Week 2: Challenge - Mary Elizabeth McDonough

As I mentioned in my first post, I am participating in a 52 week challenge put out there by Amy Johnson Crow: to write about 52 Ancestors in 52 weeks. #52Weeks

This week’s “prompt” from Amy was to write about an ancestor who was a challenge to find or an ancestor who faced his or her own challenges. At this stage of my work on my family tree, everything is a challenge - no more “low hanging fruit.” Therefore, I want to talk about an ancestor who faced challenges. I could talk about the son of the guy I talked about last time: David Baty. David’s son George was born in 1825 in Ohio, lived in Illinois, served in the Civil War, migrated to Missouri after the war and ultimately settled in Kansas. I can’t imagine the challenges he and his family faced during all of those transitions. Many other ancestors travelled far and wide to come to the melting pot that is America. Many from Ireland, Germany, and England. Each with a unique story and unique challenges deserving of their own telling.

Yet, I think the person I can most relate to with the challenges in her life is my grandmother, Mary Elizabeth (nee McDonough) Glacy.

Mae (or sometimes “May”) was born in 1883 in what was then called Hilton, New Jersey. Hilton became the town of Maplewood and is where Mae’s grandfather settled in when he emigrated from Ireland (and the town I grew up in). She married my grandfather Anthony Joseph Glacy in 1915 when they both were 31. While, 31 seems late in life for a first marriage, I don’t find evidence of a prior marriage for either of them. Mae was a stenographer for an insurance company in 1910, but appears to have stopped working outside of the home, at least by 1920.

Mae and Anthony had two children: my dad and my aunt. However, one year after my aunt was born, Anthony died of pneumonia. Here’s where I think it gets hard(er) - her husband and family breadwinner is dead, she has a one-year old and a four-year old, and America is on the cusp of the great depression. Yet, somehow, she is able to live on her own with the children, either in her own home or as a lodger. She appears to be able to make a sufficient living as a real estate broker and secretary to support them all (her mother died six years after Anthony and her father had been long estranged from the family).

She did have a couple of brothers, so it is conceivable that they helped to support her and her children. But she never remarried. She was able to send my dad to private high school and my aunt to nursing school. She was a life-long Democrat, but I am not so sure how conversant she was in politics. I remember her telling me that she voted for JFK because he was so handsome. :-)

I wish that I had taken the time to talk to her when she was alive and pick her brain about family history (the regret of every genealogist I know). I haven’t yet determined where in Ireland her grandparents came from (any guesses on how many Micheal McDonoughs immigrated to the US between 1840 and 1850?). My memories of her include the small box of toys she had at her apartment for the grandkids to play with (she lived above the bank on the same block where I grew up) and the worst pasta sauce you’ve ever eaten.

Mae was really short (under 5 ft tall) and I recall laughing at the height she invented for herself for her driver’s license. She was very proud of her Jersey roots and her Irish heritage. She was, as I remember, just a little nutty (the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, right?). She died the summer after I graduated from high school at the ripe old age of 91 (should we all have such good genes).

Here she is in what I think was an engagement picture with Anthony, taken probably sometime in 1915.

Anthony Joseph Glacy and Mary Elizabeth McDonough