I wish I knew

More about all things family that means my Mom’s as well as my Dad’s.

My cousins have been working on our genealogy for years on my Dad’s side, but Mom’s side’s mystery lingers large.

Most of that side knows very little, since I did ask.

I do know that Mom’s Mom is whom I was named for, after she was killed in a car accident six months before I was born, at a mere fifty-seven years old. Grandpa and Grandma were driving from New Jersey to Miami back in late 1949 or early 1950, never made clear. Grandpa had a heart attack and that is all I know he ended up in the hospital and she ended up dead. It was my Mom’s last time that she would be willing to fly in a plane, since the whole experience was devastating to her, naturally, and she never wanted to fly again or drive a car.

Mysteries are rampant on my mother’s side and that is why I thought it would be very interesting to find out more.

She had a bunch of interesting cousins involved in the arts and an aunt in particular that was legally blind who was an artist and a Bohemian or Hippy before it was in vogue and lived and worked in Greenwich Village NYC during the first part of the twentieth century for many years after, I think her name was Minnie. And a first cousin who was an actor and voice over artist named Mason Adams who was Lou Grants’ boss, yep the show with Mary Tyler Moore. His son attended my Mom’s funeral back in 1982.

And that is part of the reason her Mother’s maiden was a very common name, and although I do know that her Mom came from Liverpool England around 1877 at the age of two.

My Mom was the oldest of five and all are gone now, and my first cousins are slowly diminishing too, either passing away or not interested in being very close. Most are spread hither and yon.

When we were able to talk there was a story that one told me about my Russian Grandpa, my Mom’s Dad that he killed a man who was raping his sister way back in the early 1900’s in Russia, he came here after that. But my Grandpa was a sweetheart and I tend to believe its feasibility of it all, he would protect his family no matter what as fantastical as it may seem to most. But that is way over the top from the man I knew, until I read the below information that I must have forgotten from my world history class in high school.

“The revolution of 1905, an unprecedented empire-wide social and political upheaval was set in motion by the violent suppression on January 9 (Bloody Sunday) in St. Petersburg of a mass procession of workers, led by the radical priest Georgiy Gapon, with a petition for the tsar. Bloody Sunday was followed, nationwide, by workers’ and students’ strikes, street demonstrations, spates of vandalism and other periodic violence, assassinations of government officials, naval mutinies, nationalist movements in the imperial borderlands, and anti-Jewish pogroms and other reactionary protest and violence. In a number of cities, workers formed Soviets, or councils. At the end of the year, armed uprisings occurred in Moscow, the Urals, Latvia, and parts of Poland. Activists from the zemstva and the broad professional Union of Unions formed the Constitutional Democratic Party, whose initials lent the party its informal name, the Kadets. Some upper-class and propertied activists called for compromise with opposition groups to avoid further disorders.”

For more info goto: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Russia_%281892%E2%80%931917%29

He was the type of grandpa you would sit on his lap and he would give you presents, mostly money, and he loved to garden. He had been a dairy farmer when he first moved here that is Bayonne NJ and sold his land and farm to Borden in 1913 and became a housing developer in Elizabeth and built developments and apartment buildings as well as hospitals and a Y even. He died in 1958 from another heart attack again while wintering in Miami and that is the winter of 1957/58 that Mom and I trained, via train travel, down to see him in the hospital and then he passed away.

Amazingly with all those incredible bits of info I do not know my great grandparents names or my grandparents siblings names or those who came before them… now that would be very interesting to find out through genealogy.

Oddly enough when my cousin told me about what my grandpa had done my reaction was one first of disbelief and then mulling it over ever so slightly I said that felt that Grandpa was a hero saving his sister like that!

My cousin was speechless or if not that I somehow have forgotten what he did say to my response, but I do not believe he thought I would take it that way and that he was trying to shock me and we were adults at the time not kids, within these last ten years or so if I recall.

Geez, if anyone out there is from my Mom’s side I would love to hear from you and perhaps we could hash it out or maybe they know what I don’t or more or have been secretly doing a search genealogy wise.

Any-who, on that note of way too much info, allow me to be the very first to wish all of you a very happy good night and ask you all to kindly count all your blessings and share all your overages with you know who and we will too!

And next time please be here or be square, ya hear!

Below is my Mom’s family, that is her mom and dad and her siblings, each two years apart in age, for her Sweet Sixteen circa 1927 picture. She is the one in the middle on the chair the eldest and from this picture I am sure you tell why she was chosen to play Anne of Green Gables in her school play. Dark auburn hair and pencil thin.