In The Beginning

When we were young, our grandmother would frequently tell me and my five siblings we were direct descendents of Marie ("Let them eat cake") Antoinette. Of course we didn’t believe her. This was after all, the same woman who would take us to neighboring Fall River (a town in Massachusetts known almost exclusively for Lizzie Borden giving her father 40 whacks) and tell us it was New York City. A town filled with old factories with a smell reminiscent of grease and decay, Fall River would in no way be mistaken for New York City. As we grew older, she continued this tale of Marie Antoinette and we continued to mock. Out of frustration, she visited us one day toting a very large and as it turned out, very expensive book detailing that we were, in fact related to Marie Antoinette. We should have listened.

On to our 20’s, 30’s and 40’s, we became engrossed in our own lives, our children’s lives, school, work etc. Our parents made periodic attempts to tell us about their parents, their grandparents. Did we listen? No we did not. Oh, maybe some tidbits sunk in but mainly we were too busy to listen. My father died in 1986 and with him died any hope in learning about his parents, both of whom were born and grew up in Ireland. In 1999 I left my husband and moved in with my mother. I realized that I wanted to learn more about my heritage, my ancestors. My mother and I talked for hours about her memories and with my encouragement she wrote bits and pieces of what she knew…how she and my father met, the years my grandparents were born and where, stories about her godparents who were born in Denmark. Soon we had stacks of paperwork, newspaper clippings, pictures. In 2002, she died and my brothers, sisters and I became orphans, and all links to our past died with her.

In 2005, I bought a scanner and scanned every single page, clipping and picture my mother gave me and for Christmas presented each of my siblings with a binder filled with our family history. But I wanted more. I searched online at various websites, ancestry.com; familyhistory.com, familysearch.com, cyndislist.com and many, many others. I finally joined ancestry.com and started to search for my family roots in earnest.

I found we had a great aunt we didn’t know existed. I found pictures of our grandmother in the newspaper archives. I found our grandfather’s obituary and learned he was considered a “prominent citizen”. I learned our grandfather was a “jitney” driver. For a short ride taxicab drivers charged a nickel or a “jitney” and soon the word became synonymous with taxi.

I wanted more and the search was on.