincidently, the name of the ship that the Ripleys took to the new world was called Providence.

Through the years, the Ripleys intermarried with Loyalist families (relocated Americans who had supported the British in the Revolutionary War) as well as Scottish immigrant families. Through my research, I have found to my dismay, that some of those Loyalists and early settlers had slaves.

The Colburns have been in North America just as long, or maybe longer than the Ripleys. Richard (Colbourne) served as a defender of Fort Cumberland (in New Brunswick, Canada) in the Eddy Rebellion of 1776. For his military service, he too, was granted land to settle. Where he was from has not been definitively answered. Perhaps he was originally a Loyalist from America.

Old and New Immigrants

28 Eleanor Street, Chelsea, Massachusetts

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 Jews in 1895 are now primarily Hispanic. Actually, Chelsea is one of three cities in Massachusetts in which Hispanics are now the majority population (67%). The biggest immigrant groups here currently are from El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala.

In the middle of these little row houses, behind the brick wall, lived my immigrant ancestors/great-grandparents Daniel and Kate (McMahon) O’Connor. They started their family there, and stayed for only a year before moving elsewhere in the neighborhood. Walking along nearby Broadway, the only Irish-named business that I could find was a funeral home.

1901 Daniel J. O’Connor US Naturalization

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 Daniel O’Connor might have had of his new home, back in 1893. It certainly wouldn’t be one of spacious skies and amber waves of grain. Rather, it would be one of soot, screeches and stink.

Not everything would be unfamiliar for this immigrant, however. Daniel was a urban kid from the city of Cork, Ireland, and he followed his older brother Frank to Chelsea, Massachusetts—living with him and his family at first. At that time, this crowded little city across the river from Boston was swarming with Irish immigrants—as well as other new groups such as Jews from Russia. Like almost all American immigrants, my ancestors came uninvited, and they took on the least desirable jobs. For Daniel and Frank, that was working in the factory they faced, the Revere Rubber Company. They were “mixers” according to the 1900 census. Lots of men who lived on their street worked there.

Before me now is a sad shell of the showcase structure featured in an advertisement of 1918, when it was built. My relatives worked in the building that preceded this one. My guess is that it was the Great Chelsea Fire of 1908 that brought the older building down. By the time it was rebuilt, Daniel and his young family had started again in a another industrial city—Providence, Rhode Island, where he would work in another rubber factory for the rest of his life. Frank moved on to Roxbury, on the other side of Boston, and also returned to work in a rubber factory. Their children went on to be service workers rather than factory workers.

New City

46 Regent Avenue, Valley Neighborhood, Providence, Rhode Island

Daniel O’Connor moved his growing family to Providence’s Valley neighborhood from Chelsea, Massachusetts in 1915 to work in the huge US Rubber plant just down the hill. He and his wife Kate (McMahon) were immigrants – they grew up in the same parish in Cork City, Ireland. By this time, they had seven of their eventual ten children – including my grandfather, James who was the third of the bunch.

A Certain Age

99 Doyle Avenue, Mt. Hope Neighborhood, Providence, Rhode Island

My great grandmother, Ellen (Ivers) O’Keefe lived in the first floor apartment of this house in Providence with her family in 1935. She was the only immigrant ancestor I ever met. Ellen came from Ireland in 1901 at the age of 21, and only because she lived to be over a hundred years old, did I get to hear her sing-song accent.

Actually, her age itself is a good story. When she turned 100, there was big party for her. Local civic and religious leaders attended. Only now, looking back at very old Irish records, can one see that she lied about her age for her entire married life – protective of the fact that she was older than her husband. At her party, she alone knew that she was actually 101. She took the fib to her grave -the wrong date is carved on her gravestone.