#52Ancestors-Week 13-The Old Homestead

This may not seem like an "Old Homestead" to some, but it does to me.  My grandparents built their dream home in 1956, which is more than sixty years

ago now.  I was around eight years old and remember the house being built.  They had purchased five acres along the Illinois River.  The house was about two acres from the main road, with a railway track running through it near the road.  Then there was about three acres for the backyard, which ran to the river.

The house was a two bedroom, one bath ranch, with two big great rooms dividing the kitchen from the bedrooms.  One of the great rooms faced the front yard and had a big picture window.  The other great room faced the backyard and the back wall was almost all glass, facing the river. It was a beautiful view. There was a fireplace in this room.   The two great rooms were divided by double pocket doors.

The garage was under the house with a stairway leading up to the kitchen.  The other 3/4 of the basement was unfinished and was where my grandmother did her laundry.  I remember her using a wringer washing machine there.

For me, the outside was the most wonderful part of their "homestead".  Grandpa had a small shed where he kept tools, lawn mower, etc.  Down the hill in the

backyard was the "Gazebo", as we called it.  It was about the size of a one stall garage, with a concrete floor and was screened in.  Inside was a table that took up all of the middle of the room.  Chairs were along the table and along the walls.  Lots of people could fit in the gazebo.  When the weather was nice, we ate most of our dinners out there, with everyone helping to carry the dishes and food out there.

The property was a dream-come-true for kids.  My brother and I had all kinds of room to run and play.  We put pennies on the railroad tracks to smash them and listened for trains by putting out ears to the tracks.  We stood and waved as the trains rolled by and often the engineers would blow the whistle and wave to us.  We could go down to the river and wade in it and play.  In the winter, we ice skated on it.  In the spring we made rafts to try to sail away on adventures!

My grandfather had a pontoon boat, that was like the original party boat to us!  The kids and adults spent many afternoons out on the river on the pontoon boat.

Being the oldest grandchild, I spent many weekends at the house with my grandparents.  Even when I was in college, when I came home, I would go stay with them sometimes.

When my grandfather retired, they decided to move to Arizona for his health.  They had fifteen years in their dream home.  That doesn't seem very long to me now, but they had a wonderful time there.  Their home on the river has always been talked about in the family as where some of our very best memories were made.

#52Ancestors-Misfortune-James O'Neill

While writing earlier about Ellen Murphy O'Neill, I realized that I didn't have much information on what had happened to her son James.  I contacted the library in Watseka, who then passed on my request to the Iroquois County Genealogical Society who initially could not locate an obituary, but within a week I heard back from them and they had found one.

I learned that James O'Neill, born in 1864 in Kickapoo, Peoria County, Illinois died on the second of December in 1885, at the age of 21. James was the second child born to Edmond and Ellen Murphy O'Neill. The family moved to Iroquois County, Illinois in around 1872 when James would have been eight years old.  He was listed with the family in the 1880 Census and was sixteen years old.

On the second day of December in 1885, James and three other boys went to work with their machine digging a ditch. James was managing the horses and "before he could get hold of the sweep it forced itself away from the strong arms of the man and struck James on the back of the head, killing him instantly". It was written that he was "a quiet industrious young man".

Such a sad story. A young man's future gone in an instant, leaving his family to grieve the loss of him.

#52Ancestors-Week 11-Lucky: Having a picture

This week's prompt is "Lucky".  That seemed rather difficult as I thought through it.  Then it occurred to me, as I was writing another post, how lucky I am to have a picture of Mary Murphy Ryan Corrigan.  This is the only picture that I have of any of the seven children of my great-great-great grandparents, James and Alice Read Murphy, who came over to the United States from Ireland.

Mary was my 3rd great aunt.  She was born in County Kilkenny in 1834 and came to the United States with her family in 1849.  Mary lived until 1922, with  only one other sibling surviving her.

I have searched and searched for pictures of the other six children, but so far, I have not been able to locate any, not even of my great-great grandfather, William H.Murphy.  So, right now, I consider myself lucky to have a picture of Mary! Mary is on the far right in the top row.  From this picture, I can begin to imagine what her siblings may have looked like.  That's a start!

#52Ancestors-Week 10-Strong Woman

The theme/prompt of Strong Woman brought to mind many of my ancestors, several of whom I have written about previously as strong women.  I decided to write about my third great-aunt, Ellen Murphy.

Ellen Murphy was born on the 5th of May in County Kilkenny, Ireland.  She came to the United States with her family in about 1849 when she was eight years old.  Ellen was the sixth of seven known children of James and Alice Reade Murphy. The family settled in Kickapoo, Peoria County, Illinois.  In 1861, at the age of twenty, Ellen married (who I believe to be) her first cousin, Edmund "Ned" O'Neill, who was twenty-nine years old. It appears that their mothers were sisters.

A daughter, Alice, had been born in 1868, but had died in infancy in a scalding accident. In the 1870 Kickapoo Census, Ned and Ellen were living with their children Michael, James and Catherine.  The following year, the family moved from Kickapoo to Crescent City in Iroquois County, Illinois, which was about 120 miles away, moving Ellen away from her family. By 1873, Ned's younger brother, Thomas, was also living in the Crescent City area, but I don't know who moved there first or why.

Over the next ten years, Ned and Ellen had six more children, including two sets of twins.  The children were: Mary Ellen and Alice Agnes (twins), Nellie and Johanna (twins), Thomas and William Aloysius.  Sadly, Nellie died when she was two years old. So, out of the ten children born to them, eight lived to adulthood.  The 1880 Census shows Ned working as a farmer. Ellen's mother, Alice Reade Murphy, died in July of 1880 in Peoria.  Ellen had given birth to her youngest child in March of that year, and, besides the newborn baby, had several young children in the household, so she may have not been able to attend the services for her mother.  Her son, James, died in 1885 at the age of 21 in a ditch-digging accident.  He was the third of Ellen's children to have died.

In 1887, Ellen's aged father, James Murphy, came to live with the family.  He had been widowed for ten years by this time and was in rather frail health.  He lived with them for three years until his death in 1890.  James was buried with the O'Neill family in the Gilman Catholic Cemetery.  In 1896, Ned and Ellen's son, Michael married, and in 1897, their daughter, Mary Ellen, married.

The 1900 Iroquois County, Illinois Census shows that Ned and Ellen were living with five of their adult children in the home.  Ned was still farming.  In 1902, William married, and in 1907, Thomas married.

In June of 1907, Ned died.  He was seventy-five years old.  In the 1910 Census, Ellen was listed with her three daughters, Katie, Alice and Josie.  Katie worked for the telephone company, and Josie was a school teacher.  None of the three girls ever married.

On the 19th of October in 1919, Ellen passed away.  She was seventy-seven years old.  She had outlived her parents and her husband and four of her six siblings.  She had buried three children.  She had moved quite a distance from her family as a young bride and settled on a farm, raising her young children. She had cared for her dying father. A strong woman indeed.

I wish that I had a picture of Ellen, but I don't.  That Murphy family didn't seem to be ones for having portraits done!