We had dinner together in Soho. They then went on to see The Producers at the Drury Lane Theatre.
I'm proud of my parents and I just hope I can be like them after thirty years. They're kind to each other and they look after one another. And they have created a wonderful family. Happy Anniversary!
And here is the man himself giving a present to Jonathan, which turned out to be a beautiful four winds hat.
Don't the reindeer look cheery! They know the big night is coming soon.
Bob gave me one other picture to keep, of grandma Bobby and a little bubba named Bruce. She wrote on the back: Bruce & Mama 7/20/47. Look at all that hair! Seems to be a Bovee trait.
I also have about 15-20 pictures I borrowed to copy. There are some nice pictures of Phyllis and her children. Bob always seems to have a cheeky little grin on his face, it's really sweet. There are some of great-grandfather Alfred and Ann LeDuc. There are pictures of Evelyn as a baby and with Phyllis's family. And there are some pictures of grandma and her sisters as children; there is even a picture of a two-year-old Phyllis pushing her dolly pram around the back garden of their house in Montana. Here is one I scanned already. From left to right: Mary, Phyllis, a friend, grandma Bobby, and another little street urchin, probably in Jackson Heights. I love the grin on grandma's face. Aren't they lovely, all three of them! Click on the pictures to make them bigger.
I spent the weekend in Boston staying with Bob. I left Friday morning and had the afternoon to spend at the archives. I researched some vital records and then headed up to the Charlestown branch of the Boston Public Library. I thought they might have a local history and genealogy section. I was wrong. They had few books of slides with old views of Charlestown and I got to see two or three pictures of Main Street as it would have been in Michael O’Brien’s time. It certainly wasn’t worth the schlep from the T Station. Oh well. I think the Main Public Library or the local historical society might be a better bet. (I’m trying to write this on the way back into New York. The highways in the Bronx are horrific; Basra to Baghdad is probably a smoother ride!)
Later I met up with Bob and after dinner I got him to fish out all his pictures and family papers. He had a biography piece on Alfred O’Brien from a book entitled “History of Montana.” We'll have to locate the book when we go to Montana. It's quite long, so I'll email the text of the article. The information on his parents is mostly fantasy. Bob and I have a theory about this. Phyllis had told Bob that she was brought up as a Protestant and that when she married his father, she had to convert to Catholicism. Odd, as both of Alfred’s parents were definitely Catholic. Perhaps when he went off to Lehigh University to study engineering, he realized that his social and carers prospects were better if he weren’t a Catholic. Then he went off to Montana where he married Moina Ducie in a Roman Catholic ceremony - well, her Irish parents would have seen to that - but the article clearly makes every attempt to expunge his Irish famine immigrant background. Perhaps this explains why neither Bobby or Phyllis new anything of their aunts and uncles… Alfred had become somewhat estranged from them. By 1928 he was in Connecticut and then New York, that’s not so far from his family in Massachusetts and yet there seems to have been little contact. The article also has some useful - and I assume relatively accurate -information about his siblings. One sister was married to an artists. Perhaps this is our Boston Public Library fellow!
Saturday, we drove to New Bedford. We stopped first at the public library where I spoke to the chap at the Genealogy Department. He told me that Frank Paul's original name could be Paulinho, rather than him having dropped it completely. He told me that he may have come to New Bedford without his family, as a cabin boy on a whaling ship, especially if he had an older brother who was also a crewman. I told him that Frank was from Pico and he said that there are only twelve parishes and that the Church has microfilmed all their baptismal records, so it wouldn't be impossible to find him. The Azorean records list the child's name, parents and godparents, and grandparents, so it would be a real find! They had copies of the Catholic St.Mary's Church records, so we looked up both of Frank Paul's marriages and the baptisms of some of his children. They give the child's middle name which often wasn't recorded on the civil records and the godparents for each child. I have a photocopy of my gt-gt-grandmother Mary Ann's baptismal record from 1859. We went to Frank Paul's address from the 1900 and 1910 census, 128 Achushnet Avenue, but while many of the old Victorian clapboard houses in the neighborhood have survived, Frank's house has been replaced. We also didn't have much luck at the cemeteries, but I now have the contact information so I will phone them on Monday.
We had dinner with some of Bob's friends that evening, which I really enjoyed. It was nice to spend some time getting to know Bob. I have so little extended family, so it's a real treat to talk to someone who knows us and our background. He loaned me a lot of pictures to scan, so I will let you know when you can look at them on my flickr account.
