Week 23: “Wedding” #52Ancestors
The picture below is the saddest wedding picture I have ever seen. Or more accurately, not seen.
One of my quarantine projects has been to reorganize and label the family photos I had digitized several years ago.[1] Sadly, when I first started digitizing I hadn’t yet taken any of Maureen Taylor’s online courses so I am now re-doing all my previous work but in a much more organized and logical manner. I am a huge fan of Maureen’s and chat with her most Fridays over zoom where she holds an “office hour.” Maureen is known in the genealogical community as The Photo Detective. In addition to her online courses and books, Maureen also offers photo consultation (by phone or Zoom) to help clients identify the person, place, or era of their mysterious photos. She’s the best![2]
My husband’s grandmother had this photobook of sorts with photos mounted to three-hole-punched plain white paper. I think the photos likely came from a prior album because some are a bit tattered and look like they were previously glued to black paper. The page I’ve attached had four pictures glued to it. Where the wedding picture is is anybody’s guess.[3]
The date of the marriage in the scrapbook is correct: Edward McCormick and Mary Quinlan were marred at 8 o’clock in the evening on Wednesday, 21 August 1889 by Father John Ward at St. Patrick’s Church in Parsons, Kansas. I know from a newspaper article that her parents held a reception for the couple after the ceremony at their home.[4] The article lists the numerous presents they received and from whom they came. They received a lot of silver such as forks, knives, spoons, berry dish (2), cologne case, syrup pitcher, sugar castor, napkin rings, butter dish, crumb holder, and pickle castor. Quite the hall![5]
St. Patrick’s was established in 1872 by missionaries from the Osage Mission.[6] The picture I’ve attached shows St. Patrick’s second church built in 1883. The couple standing on the right are Edward and Mary. Although the church began with only twenty families, by 1884 the congregation had grown to over 600 members.[7] This tremendous grown doesn’t surprise me: land was readily available, good jobs came with the railroad in the 1870’s, and in looking at the list of folks that attended their wedding, the overwhelming number were of Irish (and likely Catholic) descent: Dowd, McManus, Dunbar, Moran, O’Hare, Harrigan, McGough, McBride, Byrnes, Cloughley, Tierney, etc.[8]
Ed and Mary had been married for forty years when Ed died at age sixty-four in 1929.[9] Mary passed away seven years later at her daughter’s home in Kansas City.[10]
[1] All on Dropbox to share with cousins.
[2] You can find Maureen Taylor, The Photo Detective at https://maureentaylor.com.
[3] Hey any of you Baty, McCormick, or Quinlan cousins – if you have it, would you be so kind as to send me a digital copy?
[4] “Ed McCormick and Miss Mary Quinlan were married,” The Parsons (Kansas) Palladium, 4 September 1889, p. 1, col. 4.
[5] Of all those items listed, my husband inherited a cut-glass berry dish the was given to the happy couple by either Mr. and Mrs. James Harrigan or Mr. and Mrs. O’Hare (they received two such dishes).
[6] “History of St. Patrick Catholic Church, Parsons, Kansas,” St. Patrick Catholic Church in Parsons, KS (https://stpatricksparsons.org/home/st-patrick-parish-history : accessed 12 June 2020).
[7] Ibid.
[8] Wikipedia.org, “Parsons, Kansas,” rev. 16:15, 4 June 2020.
[9] “Obituary,” The Catholic (Wichita) Advance, 12 October 1929, p. 4, col. 2-3.
[10] Missouri State Board of Health, certificate of death no. 44693 (1936), Mary McCormick; digital image, Secretary of State, Missouri Digital Heritage (http://www.sos.mo.gov).
Page from scrapbook with missing wedding picture.
Ed and Mary are the couple on the right (he with mustache). Don’t know who the people are with the penned X on them but guessing they are family as the X is made with same blue ink as was used to ID the people in the album.