Finding Hannah

The family tree is a project you inevitably have to tackle when you have children. I made several forays into ancestry.com a couple of years back when my daughter Maeve had to do a family tree. A couple of days ago, my cousin Kathleen wrote me to say that her daughter Alexandra had to do a "heritage project" for her senior year of high school. Kathleen remembered I had been bugging her mother, my godmother Aunt Ann, for family information about our mothers' side of the family. Now that Aunt Ann has passed, Kathleen was hoping I still had some info.

I pulled out paperwork that had been languishing on a shelf, most notably, our maternal grandmother Hannah's 1891 birth certificate from Templeglantine, County Limerick in Ireland.Our mothers' sister, Aunt Peggy had kindly sent it to me several years back.

And I found myself on the hunt on the Internet once again. I can get pretty lost in genealogical research:It is indeed reaching through the mist to find forebears in other decades, other centuries. I also called Aunt Peggy, the last surviving of Hannah's children, to help fill in the blanks. Here's what I found.

Hannah Casey was born August 3, 1891 in Templeglantine, a village in County Limerick. Her father was Patrick Casey, an agricultural laborer. Her mother was Mary Connors Casey.
According to the 1901 Irish Census, Patrick (40) and Mary (35) had the following children: Ellen (12), Johanna (9—our grandma Hannah Hickey)), Catherine (7), John (4). Father-in-law Maurice Connors and mother-in-law Mary Connors were also living with them.
According to the 1911 Irish Census, Patrick and Mary had living with them Catherine (17), John (14), Patrick (10) and Bridget (7). Father-in-law and mother-in-law (age 90 and 85) were still with them and the grandparents could not read or write, but they spoke both English and Irish. In 1911, Patrick and Mary Casey had been married 27 years. The Census indicated they had 9 children born alive, and 8 still living. (There is no indication of Mary Casey, who became Mary O’Connell, mother of Father Dave, Father Jack and Father Francis, or of Nora Casey (born about 1894).)
Aunt Peggy Lapinski, Hannah Hickey’s daughter who is now 87, recalls Aunt Nellie Casey O’Halloran (her husband had a bar at 92nd Street and 3rd Avenue); Aunt Katie Casey (Bridie Flavin’s grandmother, very religious, all of a sudden she would break out in the hymn “Amazing Grace” ); Aunt Nora Casey (who between her first husband Mr. Mahoney and her second husband Pat Toomey had something like 13 children among them),;Aunt Mary Casey O’Connell; Aunt Bridie Casey (she came to America, had an unhappy marriage, left her husband and went back to Ireland); Uncle Jack Casey (who lived in the Bronx, but took all his kids out of school and went back to Ireland as well), and Uncle Patty Casey (married to Aunt Beatrice.) And, of course, Hannah Casey Hickey.
Her husband Michael Hickey was born May 27, 1894 in New York City. In the 1900 Census, he was listed as age 6, living with his father Michael Hickey who was born in Ireland in November of 1870 and immigrated to the US in 1891;, and with his mother Margaret Hurley Hickey, who immigrated to the US in 1886. (Hard to read her DOB, but it looks like March 1865.) Father Michael was a longshoreman. Father and mother had been married 8 years. Their address was 243 Madison Street in Manhattan. (That’s the Lower East Side near the end of Canal Street.)
Aunt Ann McGuire said Margaret Hurley Hickey died in 1912, but I would place it more between 1900 and 1902. My mother said Margaret Hurley Hickey was bending over to change the ice in the ice box when a whalebone in her corset pierced her heart. (I have a portrait of Margaret Hurley Hickey, which hung for years in Hannah Casey Hickey’s front room. Margaret Hickey looks just like Aunt Ann McGuire.)
The 1910 Census shows a Michael Hickey living on 44th Street in Manhattan in his second marriage with a wife named Mary. They are both about 38 and have been married 8 years. He is a coachman with a private family; she is a laundress. No sign of son Mike, our Grandpa. (There are A LOT of Michael Hickeys in NYC in 1910. But this one seems to fit for Great-grandfather.)
The new stepmother and young Mike didn’t get along and at some point he left his father’s house. A Mabel Hurley, age 40 is running a boardinghouse at 241 East 32nd Street in Manhattan in the Census of 1910. Her sister Elizabeth Hurley and brother John J. Hurley live with her, as do 9 boarders. No sign of Mike, who would be 16. But my mother Mary Hickey Amoroso said that the new stepmother chased out young Mike and he went to live in Auntie Hurley’s boardinghouse. That’s where he courted Hannah, who was nearly 3 years older than he. He would drop down notes on a string and a hanger to the window of her room.
How did they meet? Aunt Peggy Lapinski says young Mike Hickey drove for Bloomingdale’s and Hannah Casey worked as a domestic in charge of linens for Jay Gould, probably Jay Gould II, son of the first Jay Gould, a robber baron of the mid 1800s.
They married around 1918, when Hannah was 27 and Mike was 24. (She always shaved her age on the Census survey.)
The Census of 1920 has Hannah and Michael married and living on Lexington Avenue and 96th Street. He is a chauffeur. No children. The Census indicates Hannah arrived in US in 1915. We have a passenger listing that shows her arriving in New York October 23, 1916. (A Nora Casey arrived June 26, 1916).
The Census of 1930 shows Hannah and Michael living on 96th Street with five children: Michael (9), Mary (8) (my mom), Margaret(6)(Aunt Peggy), Patrick (4) and Helen (1). No baby Ann yet. Grandpa is listed as a commercial chauffeur. (Aunt Ann said he was a chauffeur for Bloomingdale’s and American Meter Company.) When he lost his job, he became depressed and violent and ended up at Rockland Psychiatric through WWII. I remember him as the grandfather who sat in the far corner of the kitchen in the railroad flat at Lexington and 96th Street, and played his harmonica. Through the window behind him, clotheslines stretched out like tentacles to other buildings.
The 1930 Census places great-grandfather Mike Hickey and his second wife Mary at 8th Avenue and 118th Street. He is 59 and lists his occupation as steamship company but he seems to be unemployed. Mary calls herself a housewife.
The Census of 1930 also shows Hannah’s sister Mary O’Connell (age 36) living with her husband David on Eighth Avenue in Manhattan. The following children are listed: David (15), John (12), Madeline (8) Catherine (6), Leonard (4), Bill (almost 3) and Theresa (1). (David, as a Dominican priest, organized my adoption to Mary and Lou Amoroso and officiated at my wedding in 1979.)
Aunt Peggy says the O’Connells lived on 69th Street in Manhattan. Once they won a live pig in a raffle at church. They had to bring the pig home and stash it in the bathtub until they slaughtered it.
Peggy remembers a cousin Eileen O’Connell who worked for many years at the Mayflower Hotel in New York. Cousin Will O’Connell died during World War II in Guam the exact same day that roving reporter Ernie Pyle was killed April 18, 1945 in Japan.
Aunt Nora Casey Toomey lived in a brownstone at 292 Hoyt Street in Brooklyn with her many children from three marriages. St. Agnes Church was right across the street. The Hickey cousins loved taking the subway to her house. “It was like the country,” said Aunt Peggy. “There was a tree in the backyard.”
Aunt Nora was an incredible cook and baker. Aunt Peggy said that during World War II, when supplies were limited, Aunt Nora made a delicious cake with tomato soup. She also rolled nuts in cream cheese. People rushed to buy her cakes at bake sales.
Her husband Pat Toomey worked for the New York subway system. (So did Patty Casey, according to Aunt Peggy. Patty Casey also worked as a bartender.)
Aunt Nora’s son Jack Toomey died at Anzio Beach in World War II. He was my mother’s favorite cousin. “I loved Jack Toomey,” she would say plaintively decades later.
After Great-Grandfather Michael Hickey’s second wife died, his son Mike Hickey and daughter-in-law Hannah managed to get him a 6-room apartment right across the hall in their building at 1512 Lexington Avenue. I think my mother told me they called him “Red Mike.”
Red Mike would invite the ladies in, throw open his cupboards to show them his wide array of dishes and kitchenware, and say to the ladies, “All you have to do is take off your hat and move in.” He also had a piano in his apartment.
. “He talked like a dockworker, loud and bossy, “ said Aunt Peggy.“He’d go to the door of his apartment and bellow across the hall to my mother, ‘Coffee.’ One time Momma got mad and when he came through the door of our apartment, she took a broom and hit him across his can.”
He had what they call a railroad apartment (as did Hannah Hickey and her brood), where you walked straight through one room to get to the next. So each room (with the exception of the first and the last) had doors on both ends. Red Mike took off all the doors, chopped them up, and burned them for firewood.
Pretty much the whole building was Irish, and a lot was family. Nana Hickey was on one floor. My parents Mary and Lou Amoroso were apparently on the third floor after they married. There were two different McGuire families: the second-floor McGuires (little Mrs. McGuire) and the top-floor McGuires (big Mrs. McGuire, Aunt Ann’s husband Ackie’s mother.)
“Ackie’s mother worked as a nurse, and his father worked two jobs, so –unlike a lot of young men at the time—Ackie did chores. He was embarrassed and tried to hide it, but I’d see him hanging out the laundry,” said Aunt Peggy. “I’d say to him, ‘You’re going to make someone a good husband someday.’ ”
When Aunt Peggy and Uncle Walter (we called him Uncle Whitey) married, they moved into an apartment right next door at 1510 Lexington Avenue. There was a man with a violin next door who would open his window and play the most amazing Irish diddies.
“We’d all hang out the air shaft and clap and stamp our feet,” Aunt Peggy recalled.
For sun-bathing, there was “tar beach.” The girls would slip into their swimsuits, grab a towel and head to the roof for some solar rays
Nana Hickey had some trouble adjusting to her daughters’ choices in husbands. Mary Amoroso married an Italian-American, which seemed to Hannah Hickey like a kind of miscegenation. Aunt Peggy married a man of Polish extraction.
“Momma would say, “Can’t you find someone of your own kind?” ” Aunt Peggy recalled.
Nana Hickey was very social and very kind. People fresh off the boat from the Old Country knew they could find a place to sleep at Hannah Hickey’s. She had 6 children and people might sleep 3 to a bed.
And then there was Nellie Kimmey. Nellie was a widow living with her in-laws when she came to visit with Hannah Hickey over a cup of tea. Nellie headed home to find that her in-laws had packed her possessions and put them outside their front door.
Nellie went back to Hannah Hickey’s in a panic.
“You can stay here,” said Hannah.
Nellie Kimmey lived with Hannah and Mike Hickey for 40 years. She was still there at Lexington and 96th after Hannah died in the mid-Sixties.