Week 12 – 2020: Popular #52Ancestors

I’d always known that my grandmother, “MaMae,” was a sort-of publicity hound and that she thought she was “all that and a bag of chips.”

Born Mary Elizabeth McDonough, Mae was such a hoot. Before her death in 1975, she stood quite a bit less than five ft. tall, but her driver’s license had her at like 5’ 6”. While she added to her height, she was a typical ancestor in that she reduced her age. When she died at ninety-one years-old, I think we were a bit shocked to learn she was that old. She apparently lied about her for many years: 1940 U.S. census recorded her age as forty-six when she was really fifty-six.[1]

Mae was born in 1883 in the Hilton section of my hometown of Maplewood, New Jersey. She was one of six children born to Michael McDonough, a first-generation Irish-American farmer and Sarah Elizabeth (Lizzie) Goetter, a first-generation German-American. Mae was baptized at St. Leo Roman Catholic Church in Irvington; the same church were her parents were married.[2] Since Michael and Lizzie were from different towns and different ethnic groups, it may have been their Catholic faith that brought them together. St. Leo’s was established in 1878 and was the closest Catholic church to where Michael and Lizzie lived.[3]

I’ve mentioned before how much I adore old newspapers – so much good stuff! My only “problem” is that more old papers are being put on-line all the time so that you can’t ever say that you’re done with a particular search or website. A great aid in keeping up-to-date with newly published newspapers (and other things) is a website called The Ancestor Hunt (www.theancestorhunt.com). If you subscribe (for free), they will send you a weekly email with all of the new collections that have been published by many genealogy websites, including Chronicling America (http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov) and other historical newspaper publishers (e.g. Fulton Postcards at https://fultonhistory.com/Fulton.html). So, yay for me because the February 28, 2020, email noted that New Jersey had just added four new titles to Chronicling America and all were Newark newspapers – the only large city near my Maplewood ancestors!

Of course, I was right in the middle of some other project, but I couldn’t wait to see what nuggets these newly published papers might have for me. I was happily rewarded for this detour as I found fourteen articles and even resolved the mysterious death of a great-uncle.

For my grandmother MaMae, I found two articles about her and her sisters parties. On 2 January 1912, the Newark Star and Advertiser reported that Mae, Cecilia, and Marguerite McDonough gave a New Year’s party for a number of friends.[4] Gosh, I would have loved to have been there.

Mae (“assisted” by her sisters) was also responsible for another party three years earlier – a “Chuck-A-Luck” party to benefit St. Leo’s Church.[5] Apparently, Chuck-A-Luck, also known as “Birdcage” is a game of chance where the player places bet on the outcome of the roll of three dice.[6] These days, it is most often played at carnivals and, as here, for a charity fundraiser.[7]

I love this article because it mentions who attended including the five people who played music for the gathering (although it does not indicate what instruments were played). Attended by many people from the surrounding communities and from Brooklyn and New York, the article mentions Mae’s mother, sisters, a brother and sister-in-law, an aunt and an uncle. It also shows that Mae’s future husband (my grandfather) was one of the party-goers. She and Anthony J. Glacy were married three years later at St. Leo’s (of course). Noticeably absent is her father who I think was separated from her mother at this time.

The Newark papers recently added to Chronicling America account for only four years of publication. So as soon as I get a new alert from The Ancestor Hunt, I’ll be on the “hunt” for more great articles.

[1] 1940 U.S. census, Essex County, New Jersey, population schedule, Maplewood, p. 1B (penned), enumeration district (ED) 7-219, line 52, Mary E. Glacy; NARA microfilm T627, roll 02336. Mae and her children were living in the home she was born in and she had a pharmacist, butcher and stock clerk living there as boarders.

[2] “New Jersey index to records of births, marriages, and deaths, 1848-1900,” “Marriages Atlantic-Warren v. 5 1880-1881,” McDonough-Getter (1880); digital image FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org : accessed 25 July 2018), FHL microfilm 495696, image 103 of 430 .

[3] “Chronology of Parishes,” Archdiocese of Newark (https://www.rcan.org/offices-and-ministries/history-archives/chronology-parishes : accessed 19 March 2020).

[4] “The Misses May, Cecilia and Marguerite McDonough,” The Newark (New Jersey) Star and Advertiser, 2 January 1912, p. 12, col. 5-6. Throughout her life, Mae was spelled sometimes with an “e” and sometimes with a “y.”

[5] “Held a ‘Chuck-A-Luck Party,’” The Newark (New Jersey) Star and Advertiser, 20 April 1909, p. 11, col. 4.

[6] “Chuck-a-luck made its way to U.S. around 1800,” Detroit Free Press, 27 January 2016; HTML edition (https://www.freep.com/story/entertainment/nightlife/2016/01/27/mark-pilarski-casinos-chuck-a-luck/79143822/ : accessed 19 March 2020).

[7] Wikipedia (http://www.wikipedia.org), “Chuck-a-luck,” rev. 19:33, 14 June 2019.

Mae’s wedding portrait, 1915. She was thirty-one.