Ø      Mary Sullivan Church (Aunt Maime), 1886-1965

Ø        Ella Sullivan Conway (Aunt Nell), 1888-1933?

Ø        Timothy Patrick Sullivan (Uncle Tim), 1889-1960

Ø        Genevieve Sullivan Delehanty (Grandma), 1891-1975

Ø        Cornelius Neal Sullivan (Uncle Neal), 1892-1946

Ø        Edward James Sullivan (Uncle Ed), 1894-1977

Ø        Grace Ann Sullivan Reiser Gorczyca (Aunt Grace), 1895-1978

 

This was a riotous group of people – loud, boisterous, sometimes obnoxious, mostly decent and kind, never dull.  In the words of Beulah "Billie" Lacount, one of my mom's oldest and dearest friends,

My siblings and I came to know four of the Sullivans:  Aunt Maime, Aunt Grace, Uncle Ed, and of course, Grandma.

Grandma lived with our family – mom, dad & siblings – for most of our childhoods.  She was a tall woman, nearly six feet, and fairly big-boned.  Her hair was gray and not quite shoulder-length.  She could make herself heard above the din if she wanted to, though mostly her voice was soft and lilting.  She had a gentle, open face, and an inquisitive sparkle in her eyes.  Her hands were big, her fingers and knuckles swollen with arthritis, though her touch was light and feathery.  Her lap was broad and comfortable.

 

Michael, Grandma, Tom (on lap), Fridley MN, Aug 1962

 

Lois Vosjepka, one of my mom's best friends whom us kids called "Aunt Lois," remembered Genevieve:

Aunt Lois was exactly right:  Genevieve was a simple, kind person of great inner strength, and she lived an extraordinarily difficult life.  She was simply the most wonderful human being I have ever known.  As I said, her siblings Aunt Grace and Uncle Ed were also a part of our lives growing up, as was Aunt Maime, though I have only a few foggy images of her.  Sue remembers her much better than I.  None of us kids ever met any of the others, though we did hear stories about Uncle Tim, the "jail-bird" and "three-time loser" who spent much of his life in prison.  More on that later.

 

♣

 

In the mid-1920s, when Calvin Coolidge was President and silent movies were all the rage, Genevieve Sullivan married John Delehanty.  She was around 35 years old.  It was her second marriage, as I learned years after her death.  Her first husband, named Raymond Reilly, had fought in World War I and died in the V.A. hospital.  She never told us about him, as was true of many other parts of her life.  She didn't want us to feel sad.

My hunch is that Ray and Genevieve had a baby and the baby died, but I'm not sure.  What I am sure of, even though I have no direct evidence for it, is that Ray's death broke her heart, that she went through horrible grief, then picked up the pieces, put herself back together, and moved on.

 

♣

 

After their wedding, Genevieve and John Delehanty set up house at 1512 Burns Ave. in St. Paul.  On June 22, 1928 they had a daughter, Elizabeth Jane Delehanty—my mother.  Genevieve was 37 years old.  Seven months later, John Delehanty died.  He was 42.  The death certificate says he died of a "decompensated heart" caused by "mitral insufficiency & myocarditis" that he'd suffered for the past 15 years—basically a heart attack caused by chronic heart disease.

Portion of Jennie Lang Sullivan's death certificate (d. June 27, 1944) with parents' names and birthplaces, and informant's name indicated.

 

Ella Kinsman, according to this document, was born in New York.  "Franz Lange," as Frank Lang sometimes signed his name, "came from Germany to the United States when he was a little fellow, with his two older brothers," according to his fourth wife. 

How do we know that?  Because 15 years ago I looked up Frank Lang's Civil War file in the National Archives, photocopied everything that looked useful, and filed it all away.  So let's dust off my great-grandfather's old file and see what it says.

 

♣

 

Franz Lange was born around 1842 in Prussia (the biggest kingdom in what later became Germany).  So he must have arrived in the United States in the late 1840s or early 1850s.  His brothers, names unknown, moved to Colorado, and he lost touch with them. 

When the Civil War broke out, he joined the Union Army.  He was around 19 years old.  He enlisted at Burr Oak, Michigan (Jennie Lang's birthplace) on August 10, 1861.  Twelve days later, on August 22, he joined his unit in Monroe, Michigan, a few hours east by rail.  That gave him 10 or 11 days to explore St. Joseph County, where Burr Oak is located.   For the rest of the war he served as a private in Company K of the 7th Regiment of Michigan Infantry, mostly as a nurse or medical attendant in the Union field hospitals.

He was described as 5' 7" and 150 pounds, with gray eyes, auburn hair, and a dark complexion.  (We have no photos of him, but the accompanying drawing of a Union soldier who just stole a chicken seemed like a pretty good representation of what he might've looked like, so we'll use it to help put a face on his name.) 

Franz Lange mustered out of his unit on July 5, 1865 in Jeffersonville, Indiana, and was discharged 11 days later, on July 14, at Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.  Two weeks later, on August 1, he was examined by a physician in Jonesville, Hillsdale County, Michigan—about 30 miles east of Burr Oak along the railway and the road that later became Old Highway 12—and found to be "½ incapacitated."

How did he get "incapacitated"?  As the "examining surgeon" described, repeating Frank's tale to him,

 "I was ruptured in Virginia in 1863 while marching during the night," Frank claimed in a later document.  He suffered a "herniated scrotum"—basically some of the contents of his gut pushed down into the little sac holding his testicles.  This injury was the basis for his claim for a pension from the government, beginning in Jonesville, Michigan, on August 1, 1865.

 

♣

 

Ella became pregnant around mid-February 1866.  So she and Frank probably became romantically involved pretty soon after Frank mustered out of the army.  My hunch is that he and Ella had met in Burr Oak before the war—remember that he enlisted in Burr Oak in 1861?—and that at war's end he went back to Burr Oak to see her.  It's also my hunch that Ella wanted to get the hell out of Burr Oak, was dazzled by Frank's worldliness and charm, and saw him as her ticket out.

In 1867, Frank, Ella, and baby Jennie moved permanently to Minnesota.  Three sources document the move.  The first, from a later investigation, says that on October 31, 1867 Frank Lang filed a "declaration of intention" in Minneapolis, Minnesota to become a naturalized citizen.  Baby Jennie's not yet a year old.

The second source is an "Examining Surgeon's Certificate" from Minneapolis of November 1, 1868, in which the examining surgeon noted that Frank suffered a disability resulting from "a scrotal hernia . . . the hernia is large and comes far down giving [him] much trouble about walking."  Now little Jennie is almost two.

The third source is the 1870 U.S. census for the 3rd Ward of the City of Hastings, Dakota County, Minnesota, taken on 27 July 1870, which lists the following household:

Jennie is four.  All these data fit perfectly with what we already know about Ella, Frank, and Jennie (as we'll see, "Ella" also went by "Nellie."  They also fit with Jennie Lang's 1944 obituary, which says she had one sister named Nellie (Nellie Atkins).  It has to be the right family. 

The census shows that Ella Kinsman was barely literate.  The census-taker checked the box marked "cannot write" for 22 year-old Nellie, though evidently she could read well enough to satisfy him not to check the box marked "cannot read."   There's also a checkmark in the box indicating that Nellie's father was of foreign birth, though it appears to be erased.  So it's unclear whether her father was born in the United States.  He probably was.

It's also interesting that her husband Frank Lang was not poor.  His "value of personal estate" was listed as $2,100—quite a bundle in 1870, quite a bit more than most adult men in the census.  His "value of real estate" was listed as $400, which means he owned some property, either their house or a workshop of some sort where he made barrels.

 

♣

 

 Among Frank Lang's papers was a certificate of divorce, which shows that sometime in 1870—less than two years after he, his wife, and baby moved to Minnesota, and just around the time of the 1870 census—Nettie Lang marched into the Dakota County, Minnesota courthouse and (somehow) filled out the paperwork for a divorce, which was granted on 25 January, 1871.  The certificate also says that Nettie received custody of their two children, "Jennie" and "Willie."  

Was this "Nettie" actually Ella Kinsman Lang, and the child "Jennie" my great-grandmother Jennie Lang?  The evidence indicates that it was.  The chronology fits.  The place—Dakota County—also fits.  Also, as we've seen, Jennie's obituary from 1944 said that she had one sister, named Nellie. 

What about this child named "Willie"?  The certificate of divorce is a typewritten copy made years after the original, which was doubtless handwritten.  Whoever transcribed it  probably mistook  "Nettie" for "Nellie," and "Willie" for "Nellie."  They would be easy mistakes to make. 

It thus appears that 23 year-old Ella (Nellie) Kinsman Lang sought and received a divorce from her husband Frank about three years after they arrived in Minnesota, leaving her with two small children to raise by herself.  It must have been a momentous decision.  Frank was fairly well-off, and she was barely literate and owned no property.  Also, in those days divorce carried a huge social stigma, especially for young women with children.

All this suggests that Ella Kinsman had an exceptionally strong sense of herself, that she was a young woman of tremendous will and determination.  Other evidence on Frank Lang's life shows that she probably had very good reasons for divorcing him.

 

♣

 

           Frank Lang appears to have been something of a scoundrel.  He was married at least four times.  His first wife, as we've seen, was my great-great grandmother, Ella Kinsman, with whom he had two children, Jennie and Nellie.  In January 1871 Ella (Nellie) divorced him. 

Within the year, on October 2, 1871 in the same city of Hastings, Minnesota, Frank Lang married a 19 year-old woman named Millie Tiner, born in 1852 in New York, the daughter of Irish immigrants.  It seems likely that he and Millie Tiner started having an affair, infuriating Nellie (Ella), who refused to put up with it, took the children, and left him, despite all the hardship it would cause.

Eight years later, on October 21, 1879, Millie Tiner Lang died of consumption (tuberculosis).  Three weeks after Millie's death, Frank Lang married for the third time, to a woman named Clara Morris.  Given this short span of time—a mere three weeks—it seems probable that Frank and Clara were romantically involved before Millie's death. 

Frank and Clara were married in Red Wing, Minnesota on November 18, 1879.  Clara had a daughter named Jennie from a previous marriage.  In 1883 Frank and Clara had a son, also named Frank.  On June 17, 1884, a year after little Frank was born, Frank Sr. and Clara divorced.  Clara died in Minneapolis in 1891.  After Clara's death, Frank Sr. took in his step-daughter Jennie, now in her teens.  This Jennie later moved to Seattle and married a man named Walter Thornhill.

Soon after he divorced his third wife Clara in 1884, Frank Lang married a fourth time, in Minneapolis, to a German immigrant named Henrietta Eikendorf.  Henrietta Eikendorf Lang claimed Frank Lang's pension money.  This is how all this information was generated—Henrietta Eikendorf Lang wanted Frank Lang's Civil War pension money, so the Bureau of Pensions of the Department of Interior launched an investigation into Frank Lang's marital history.  It's really quite elaborate, with lots of reports and depositions and so on.  In a revealing passage, in April 1918 Henrietta declared the following:

So, it appears that Henrietta and Frank, through the good offices of this mutual friend named Budd, began having an affair while Frank was still married to Clara, who was dying of tuberculosis, just as Millie Tiner was. 

To put it plainly, my great-great-grandfather Frank Lang sounds like a selfish bastard.

            There's an obvious question posed by Henrietta Eikendorf Lang's declaration:  Why did she call Ella Kinsman "Nellie Kinsman" if she'd never heard of her?  It's because that was the name Frank Lang wrote on a Bureau of Pensions form dated January 15, 1898.  One of the questions on the form asked:   "Were you previously married?  If so, please state the name of your former wife and the date and place of her death or divorce."  In the blank space next to this question, Frank Lang wrote:

This was the response that got the whole investigative ball rolling with the Bureau of Pensions.  As you've surely noticed, Frank Lang didn't really answer the question.  He never specified "the date and place of her death or divorce."  So, the Bureau of Pensions figured that maybe he was still married to this "Nellie Lang 'nee' Nellie Kinsman."  Later, after Frank's death, this incomplete answer ended up putting Henrietta Lang's claims to the pension money in doubt. 

It also meant that Frank Lang no longer recognized Jennie and Nellie as his children.  After his divorce from Ella, he probably never saw his daughters again.

 

♣

 

That single incomplete answer on this single form is the reason why the Bureau of Pensions launched this huge investigation, which continued for years after Frank's death, and which turned up lots of information but almost nothing about his earlier wife "Nellie Lang 'nee' Nellie Kinsman" or her children.  Of the dozen or more people interviewed who knew Frank Lang, none could remember her name.  The only documentary evidence that the investigation turned up regarding "Nellie" was the divorce paper from October 1871, granting a divorce to "Nettie Lang" from Frank Lang.

One person did remember Frank talking about his first wife.  His name was John Alexander.  He and Frank Lang were neighbors in Minneapolis, beginning in 1890.  In 1905, the year after Frank's death, John Alexander swore to the following:

John Alexander could not remember the name of Frank Lang's first wife, or her child, but he did say that she died in Minneapolis—which places her death sometime between 1871 and 1904. 

            Thirteen years later, in 1918, the Bureau of Pensions again interviewed John Alexander.  Here is what he had to say about Frank Lang's first marriage:

If we put both of John Alexander's statements together with everything else we know, the story seems to be the following:  Ella Kinsman Lang moved to Minnesota, had a second daughter, divorced Frank, and died in Minneapolis a few years later.  Someone in her family then came to Minneapolis to care for and raise Jennie and Nellie.  If so, we should be able to find them there.  We can surmise that Ella died before 1884, when Jennie turned 18.  So that narrows the likely range of dates for Ella's death to between 1871 and 1884.

 

♣

 

After the war, Frank Lang worked as a cooper (barrel maker) in Minnesota.  He moved around a lot, picking up stakes about every four or five years.  As best as I can reconstruct, he lived in Hastings (1867-72), St. Paul (1873-83), Wadena (1884-88), Minneapolis (1890-95), Cannon Falls (1896-1900), and South Haven (1900-1904). 

Frank Lang died on March 19, 1904, in South Haven, at 62 years of age.  According to his third wife Clara's sister Cora May, he "fell off a wagon and broke his neck on the farm."  Or, in the words of Frank and Clara's son Frank W. Lang, "he fell off a load of hay, hit his head and was killed."

 

♣

 

So we're left with a bunch of mysteries regarding the childhood of Jennie and Nellie Lang in Minneapolis.  Another real puzzle concerns my grandmother's grandmother, Ella (Nellie) Kinsman.  What was her real name?  Who were her parents?  Where and when was she born, and where and when did she die? 

Let's summarize what we do know.  She was born in the state of New York.  Her father might have been foreign-born.  She lived for a time in Burr Oak, Michigan, where she married and became pregnant by Frank Lang in February 1866—just after he had mustered out of the army.  Nine months later, still in Michigan, she gave birth to daughter Jennie.  She, Frank, and baby Jennie then moved to Hastings, Dakota County, Minnesota and had a second daughter, Nellie, in 1868.  She divorced Frank in 1871.  And, she was barely literate.

We also have reason to think that she died in Minneapolis sometime between 1871 and 1884, and that after she died her parents or other relatives raised her two children Jennie and Nellie in Minneapolis.

 

♣

 

So, since we know so little about Ella Kinsman's life in Minneapolis and her later death, what about her life in Michigan, before she moved to Minnesota?  Were there any Kinsman's in Burr Oak, Michigan in the 1850s and 1860s? 

In fact there were, but in the sources I've looked at none were named Ella or Nellie Kinsman.  I can't seem to track her down.  Here's what I've uncovered so far, beginning in the 1860s.  Think of these little hand-symbols below ( L ) as pointing to discrete sets of little facts, little factoids that a detective might put onto 3x5 cards and pin up on a bulletin board to help them solve a mystery.  There are 13 of them:

L  Factoid 1.   The only Kinsman's in St. Joseph County in the 1860 Census were in Burr Oak Township, listed as A. E. Kinsman, age 41, from Vermont, his wife Sarah Kinsman, age 37, from New York, and their six children, ages 2, 5, 9, 12, 14 and 16.  Their names (youngest to oldest) were Lelia, Martin, Martha, Clarence, Mary, and George.  Only the two year-old, Lelia, was born in Michigan.  The others were born in New York.  Also listed as part of their household was one "Susan Roggers."  The whole family therefore must have moved to Burr Oak from New York between 1855 and 1858. 

L  Factoid 3.   A notebook from the Burr Oak Public Library, titled "Deaths in Burr Oak Township, 1869-1905" (which I call the Burr Oak Deaths Notebook below) lists the following:

Ø	Sheldon Kinsman, 1818-1904.  Died age 86.
Ø	Sarah Kinsman, 1823-1889.  Died age 66 of consumption.  From New York.
Ø	Asa E. Kinsman, 1819-1899.  Died age 80.  From Vermont.

From this it seems reasonable to suppose that Sheldon and Asa (A.E.) were brothers.  Sarah, as we've seen, was Asa's wife.

L  Factoid 4.   Asa Kinsman tried to become something of a local political player in Burr Oak in the early 1860s, starting the year after the town was incorporated.  He had mixed success.  At the annual township election of April 1, 1861 he received a grand total of one (1) vote for Supervisor, from a total of 299 votes.  In 1863 he contributed $5 to the "Volunteer Bounty Fund," money that went for the upkeep of local Civil War volunteers.  In 1864 he was elected as one of four constables, with 194 votes out of 1,119.

L  Factoid 5.   The dates also fit very nicely with the history of Burr Oak.  According to a book called The History of St. Joseph County (1910), the village of Burr Oak began as a railroad town, along the path of the Michigan Southern Railway, in the early 1850s.  Settlement started in 1851-1852 with a couple of houses, a store, a tavern, and a post office.  It became incorporated as a village in 1859, and held its first elections for public officials in 1860. 

L  Factoid 6.   Fast-forward ten years.  According to the 1870 Census (available online), the only Kinsman's in St. Joseph County at that time were Sheldon Kinsman, age 53, from Massachusetts, his wife Mary Kinsman, age 49, from New York, and their five children.  They lived in White Pigeon Township.  (Their children were ages 14, 13, 11, 10, and 6, and named Sheldon Jr., Mary, Jackson, George, and Theodore.  The eldest, Sheldon Jr., was born in Indiana, the rest in Michigan.)

L  Factoid 7.  The same 1870 Census also shows Asa Kinsman, age 48, living in the Village of Lowell, County of Kent, Michigan (a few miles north of Burr Oak) with his wife Catherine, a 12 year-old girl named "Annette" (I think), and one "Benjamin Gain," a 22 year-old "Negro gardener" from Virginia.  Benjamin was probably their boarder.  Asa's occupation was "laborer."

L  Factoid 8.  According to his death certificate, Asa Kinsman died of heart disease on September 15, 1899, at 80 years of age, in Burr Oak.  (Actually 80 years, 3 months, and 16 days.  That means he was born May 31, 1819).  He was born in Vermont, the son of George Kinsman and Mary E. Kinsman.

L  Factoid 9.  Sarah Kinsman (Asa's wife), according to her death certificate, died of consumption in Burr Oak on January 16, 1889 at 66 years of age.  (Actually 66 years, 9 months, and 4 days.  That would make her birthday April 12, 1822.)  She was born in New York.  Her mother and father's names are "unknown."

L  Factoid 10.  The following dates for obituary notices in the local newspaper appear online in the Burr Oak Obituary Page Index:

Ø        Kinsman, Clarence E., 20 July 1933

Ø        Kinsman, Sarah (Rogers), 25 February 1892

Ø        Kinsman, Martin Peebles, 6 and 13 May 1919

Ø        Kinsman, Margaret (Snyder), 14 December 1905

Ø        Kinsman, Sheldon, 28 July and 11 August 1904

L  Factoid 11 (actually more of a summing-up than an actual factoid).   Sheldon's obituary date of 1904 matches the Burr Oak Deaths Notebook date of 1904.  Sarah's dates are off by three years (the obituary says 1892, while the Burr Oak Deaths Notebook says 1889).   Asa, who died in 1899 in Burr Oak according to the Deaths Notebook, does not have an obituary listed at all.  This seems strange.  Why no obituary for Asa Kinsman, a longtime Burr Oak resident who had been involved in the town's public life?  Perhaps his name was missed or misspelled when the online inventory was put together.

L  Factoid 12  (actually more of a deduction).   An important bit of new information here is Sarah Kinsman's maiden name:  "Rogers."  This matches "Susan Roggers" listed as living with Asa and Sarah in 1860.  Sarah Rogers and Susan Rogers (or Roggers or Rodgers) must have been sisters. 

L  Factoid 13  (more like another set of questions and a summing-up).  Why are neither Ella, Sheldon, nor Sheldon's family listed in the 1860 Census?  Perhaps they hadn't arrived yet, or perhaps I missed them.  In any case, the name Kinsman shows up in Burr Oak in 1857.  Asa was definitely there in 1860, Sheldon in 1870, and probably before.

 

♣

 

            So with these 13 little factoids pinned up on our imaginary bulletin board, let's get back to the main question:  What does all this mean for Ella Kinsman's ancestry? 

We've already summarized what we know:  She was born in New York state, and she had Frank Lang's baby in Burr Oak, Michigan in November 1866.  That's mostly it.  We can surmise that she was somehow related to Asa and Sheldon Kinsman.  What are the odds of two sets of unrelated Kinsman's living in Burr Oak in the 1860s?  Pretty slim.  Anyway, I hope she was related to them.  Because if she wasn't, all our clues are gone out the window, and we've hit a dead-end even worse than the one Tom and I hit 15 years ago.

Perhaps she was Asa and Sheldon's niece.  Or maybe she was Asa's daughter and her real name was "Mary Ella Kinsman," listed in the 1860 Census as 14 year-old Mary.  "Mary Ella" is a pretty common name.  If this were the case, she would've been 20 years old in 1866 when she gave birth to Jennie. 

Which of these ideas is right?  Or are none of them? Maybe these obituaries hold some clues. 

So I called the Burr Oak Public Library.  The woman said that they have all the obituaries online, but only if you're actually in the library.  It's a two hour drive from here, and it's the dead of winter and I'm not sure my little Honda will make it.  I'm supposed to call next week and talk to Divanne, she handles all that stuff, she'd be happy to help me.  So soon we'll see what those obituaries say, I hope.

 

♣

           

So, I finished writing up all this stuff about the Kinsman's and I began surfing around the Internet, looking for online sources in the Vermont area.  I stumbled onto a genealogy message board where I found a posting from one Margaret Bourdette, dated 29 July 2002.  It was in response to a question someone had posted about "Asa Kinsman."  It read:

I read this message and my eyes just about popped out of my head.  Bingo!  Everything fits!  This has to be the same Asa Kinsman!   Born in Vermont.  Birthday May 30, 1819 (I miscounted by one day).  Married to Sarah Rogers.  Three big fat home runs!  The odds that it's a coincidence are a million to one.

            So I emailed Margaret Bourdette, hoping she still has the same email address three and a half years later.  We'll see if she responds, and if so what she says.

           

♣

 

So while we wait to see whether Margaret Bourdette gets back to us, and wait to see what those obituaries might offer, let's continue with what we do know about our family saga.  What about my great-grandfather and Jennie Lang Sullivan's husband Cornelius Thomas Sullivan?  His death certificate, as we said, shows he was born in Bangor, Maine, on July 8, 1859, the son of Timothy Sullivan, mother unknown.  The 1870 Census from Bangor, Maine, shows lots of Timothy and Cornelius Sullivan's. 

There is, however, one listing of a Timothy Sullivan with an 11-year old son named Cornelius—which would be just the right age.  This Timothy Sullivan is listed as a day laborer, age 53, born in Ireland.  His wife is listed as Mary H. Sullivan, housekeeper, age 50, also born in Ireland.  They had six children, Cornelius the youngest, all born in Maine.  The oldest, Daniel, was 22 years old in 1870, which means he was born in 1848. 

This must be the right family.  Years later, Cornelius and Jennie named their first-born daughter Mary, and their first-born son Timothy.

So it appears that Timothy and Mary H. Sullivan came to the United States in the mid-to-late 1840s—smack dab in the middle of the Potato Famine.  As one textbook on U.S. history puts it,

 So, unless this is the wrong family, it appears that the Irish side of my family arrived hungry and penniless from Ireland, moved to Maine, and started a farm.  Their names are so common, and their were so many others like them flooding into the country, that the chances of tracing them back to Ireland would seem to be just about zero.  So that looks to be a real dead end.

 

♣

 

Until some of the mysteries surrounding Ella Kinsman are resolved, that's about as far back in time that I'm able to trace my family roots on my mother's side.  So, for now let's switch gears and go forward in time, to the Sullivan family in Northeast Minneapolis and the marriage of Genevieve Sullivan to Jack Delehanty, and carry the story forward to when my mother was growing up in Northeast Minneapolis.

 

♣

 

What was the "Nordeast" like in the late 1800s and early 1900s?  At that time, Minneapolis was a booming commercial and industrial city.  It controlled the commerce of the "grain belt," shipping millions of tons of wheat, corn, and other grains down the mighty Mississippi.  Factories and breweries lined both sides of the river as it meandered south and east toward St. Paul. 

Its neighborhoods were a patchwork quilt of white ethnic enclaves—Poles, Irish, Italians, Germans, Slavs, and others, all jostling against one another in a gritty, bustling, working class part of the city. 

In 1989, Richard Reiser (Grace's son) described in loving detail the house in which Jennie and Cornelius raised the seven Sullivan children – the house that was bulldozed to make way for a parking lot after Jennie's death.  It's a lovely description that offers keen insights into the family that lived there:

Richard lived in this house for several years, so he should know.  So many of his descriptions ring true from stories I heard from my grandmother, and from my memories of visiting my Aunt Grace's house in Northeast Minneapolis when I was a kid of 8 or 10—a different house, but probably much the same in many ways, with its massive, heavily upholstered furniture; the dark, heavy drapes; the thick carpets and rugs; the dusty, dank, musty smell; the feeling of being crowded and closed in by all the big chairs and tables and pictures and knick-knacks; the sense that I was stepping back in time.

            I remember my grandma always called the refrigerator the "icebox"—"say, Michael, run to the icebox and get some grapes for your gramma, will you my little lamb?"  Either that or the "Frigidaire," which must have been the brand name of their first refrigerator.

 

♣

 

Another letter of Richard Reiser's offered more details about the seven Sullivan siblings:

Again, much of this resonates with stories I remember from my mom and grandma.  For instance, Great Uncle Tim, the "jail bird":  my mom said he got caught three times forging checks and spent most of his life in prison as a "three-time loser."  She told the story in a very funny way, because, according to her, all the forged checks were for very small amounts – less than $100.  "For heaven's sake!" she'd say. 

Timothy Sullivan, or Uncle Tim, no date, out of prison, circa 1930s?

She thought that Uncle Tim learned to like prison and wanted to go back – especially the third time, during the Great Depression, when jobs and money were so scarce.  Three square meals a day, a warm place to bunk down at night, sports and activities of various kinds – "he was in heaven," she'd say.  He worked a lot in the carpentry shop and became pretty good at it, so she said, making little boxes and stools and all kinds of things.  I'm almost positive that he made the little stool and the sweet little wooden box in which I still store my old letters from my mom.

 

♣

 

Richard Reiser also offered some insights into Cornelius's personality as a father (again, his recollections were based on first-hand experience).  From his description, it seems that my great-grandpa was rather the autocratic type:

Emotionally distant, tough, and unyielding, but also rock solid, dependable, and a good provider.  Richard recalled that Cornelius helped fund his son-in-law John Delehanty's lawsuit against his business partner, a lawsuit over some $3,000 to $5,000 worth of assets.  Remember that?  As I said, grandpa Delehanty lost the lawsuit, though it speaks well of him, and of Cornelius, that Cornelius backed him in it.

 

♣

 

I remember my Uncle Ed very clearly, and with great fondness.  When I was a kid growing up in Fridley, he lived in a hotel in the skid row district of Minneapolis and would visit us every few months.  I know my mom felt a special obligation toward him.  Every morning around 7:30 she'd pick up the phone and dial the hotel and say in a voice I can still hear clearly, "Ed Sullivan please."  I thought it was so funny, because the Ed Sullivan Show was a big TV hit at the time.  For a while I thought we were a really special family, because she was calling the Ed Sullivan.

Whenever he came to visit he'd always bring a big glass jar filled to the brim with pennies.  "Oh, just some extra change I picked up here and there and thought I'd give to you kids," he'd mutter.  "I don't have time to count it all out, you'll all be doing me a real favor if you just take it off my hands."  I loved emptying the giant jarful