Visiting the Relatives

Cotton Mill

Gilman Road, Gilman, Bozrah, Connecticut

There’s been a mill on this spot in Bozrah, Connecticut, since 1814. Back then, the village was called Bozrahville and a series of cotton mills were here, powered by the Yantic River. On the day of my midsummer visit, the river was reduced to a sad trickle. This is a tiny old mill village, seemingly owned and operated now by the Gilman Company which makes foam board in a newer, bigger factory behind the old one. Back when my ancestors were here, the front building was a cotton mill. It’s now a hodgepodge of different abandoned elements that have survived fires and other changes. The most interesting surviving feature is the unusual smokestack. I’m usually a fan of old mills, but I found this one to be pretty ugly—a kind of Frankenstein monster. Back in the 1870s, cotton twill and sheeting was made here with a number of immigrant Lynch families (from Cahersiveen, Ireland) supplying women and men to the workforce (some quite young). The youngest children went across the street to a one-room schoolhouse that still stands. Other relatives worked upriver at the Hayward Rubber Company. In time, the cotton and rubber mills closed and the Lynches followed the river east to other factory jobs. They weren’t moving up in the world—just moving along.

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 East Cork lived here with her fellow Irish immigrant husband, Michael Kelly. The two married soon after meeting in Providence in the late 1880s. Michael walked to work at the large Weybossett Mills worsted wool company where he was a weaver. A number of his children worked there, too, at different times. In 1910, their oldest daughter, Mary (19), was a “spooler” and son John (17) was a weaver. In 1915, Edward (17) and Catherine (15) were “doffers” at the mill. In 1920, Elizabeth (15) worked as a “winder” at the mill. Meanwhile, mother Mary, while raising seven children, earned money doing housework for a private family.

The Oak Street house where the Kellys lived for many years is gone. A highway mowed down their neighborhood. I’ve had a lot of trouble finding out what happened to the children after the death of their parents around 1930. All that remains are the mills of Olneyville.

1920 Census, Mary Ivers Kelly and family

Puritan Houses

My immigrant ancestor John Guild is believed to have arrived in Boston around 1636 along with his siblings, Ann and Samuel, from Suffolk, England. By 1840, John was joining the Puritan community of Dedham, Massachusetts. He was the 85th signer of the town “covenant” (the contract of citizenship). Dedham is a lesser-known colony which was formed along with Concord as inland enclaves of the new white settlers. Unsurprisingly, the Native Americans were not thrilled by their presence. This house was not John Guild’s, but was the home of his neighbors, Jonathan and Grace Fairbanks. Built in 1636, it’s considered to be the oldest timber frame house in all of North America. John’s daughter Elizabeth left town upon getting married, taking my family tree with her.

Remarkably, I found a drawing online of John Guild’s 1640 house which stood for a couple of hundred years. I’m thankful for the unknown artist who documented it. Finding this illustration reminds me of what a wealth of information there is of the early American white settlers. It’s striking. My small slice of Yankee ancestry is so much easier to research than the rest. Historical societies and libraries are stocked with documents, maps and proud family histories. The early colonists were considered the noble American immigrants. (Actually we don’t refer to them as immigrants.) That’s quite a contrast from my scrappy Irish ancestors who were lost and forgotten in a short period of time

Last Stop

117 Leah Street, Mt. Pleasant Neighborhood, Providence, Rhode Island

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 Chelsea, Massachusetts, finding work with three of his brothers. Later, he worked in Providence where he raised 10 children along with his wife, Kate McMahon. Daniel was a city dweller his entire life—from the south side of Cork City to the north side of Providence, and he never owned a house. During his 40 years in the US, he lived with his family in 11 different apartments.

Working Class

62 Felix Street, Smith Hill Neighborhood, Providence, Rhode Island

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 from high school. They were the children of immigrants and entered the workforce young. The O’Connors lived in the upstairs and the downstairs apartments over a couple of years. Next door lived Helen’s Uncle Jim, an Irish immigrant bricklayer, and his family.

Sitting and drawing from across the street, I watched people come and go, as bass-booming cars drove by. I couldn’t help but notice that no one looked like me, or my family. The Irish Americans are gone. When I think back to my grandparents, I wince at the thought of them being with me now, looking again at their old neighborhood. I fear what they’d say, what they’d think about who lives there now. They had such a tribal mindset. Every nationality had a nickname—most were derogatory. Or, maybe the passage of time could help them see this place from another perspective—that after all these years, the neighborhood is pretty much the same. It’s a working-class place, with a healthy mix of first and second generation Americans living in multi-family houses. Many on the street are probably related culturally, and by blood, just like my family back in the 1930s. Here still live the folks who drive the trucks, and lay the bricks, and stack the shelves.

Birthplace

This was my first home; it’s in the Valley Falls section of Cumberland, Rhode Island. My parents rented it from about 1962-1966. It looks nearly identical in old pictures. The house was built in 1937 for a couple of immigrants—James Donohue and his second wife, Margaret Crozier—who both came with their families when they were young from County Tyrone in what is now Northern Ireland. Between the two of them, they seem to have been related to everyone in Valley Falls, since so many people came from Tyrone to work for the Lonsdale Company, a huge textile manufacturer down the street. James worked for decades in the company’s bleachery and grew up in a mill house not far away.

The Donahue’s daughter Kate was my aunt as well as my godmother. Her childhood house was passed from family to family, so a number of my Lynch cousins were born into this house, too. Actually, cousins of mine still own the house and rent it out. One tenant is my late uncle’s former girlfriend. I met her the day I was drawing. When she saw me working, she thought I was tracking traffic on the street. Who else would sit there with a pad and look back and forth for so long?

10 Pleasant Street, Cumberland, Rhode Island, circa 1950’s

Starting Point

Haywood Mill, McGrath Lane, Yantic River, Lebanon, Connecticut

This stone wall spanning across the Yantic River may be the foundation of the Lynch story in America—a sort of Plymouth Rock. It’s in a wooded area, under a little now-closed bridge, on a dead-end street, in rural Lebanon, Connecticut. This place has been left behind and forgotten, as has so much of my family’s history. Looking back, and building our immigrant story, block by block, has been my mission lately. It’s a project of discovery through drawing, and years of research.

These are the remains of a small mill built for Nathaniel Hayward, the inventor of vulcanized rubber. At its peak in the 1860s, 50 men worked processing raw rubber into workable shape or form for the much bigger rubber mill in the neighboring town of Colchester. Michael Lynch, from the western edge of County Kerry, Ireland, (Cahersiveen) was one of those men. By 1870, there were more Lynches. The story goes that Hayward, in need of workers, sent a ship to Ireland and recruited workers in Kerry. Another story describes how Hayward’s people would recruit in New York City where so many Irish were immigrating after the Great Famine. Either way, Michael Lynch came here with his young family, and before long, lots of family and friends from back home joined him in working here. Some of the women worked as servants for the more wealthy managers. In the 1870s, the mill closed. A number of Lynches stayed and worked in the nearby cotton mill, while others moved down the river to different mill towns.

As I drew, I hoped I was correct in finding the right spot. Driving away, I took a left instead of a right to get back home, and found quickly that I needed to turn around. A short distance away, a street afforded me that opportunity. Its name was Lynch Road.

Canadiens

32 Pekin Street, Smith Hill neighborhood, Providence, Rhode Island

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 came to the US in 1889 as a couple. An apartment in this Smith Hill neighborhood house in Providence, Rhode Island, was their first home. There’s a interesting mystery as to how they started their family. The Colburns had children in 1890, 1891, and 1894, but got married in 1895. Huh? I found the record. Their marriage took place in Boston, not in Providence, by a Justice of the Peace in May 1895. At that time Alberta was pregnant with her fourth child. Had they run away from Canada? I’ve found no Canadian marriage record. Why the wait?

Whatever the family scandal or plan, the Colburns assimilated seamlessly into their new life in America—much more quickly than my many Irish Catholic relatives. By the time of their vows, they were living in their own new home, built by Clinton, who, by then, was a successful carpenter. Later, a true marriage scandal erupted when their daughter Edna (my grandmother) eloped with John Lynch (my grandfather). The Colburn’s Protestant middle-class life was rocked by a Catholic son-in-law. The damage was never fully repaired.

1895 Boston marraige for Clinton Colburn and Alberta Ripley

Bartender

The former McKenna’s Bar, Richmond Street, Downtown, Providence, Rhode Island

Snooky was my grandfather’s nickname. He loved baseball. My mother thinks the moniker came from his playing days. James Victor O’Connor was born in 1906 in Chelsea, Massachusetts, the son of two Irish immigrants from the city of Cork. In 1910, his family moved to Providence, Rhode Island. Snooky was a truck driver for the Providence Journal Bulletin newspaper when he married Helen O’Keefe, also the daughter of Irish immigrants. After a decade or so with the paper, he worked for the city briefly, and then, for the rest of his life, as a bartender. He spent a lot of time on the other side of the bar, too. Snooky was the kind of guy you see in those pictures that fill the walls of old saloons. Actually, he and his brother Frankie were on the wall of regulars at Blake’s Tavern, downtown; I found the photo in my college days.

In 1960, my grandfather tended bar here in a place called McKenna’s Theatre Tap. It was, and still is, one of a number of storefronts that run along the side of The Loew’s State theater—what was once the grandest movie palace in downtown Providence, built in 1928. They’re empty now—the space perhaps used by the theater (now known as the Providence Performing Arts Center, or PPAC. The building was almost torn down in the 1970s, but luckily was preserved and nicely restored. PPAC, host to many Broadway musicals, is an important part of the cultural life of the city.

Loew’s State Theatre, Providence, Rhode Island

Sales Clerk

47 Alvin Street, Reservoir Neighborhood, Providence, Rhode Island

My grandmother, Helen Maria (O’Keefe) O’Connor, worked her entire adult life, mostly as a sales clerk at City Hall Hardware, a long-lost department store on Washington Street, in downtown Providence. She worked her way up to running the lamps and lighting department. Helen’s paycheck was important because her husband, my grandfather, was an irresponsible guy—a drinker and a gambler. Helen was the daughter of immigrants and had an eighth-grade education. Before living in a first floor apartment in this house on the far southwestern edge of the city, she spent her life within a couple of blocks of the Mount Hope neighborhood. Her farthest trip was probably to New York City for her honeymoon. When Helen died at 57, it was devastating to the family.

Driving here, I had a flashback of the route my family took to visit her every Sunday when I was a boy, which is surprising, since I was four years old when she died. I can’t remember my grandmother, though. Drawing on location, my sentimentality was hindered by overhearing the loud squawking of order after order being placed at a take-out window of a Popeyes restaurant, just a few houses away. Later, I surrendered to the temptation of a spicy chicken sandwich.