Notes from Conversations with Mom: 1 June 2011

1 June 2011 

It was on this day that I started keeping dated notes when I talked to Mom on the phone. We talked almost every day for a while there. Wish I’d dated all the notes prior to that but am happy to have what I do.  

On this day Mom wanted to talk about WWII and the boys who served. There were a lot of them too, and ours wasn’t the only family who sent their boys off. Mom’s brother Camey Williams joined the Army and went to California for training. His best friend was Lonnie Kyle and he’s related by marriage on Mom’s side, somehow. Have just spent the better part of an hour trying to figure it out and can’t work it out. Ever get a stray person such as Lonnie Kyle? You know that there’s a connection but you just can’t make the pieces fit. 

 

Mom’s maternal grandmother Mam Whetstone is pictured with Nan Kyle in this photo above. Just don’t know who Nan is to Mam. This picture is dated 1939 and Nan appears to be pregnant. With Lonnie’s younger brother? Finding out who the Kyles were to our family is going to drive me crazy. 

While Camey was in California, so far away from little Frostburg, their hometown, he sees Lonnie! Lonnie yelled out, “Last time I saw you, you had pneumonia!” Which is strange thing to say, I first thought. 

But it was the truth! Camey and Lonnie and a bunch of the boys were playing down by the creek in January. It was frozen over, solid. Except for that spot Camey found when he cracked the ice and fell in. And he got pneumonia. He did however get an ambulance ride to the hospital. His first one. He was excited, very ill but excited. 

Lonnie also said that the last time he saw Camey he was a skinny little kid. Now, he said that Camey had turned into a man.  

 

 

That’s Uncle Camey on the right. I think this photo might have been taken in Frostburg at some point.  And I have no idea where that top one was taken, but it's not Frostburg.

 
The notation on this picture says that he was in Switzerland.  

Mom’s sister Dot had a childhood sweetheart named Harold. They grew up, fell or stayed in love and married. Uncle Harold Conrad also served but in the Navy. Cousin Steve knows his Naval history and stories of his service and someday I’ll have to get more information from him. Meanwhile, here he is in uniform. 

With his new bride, Aunt Dot.

 

 

Here he's on board a ship in the Pacific. Cousin Steve will know all of the details.

Thank goodness for cousins!

On Dad’s side of the family, his brother Bernie Kelly, was off to the European Theatre of war. When he got there, he spotted his brother-in-law Pete Fraley, his sister Christiana’s husband. Once they met again, Pete and Bernie started kidding around and Pete told him he was not regulation anything and was one of those “undesirables” they talk about. They had a good laugh! 

Kidding around was a brother thing in our family and it pops up in many family stories. Bernie was, I thought, the funniest of the uncles. Dad was funniest when he was with Bernie and they got into some close scrapes too, but all in fun. I don’t think anyone got arrested for any of their pranks, but I’m not totally certain.  

It’s said that Bernie stole watches from POWs, but maybe that’s just a made-up story told by the two other brothers. One day Bernie was walking around camp and saw this officer looking particularly pompous and thought, “Who does he think he is.” Then he realized that it was his brother Delbert!  

As I heard the story, the day the war was over in Europe Bernie grabbed a jeep and drove off to find Delbert to celebrate. Against odds, they found each other! 

 

Delbert John Kelly on the top and on the bottom, Bernie Kelly.  

 

Over the River (the Potomac) and on to St. Patrick's Church



That's the Potomac River there on the left in the photo up top, and it's the stretch of river along which our Farrell, House, Hartley, and Bigerstaff ancestors lived. It's near the long ago town of Magnolia, West Virginia, now all but gone except in the memories of a small group of folks. See that ridge line on that left far mountain? And see where it dips down, presumably to meet the river behind the greener ridge that rests in front of it? Right along in there is where Magnolia sat. And a bit down river and across from Magnolia still stands an old mission church, St. Patrick's Catholic Church in Little Orleans, Maryland. It sits up the hill aways from the river and the C & O Canal that runs next to it, looking too beautiful and historic in the warm summer sun. It captured my imagination at first sight.

Actually, we began our day driving east from the Western Maryland town of Frostburg in Allegany County where Mom lives to Little Orleans. Brother drove because he knows the area all around Little Orleans where a friend had a hunting cabin. He's been there many a time with the guys, and even thought the cabin was back in the thick woods, at night they'd all drive to a gathering place in Little Orleans, a town that somehow bills itself as the Sturgis of the East because of a motorcycling event. This year it's taking place between August 6 to 10. The rest of the year it's as peaceful as can be.

But up on the hill a bit is our target: a quiet county church. Take a look at these photos below from Cousin Joseph. Beautiful!

Visit the page for St. Patrick's Catholic Church on Find A Grave here.

How I came to visit this place is a story unto itself and so let me share that first. (Isn't it funny in genealogy how one thing for sure leads to another?) It starts with a DNA match over on AncestryDNA. Mom matched cousin Joseph and he was a wealth of knowledge! He shared that our mutual ancestors living as they were along the river on the West Virginia (formerly Virginia) side were Irish Catholic immigrants who boated across the river to attend services at St. Patrick's on the Maryland side. He found some of his Irish ancestors buried there and so did Cousin Rich.

The oldest church records from about the 1830s were still available and could be seen at St. Peter's Church in Hancock, Maryland. WOW! I imagined going there and finding the Farrell's registering baptisms and confirmations. Maybe I'd find the burial records for Thomas and Judah Farrell, our ancestors. But more on that later.

So up the hill we drove and parked. Mom waited in the car while brother and I quickly walked the grounds searching for Farrells. I took as many photos of stones as I could with the intention of eventually checking Find a Grave to see if another photo is needed. The size of the cemetery surprised me. The last picture above is deceptive and didn't give me any idea of the depth of the grounds. I had also expected to find the oldest stones closest to the church, but I could see right away that old stones were everywhere, so my strategy of looking for old stones to save time was not going to work. So up and down we walked. We got nothing. Bummer.

Oh, well. Sometimes you look and find and sometimes you look and don't find. When I just started with genealogy I was like a genea-junkie and always expected that "found it" high every time out. But now I've learned that I better just relax and enjoy the looking too. And I did enjoy this visit to the old mission church here in Little Orleans just for being there. And besides, just because I didn't find them doesn't mean that they aren't buried there. Sometimes there are some things we just don't get to know with certainty.

The bed of the old C&O Canal. These days it sits next to a hiking trail and picnic park.

 

Old stone work next to the hiking trail. Lush green beauty all around.

Down at the edge of the Potomac River, looking east towards Magnolia.

 

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Random Photo Saturday: kids at play

I check the stats for this blog regularly, not because I'm expecting the modest number of visitors to grow, but because I'm looking for patterns. Have noticed that posts that appear on the Friday - Saturday - Sunday schedule don't really get looked at until the next week. Guess everyone is busy playing "Saturday Night Genealogy Fun" with Randy Seaver:) Because of that and because maybe my weekend posts aren't usually very thrilling but your weekend activity is, today let's try something different. I'll go find a couple of random photos from the archive and post them with a bit of commentary. How's that? Shouldn't be too taxing for either you or I. Now for the photos!

 

 

That's my Gandma Kelly, Helen (Zeller) Kelly (1894 - 1985). She's what, maybe five years old? She's in her back yard of their home at 89 West Main Street, Frostburg, Allegany, Maryland. The yard was resplendent with fruits, vegetables, chickens, roses and other flowers, and as you can see, dogs. Her father, Gus Zeller (1858 - 1927) owned barber shops in Western Maryland and his shop on Main Street at the heart of the market district was a showplace of mercantile marketing. It sported a ten-foot barber pole and in the window passersby were entertained by a giant fish tank that held "fancy fish" or colorful goldfish that entertained men, women and children alike. There was a flair to most everything he did so if there were to be dogs they had to be special too. I'd heard about Grandma's dogs well before I saw this old photo so I wasn't too surprised to see this grouping of white pooches. Grandma is likely playing "baby" with them and the one in her carriage seems to look at us with the thought, "For gosh sakes, save me from this child!"

 

 



 

I'd be hard pressed to name a favorite cousin because I do really like them all. Here are the two children of my aunt Helen Lee (Kelly) Natolly (1914 - 1989), Chrissy and her brother Tom who we all called Tommy Lee. They lived in the house just one door west of where Grandma and Grand Pop Kelly lived at 89 West Main Street. When Grandma Kelly's father (Gustav Zeller 1858-1927) passed he left the house to Grandma. Her mother, who all called Ma (Moretta (Workman) Zeller 1859- 1946) lived with the family.

Chrissy was born in 1940 and was just enough older than I that she saved special outfits for me after she was done with them. I loved visiting and trying on her old dresses, especially when she started going to school dances. I remember a beautiful deep turquoise satin number with a bubble skirt. Wore it to one of my very first high school dances. Thank you Cousin Chrissy!
Her brother was too much older - and a boy, yuck - so that he and I didn't have much in common and I didn't know him as well as his sister. She was fun and he was, well, a boy. Yuck.
Chrissy got married and lived in the house just opposite her parent's house and Grandma's house on Main Street.

 

 



 

That's me there. I'm about five years old and maybe about the same age as Grandma in that picture of her with the dogs. I'm riding my tricycle on East Main Street in front of the apartment Mom and Dad rented until 1952 when we moved from little Frostburg in the western mountains of Maryland to the big city of Cleveland. When we lived here Mom and I walked everywhere, from our place on East Main Street, uptown to the main business district, and then further up to Grandma Kelly's house on West Main Street. We'd also walk to Mom's parents house and visit with Grandmother Williams, and Grandfather if he was home. We walked and walked. I thought it was the best!

 

A word about the name of the street. It was named Union Street and the two ends were North Union and South Union. About 1938 it was renamed Main Street and the two ends became East Main and West Main. Whenever I think about that change I have to laugh. What the heck happened? The four compass points remain constant so how did the street change from north and south to east and west. East and west is correct on the compass, so the unfortunately mistaken naming was the earlier north and south. Anyway, a bunch of streets were renamed about the same time and Mom's beloved Loo Street was renamed to College Avenue. It really helps to know this when looking at older records! Loo Street? Where's Loo Street??

 

 

The URL for this post is: http://nutsfromthefamilytree.blogspot.com/2014/06/random-photo-saturday-kids-at-play.html