Generations Project I Still Need You

Amy, Josh, Matt, Cait and Ryan

I am updating this post. I found Bridgida Curley today at the Family History Library in SLC with her brothers, sisters,mom and dad.

Her dad was:

Michaelis Curley

and her mom was:

Mariae Cunniff

Children of MICHAELIS CURLEY and MARIAE CUNNIFF are:

i. BRIGIDA3 CURLEY, b. 23 Oct 1830, St. Peter's, Athlone and Drum, Roscommon,     Ireland; d. Ireland.

ii. MICHAEL CURLEY, b. 26 Jan 1833, Roscommon, Ireland; m. MARIA HUGHES; b. Ireland.

iii. MARIA CURLEY, b. 04 Aug 1835, Roscommon, Ireland.

3. iv. (BRIDGIDA DELIA CURLEY), b. 14 Jan 1838, St. Peter's, Athlone and Drum, Roscommon, Ireland; d. 23 Aug 1874, Stockton, San Joaquin,  CA., USA.

4. v. CATHARINA CURLEY, b. 18 Oct 1846, Drum, Roscommon, Ireland.

vi. EDWARDUS CURLEY, b. 19 Aug 1849, St. Peter's, Athlone and Drum, Roscommon, Ireland.

Bridgida Delia Curley was born in 1837 or 1838 and was christened on

14 Jan 1838 at St. Peter's, Athlone and Drum, Roscommon, Ireland.

How old were the babies back then when their parents had them christened?

The sweet lady that helped me told me that in Ireland Bridget or Bridgida and Delia were like the same. 

I had never heard that before, have you?

I had a visitor to my blog from Dublin yesterday.

"If you come back today maybe you can tell me if that is true." Please.

So BYU TV I think I'm OK for now thanks. ;) 

No....on second thought...how did Bridgida Delia Curley get to America? 

Did the English send her family because they were in the Workhouse (Poorhouse it was called in Ireland) or did they have the money to send themselves? If so where are the records for that? 

The family story was that Brigida Delia had been an indentured servant. If so where are the 

records for that?

With all of this in mind  I am reconsidering your offer.

And the answer is HELP!! (Pretty Please)

To Whom It May Concern,

I would like to know more about my GG grandmother Bridget Delia Curley's family. She was born in Athlone Westmeath, Ireland in 1834-1837. I don't know who her mother and father are. But I have a wonderful story written by her daughter Kate Emily Pillsbury.

My family was one of the first white settlers in California. Kate's father and Delia's husband was Daniel Hackett Pillsbury. I have Aunt Kate's story on my blog and I feel like I am in Railroad Flat and San Andreas, California when I read the story. I think Aunt Kate was an amazing women. Her father obviously adored her and my Great grandfather, George Washington Pillsbury, was raised by her from the time he was six after her mother died. I talked to Kates granddaughter and she said that Grandpa Daniel Hackett also taught school. So he didn't just mine or supply water to the minors. My dad, Arthur Wayne Pillsbury was raised in West Point when a baby but mostly in Sutter Creek from the time he was three on to his graduation from Amador Hi and then he went to Cal. Berkley until WWII called and he joined the Air Force. I loved it in Sutter Creek. It is magical to me.

About 5 years ago dad took me to the Pillsbury ranch in Railroad Flat, CA. where his father, George William Pillsbury was born and where his grandfather George Washington Pillsbury died.

Oh how I wish I could find out more about Bridget Delia Curley the little Catholic girl born in Ireland who was named after Saint Bridget. She came to America during The Famine.

If you can help me please let me know, I'll be waiting.

Sincerely,

Grammy T.

PS: I wrote this letter to the 

generations project on BYUTV.

I hope they will help me find my 

Curley family.

"My wedding day was the most unhappy day of my life."

 

A GGGreat Niece of Aunt Kate

I was married on April 10, 1887, to a man named James Ham, a native of England. I think my wedding day was the most unhappy day of my life. For months afterward I couldn't think of it without tears. The wedding took place in the sitting room that I had worked so hard to make presentable. There was a nice group of friends present and everything should have been happy. But it almost broke my father up. If it had been my funeral he couldn't have felt worse. When congratulations were in order, he shook Jim's hand and said, with tears coursing down his cheeks, that Jim had taken the best spoke out of his wheel. It almost broke my heart and I would have given anything to have reconciled my father to my leaving. 

After the wedding we went to New Almaden in Santa Clara County to visit his brother and their families. We stayed there a few days more and than a month. During that time I had my first contact with real English life. As far as I know I was the only American in the community. All were English born the children of English born parents and they talked, ate and lived as in England.

When we left New Almaden we were weighted down with silver dollars. While he was there Jim worked in the quick silver mines, and as they paid off in silver dollars, a month's pay amounted to some weight. He managed it though by putting most of the dollars in one of the trunks and the remainder in several of our pockets.

From here we went to San Francisco on a sort of delayed wedding trip. This was my first visit to the city and was on of the most memorable events of my life. We stopped at the International Hotel on Kearny Street. At that time it seemed to be a family hotel and the people whom I met there were all very nice people. 

While we were in the city we took in as many of the points of interest as possible: Woodward's Garden, Golden Gate Park, The Cliff House, the seals and the seal rocks, and the theaters. We also saw the panorama of The Battle of Waterloo. Even now, after all the years since then, I have only to close my eyes and in fancy see that wonderful picture. It was glorious to me.

(to be continued)

Love,
Gammy T. 

"I Was Everything I Should Not Have Been."~Aunt Kate

The answer to the poll, that I tried to post last week, was that Aunt Kate sewed jumpers for the Chinese workers at the saw mill in Calaveras County.  The Chinese are a huge part of the history of California. 

I once asked my dad why there was not a Chinese burial grounds in the foothills of California. He didn't know the answer but I found out later when I took a class in Placer County. The Chinese sent the remains of their dead back to China to be buried. If you take a moment to Google Chinese in California you will find out the rest of the story. So for Aunt Kate to make their clothes for them was an act of human kindness and a blessing to her as the story will illustrate. 

  

Chapter 3 


In my neighborhood in the 1870's and 1880's there were some ladies who made a god out of housekeeping. They appeared to have no charity for anyone that was not as capable of a housekeeper as were they. They said I was lazy and preferred reading the New York Ledger when I should have been helping to prepare the evening meal. I was a tomboy and instead of assisting my sister in doing the family mending and other household duties I played outdoors with my brothers. In short, I was everything I should not have been and nothing I should have been.


How many times in the days since then I have been thankful I read the Ledger and everything else readable that came my way. It is thrilling even now to recall the enjoyment and sometimes the feeling of horror I felt when reading those long ago stories. Books by Dickens, Scott, Thackeray, George Elliot, Washington Irving, Cooper, The Scottish Chiefs, Robinson Crusoe and other tales which took me along wonderful paths of pleasure and gave me glimpses into the life of worlds before unknown to me. 


In the Ledger Mrs. Emma D. Southworh, a native of one of the Southern states wrote most entertainingly of life in the slave states before the Civil War. Mrs. Harriet Lewis of the same paper laid the scenes of her stories in England and Scotland and far off India. Sylvanus Cobb, Jr., another Ledger contributor, took one back to the stirring days both before and during the Revolutionary War, while Leon Lewis chose New York and islands of the Atlantic, the Bermudas, Jamaica, Madeira and Azore Islands to engage the attention and charm the mind of his readers.

Those books were not only interesting stories to me, they were also books of travel. Where else even today can one find such vivid scenes of home life in England and Scotland as are to be found in the novels of Elliot, Scott and Dickens? In one of Mrs. Southworth's books, I accompanied a young married couple on their wedding tour. From their home in Virginia we went to Washington and registered at the Willard Hotel. - A new Willard has replaced the one we stayed in. - We visited all the points of interest in that city and I was no more surprised at the magnificence and strangeness of the big town than was Gertrude, the little country bride from Virginia. From Washington we went to New York. After a week there spent in visiting picture galleries, going to theaters, riding in Central Park, eating in places so gorgeous that one's breath was taken away. And partaking of food so delicious and at the same time queer, it was rather startling to both Gertrude and me when Gerald told us that he had engaged passage on a Cunard steamship and we would leave on the next day for Europe. 

This trip is still fresh in my mind. It was a wonderful experience. And this was just one of the many that were mine and of the many people I became acquainted with. I shared their joys and their sorrows, called them by their given names, and was really one of them.

Chapter 4

When I was no longer a school girl but a homemaker in earnest, I turned my attention to the work with the greatest zeal. I would show my fault-finding neighbors I knew how to run a small three room house as such a place should be run. I have to admit that it was an uphill undertaking, but I never gave up. With the aid of broom and scrubbing brush, newspapers and plenty of elbow grease, I made that shack, if not exactly blossom as the rose, show up as a model of neatness and comfort. The cooking was not quite so easy. It was conquered, though I eventually became the best pie maker in the community. It all took time and effort to do it, and with the means at hand it often seemed impossible.

In 1880 my father bought the farm adjoining us on the east and we moved into the house there which was much larger than the shack we were occupying. There were five rooms on the lower floor and two in the attic. In the attic room on the eastern side the walls and the ceiling had been covered with rough pine lumber, but the western room had been left untouched. There was neither paint nor paper here and the imagination had to be stretched almost to the breaking point to see any beauty in these rude surroundings. The lower rooms were more hopeful and I went to work with vim to see if I could improve them. With a little money I could have worked wonders but there was no money to be spared for anything but the - must be paid fors.

Luck threw in my way a chance to earn a couple of dollars. Ah Hoo, one of the Chinese working in the sawmill decided to have some jumpers made. I was only too glad to do the sewing and by this means I earned enough to by paper for the border and walls. Each little job of sewing gave me enough to buy muslin for the ceiling and paper for the walls of the sitting room. When I finished those rooms they just looked lovely to me. I was enthusiastic now in housekeeping and flower gardening as I had been in my school work.

At the head of the stairway was a large box filled with magazines and papers. They were accumulations of several years left there by the former owners. There was a wealth of good reading among them. I have forgotten most of the titles, but I do remember Godey's Ladies Magazines. I wish I had those now. They would be quite antique.
(to be continued)

Love,
Grammy T.

Chapter 2 - Aunt Kate The Pioneer

Our Youngest Grandson Tate
This is the cutest picture so I posted it to make you smile.

More of Aunt Kate's Pioneer Story

Chapter 2

During all of these years the specter of poverty still followed closely. When apples were in season our school lunches consisted of the fruit and bread eaten without butter. I was the pilot of my family so seizing the ten pound lard bucket that held our lunches. I led the little fry to a nice quite spot remote from the eyes of the rest of the school. There we feasted joyfully without any remarks or curios glances to interfere with our pride or our digestion. 

During the first fifty years of my life I never knew anything but hard times. The only difference was that every once in so often times froze up so very solid that it seemed to me a battle axe was the only thing that might cause them to thaw. 

In 1879, my oldest sister Mary Delia Pillsbury, who had been housekeeper since my mother's death, was married and went to a home of her own. I tried to take her place and go to school also. But it was too much for me to do. We lived at least a mile and a half from the school house and by the time I had prepared breakfast, finished the housework, baked the apples for lunch, dressed myself decently for school and hurried to be on time, I was too tired to do justice to my studies. I went about six weeks of the fall term and then quit. 

It seemed queer to think of the studies I had in that one room mountain school in the 1870's. I don't know if there was a course of study or not because a pupil could take up or leave out anything he or she wished. But I think that all had to learn to read, spell, count and to write at it. Other subjects were their own choice. I took all the subjects usually included in a grammar school course and in addition I took Algebra, Geometry, Physiology, Philosophy, Botany and I read Astronomy. As there were no other pupils in school taking those subjects, it just depended on me, myself, whether or not I got anywhere with them. I think I must have had a streak of scholarly ambition, for the teachers said I did very well. 

It is with a heart full of gratitude that I look back to that fine group of men who were my teachers, and who made school life so interesting and pleasant for me. Namely: Mr. Swank, Mr. Wells, and Mr. Coulter. They knew how to arouse ambition in a student. I hope in the Great Beyond to which they have passed, they are still leading other pupils on to higher things.
(to be Continued)

Love,
Grammy T.

The Story of A Pioneer Named Kate

The full story is here.

Kate Emily Pillsbury - Lammersville School 1927

These Pictures are of Kate's nieces and nephews

a few generations down the line
and they are Daniel Hackett Pillsbury
and Bridgett Delia Curley's
GGGG grandchildren.

Love,
Grammy T.