Those Places Thursday: Gaffney House, Conneaut, Ohio

John Patrick "Jeff" Gaffney

    (1826 - 1892)

Bridget "Bridey" (Quinn) Gaffney

     (1843 - 1914)

Thomas Eugene McGinnis

     (1855 - 1927)

Mary Jane (Gaffney) McGinnis

     (1858 - 1940)

Benita Elizabeth (McGinnis) McCormick

     (1889 - 1984)

When my great-aunt, Benita "Detty" McCormick reached the "young" age of 92, she created a scrapbook of her life.  She devoted the first pages of her scrapbook to her parents and grandparents, Thomas Eugene and Mary McGinnis; and John Patrick and Bridget Gaffney.  

One of those pages contained a photograph (below) of the Gaffney House in Conneaut, Ashtabula County, Ohio.  Located at 58 Mill Street, it was also known to some as the "Conneaut House." The house belonged to Mary Jane's own parents, John Francis "Jeff" and Bridget (Quinn) Gaffney.  

John and Bridget were Irish potato famine immigrants to America.  Both were from County Roscommon- he from Drumbrick and she from Boyle.  Did they know each other before crossing the Atlantic? It's hard to say, but the towns are about five miles apart, so it is possible.  It appears, though, that they married in America. 

John and Bridget lived for a time in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where Mary Jane, their eldest child, was born and baptized in 1858.  They arrived in Conneaut sometime between 1858 and the spring of 1860, when their second daughter, Margaret, was born.  

The United States 1860 Census indicates that John was a "peddler" who owned property in Conneaut valued at $300. The equivalent today would be over $8,000, an impressive amount of money for that era.  Aunt Detty believed he had been a traveling linen salesman, but it seems plausible that he would have sold other textiles as well, such as cotton.  The demand for cotton was far greater than for linen at this time, due to shortages of flax (needed to make linen) and the rising popularity of cotton as a less expensive and more versatile material.  The demand increased dramatically with the advent of the Civil War and the need for cotton to make soldier's uniforms and medical supplies.  These factors must have contributed a decent income to the Gaffney family and made it possible for John and Bridget to afford such a large home as the Gaffney House. 

The house apparently was big enough to house John and Bridget's growing family - they would have 10 children in all - plus additional rooms to rent to the young men who worked on the nearby Nickel Plate Railroad.  

Page from Benita (McGinnis) McCormick's scrapbook

The entry in my Aunt Detty's scrapbook (shown above), describes the Gaffney House:

The Gaffney House, famous Conneaut, Ohio landmark patronized especially by Nickle (sic) Plate railroad men.  About 1880 the hotel was the home of more than 30 unmarried young men under the age of 27 years. + The cross on the addition indicates the window to the "Priest's Room" built by my grandfather John Francis Gaffney to accommodate the circuit priest who came when he could to minister to the growing Irish-American population.

John and Bridget had no idea that one of those young men would become more than just a "renter" to them in the years to come.

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Copyright ©  2013  Linda Huesca Tully

Are you a member of the Gaffney, McGinnis, or McCormick families? Share your memories and comments below.

Wisdom Wednesday: Scrapbook of a Lifetime

Benita Elizabeth (McGinnis) McCormick

          (1889 - 1984)

Phillip Columbus McCormick 

         (1892 - 1981)

From left to right: Phillip and Benita McCormick
with their tour guide, 1962, Piraeus, Greece.

One of the reasons my family moved to California in 1967 was to be closer to my great-aunt and great-uncle, Benita (McGinnis) and Phillip McCormick.  At that time, they were in their late 70s.  

We called them Aunt Detty and Unk Pill. I don't remember how Uncle Phil got his nickname, but I think my aunt's nickname originated when one or more of her siblings could not say "Benita" when they were young children.  "Detty" must have been as close as they could get. The name stuck.

Aunt Detty and my maternal grandmother, Alice (McGinnis) Schiavon, were sisters.  My grandmother having died in 1963, Aunt Detty was my mother's closest relative in California. She and Unk Pill lived about a 30 minute drive from us at Woodlake, a large apartment complex at 820 Delaware Street in San Mateo.  

Our family usually visited them on Sunday afternoons. As youngsters, my sisters and I loved ringing the doorbell by their apartment number on the building directory.  Aunt Detty's warm "Hello, there!" would greet us through the speaker, followed by a buzzer that automatically unlocked the door to let us enter the building. This seemed very sophisticated to us.  We would pile into the wood-paneled elevator for the ride to the third floor.  

My sisters and I often raced each other to see who could get to Aunt Detty's apartment first.  Our parents would remind us to not run round the corner and down the long hallway, but it was hard to resist.  There she was at the door, arms outstretched, dressed in her best clothes as if the most important people in the world were coming to visit. 

Uncle Phil would be waiting inside.  Looking debonair in his tweed golf cap and herringbone blazer, he was ready to take us back downstairs to the swimming pool or for a walk around the large complex if we were too giddy, so my aunt and my parents could talk.

Aunt Detty was a writer, artist, and entrepreneur all her life.  When she was in her 90s, she created a scrapbook of her life's memories, using an old Christmas card sample book.  The page below contains her introduction to the "skeleton" of her life.

Introduction in Benita (McGinnis) McCormick's scrapbook,
 dated May 2, 1982, San Mateo, California

This is the skeleton of my life

And the flesh of it the wonderful

people I met on the way.  They gave it

color and vitality, joy and sadness, poetry and

delight and peace of mind, gave me not only

love, but care and devotion.  For which I thank God.

I hope that in some way the joy of my life has

shown forth to others and served them in the

thought of living a full life.  There are so many more

things I hope to do.

- Benita McCormick -- age 92 / May 2, 1982

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Copyright ©  2013  Linda Huesca Tully

Are you a member of the Huesca, McGinnis, McCormick, or Schiavon families? Share your memories and comments below.

Sentimental Sunday: To the Mothers in Our Lives

Happy Mother's Day 
    Feliz Día de las Madres 
       Bonne Fête des Mères 
           Buona Festa della Mamma
       Hyvää äitienpäivää
    Lá na Máthar Shona ar
       

No matter what your language, "Mother" is the sweetest word of all.

Margaret McCoy
Born Ireland (abt. 1823 - abt. 1857)

Catherine O'Grady
Born Waterford, Ireland (abt. 1835 - 1901)

Adela Baron
Born San Francisco, California (1862 - 1917)

Concepción Celaya
Born Sonora, Mexico (1830 - after 1910)

Alice Gaffney McGinnis
Born Conneaut, Ohio (1895 - 1963)

María Angela Catalina Perrotin
Born Orizaba, Veracruz, Mexico (1893 - 1998)

Emanuela Sannella
Born Accadia, Puglia, Italy (1867 - 1966)

Mary Jane Gaffney
Born Milwaukee, Wisconsin (1858 - 1940)

María Amaro
Born Orizaba, Veracruz, Mexico (1872 - 1970)

Selma Justina Kangas
Born Vasa, Finland (1894 - 1949)

Patricia Ann Fay
Born Stuart, Iowa (1925 - 1997)

Sara Ellen Riney
Born Rineyville, Kentucky (1884 - 1938)

Joan Joyce Schiavon
Born Chicago, Illinois (1928 - 1987)

Linda Huesca
Born Chicago, Illinois (19--   )

Happy Mother's Day to all the wonderful mothers in our lives!

Above, "Happy Mother's Day" in the languages of our ancestors, in order of appearance:  English, Spanish, French, Italian, Finnish, and Irish.

Copyright ©  2013  Linda Huesca Tully

Are you a member of the Baron, Celaya, Fay, Gaffney, Huesca, Kangas, McCoy, O'Grady, Perrotin, Sannella, Schiavon, or Tully families? Share your memories and comments below.

Thankful Thursday: Life's Lessons, Part 3 - The Forces that Shape Us

Gilbert Cayetano Huesca (1915 - 2009)

(This is the last of a three part series.   To read Part 1, click here.  To read Part 2, click here.)

My father and me on my wedding day, 
just before leaving for the church.
 Santa Clara, California, 1984.

A few months before my father died, we had an interesting conversation about trust. I remarked that we were polar opposites in that he was slow to trust new people and situations, while I might have  been too ready to trust them right away.  I wished he could sometimes be more optimistic and less skeptical.

Surprisingly, he agreed with me and added that he wished he could have been that way, too. 

As far as I knew, he had never said this before.  I asked him if something had happened in his life that had influenced him to think this way.  He briefly pondered my question. "I want you to understand," he began, "that sometimes in this life, you have to protect yourself."

Protect yourself.  How many times had he said this before? As my three younger sisters and I grew up and went out on our own in the world, my father often reminded us to be wary of what we said and did.  In his view, we never knew who might be watching or testing us.  He did not want anyone or anything to take advantage of us.  I took it as wanting us to look over our shoulders all the time and thought it was very pessimistic.  Though his advice about thinking ahead made sense, it seemed as though my father's outlook was based on apprehension and pessimism.  I struggled to understand and told myself that for all his wonderful qualities, he would never change in this regard.

Protect yourself.  My father lived through traumatic times, but he saw no reason to wear these on his sleeve.  He witnessed and was the subject of man's inhumanity to man.  These were major life events over which he had no control or could not have predicted, yet they occurred in life's most mundane settings. Being skeptical and cautious - and encouraging his children to do the same - were ways my father thought would protect himself and us from ever being threatened or betrayed again. He had formed a protective shell and would not let anything or anyone penetrate it again.

Protect yourself.  Now that my children are grown and are making their way in the world, I find myself sometimes wanting to protect them, much as my father tried to protect me.  I have to stop myself from telling them what to do and how to do it.  They will make and learn from their own mistakes, as we all do.

In the months that followed our conversation on trust, my father's prostate cancer metastasized and began taking ruthless advantage of his body.  It wracked him with pain,  forcing him to go from being fiercely independent to become more dependent than ever on others for his daily needs.  It was heartbreaking.  He had protected his family all his life, and now we were powerless to protect him.

But a strange thing happened.  When things seemed at their worst, a new light seemed to go on inside my father.  He became more hopeful, trusting, and optimistic.  He greeted everyone with joy and kindness and patience, from his doctors to his hospice caregiver to the man who delivered his medical equipment.  No longer did he see the need to be guarded around strangers.  Now he regarded them differently that he would have before.  He trusted and respected them, even as it became physically harder to interact with them. The cancer had betrayed his body, but it had not betrayed his soul.

He was hopeful, almost to the end, that he could defeat the cancer.  When it became clear that this would not be, his hopefulness was transformed to peaceful acceptance.  My precious father, ever amazing, found grace in giving up the control he had exercised all his life and accepted his new path to the inevitable that awaits us all.


I understand now. Whether or not we understand the reasons for what people do, it is important to accept them for the way they are.  

My father's life and attitude were influenced by an era of politics and culture, among other things, that converged to shape him into the man that he became.  But there were also other forces at work:  the unique combination of values of love, faith, family, honor, respect, discipline, and strength that he learned from his parents in the context of his unique life.   

We were more alike than we were different.  He influenced me to become the person I am today and shared life's lessons from his heart.  He was a loving and devoted father and the best parent anyone could aspire to be.  I will always be grateful for all the time we spent together and the closeness that we shared. 

I had the perfect father.  I love him exactly as he was and would not want him to be any other way.  

To read the other installments in this three part series, please click on the links below:

Part 1:  Church Record Sunday - Life's Lessons: Unbreakable Faith

Part 2:  Wisdom Wednesday - Life's Lessons:  The Defining Moments

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Copyright ©  2013  Linda Huesca Tully

Did you know Gilbert Huesca, or are you a member of the Huesca family? Share your memories and comments below.