The Other Side of the Smith

This is Kate with her two youngest daughters, Helen and Agnes.

Of all my ancestors, the one whom I would most like to meet is my great-grandmother Kate Beggins Smith. At 16, she emigrated from Ireland to Boston in 1889, just as I moved from Massachusetts to Miami at age 17. According to the passenger list, she traveled with 2 pieces of baggage but no relatives. I was learning these things about her when I was the same age as she had been. How I wish she had kept a journal! What she excited about the trip? Did she enjoy the voyage? And like my grandmother meeting me at the airport in Miami, she was greeted in Boston by an older brother and sister.

Of course, John Smith didn't have those 10 children by himself. He married Kate in 1893 and the children followed in quick succession like the proverbial Irish twins. Kate was born in 1874 in Clones, Co. Monaghan, Ireland, right in the middle of six siblings. I can vividly remember her daughter, my Aunt Kate telling me that she had a brother Michael and a brother Peter (so do I) and a set of twin sisters and one of them had a handicap of some kind.
Irish research is notoriously difficult, especially since the war and subsequent fire in 1922 that destroyed nearly all of Ireland's vital records. I hadn't made much progress until I wrote that letter to the local newspaper. Since that time, all of Aunt Kate's stories have been verified by cousins in Ireland - there were a set of twins (Margaret and Mary) and Margaret was a bit deaf.

Kate had a hard life, like old Mother Hubbard, she had too many children, and probably never enough food to go around. She died in 1931 at age 57 of gall bladder cancer. Her youngest daughter, Aunt Agnes was only 16 at the time.
Kate and her brother Bernard, who was already in the U.S. when she arrived.

There were several Beggins family members as well as Smiths in this photograph:
11 is John Donovan, who married 15, Margaret Beggins Donovan. She was the daughter of 16, Bernard and Ellen (Donaghue) Beggins. Her mother died the day she was born and she was raised by 14, Rose Beggins Ordway. Rose's granddaughter, Mary Rose "Rhodie" Ordway Shaughnessy is 13 and her husband "Jimmy" Shaughnessy is 12.

The Propagation of the Smiths

Well, while I'm trying to finish John Smith's bio, I wanted to share this photograph of his family. This is the only photo that I'm aware of that contains all but one of his ten children. The occasion of the gathering was their aunt Rose Beggins Ordway's 80th birthday. In order, with their spouses are:
1. Kate, never married.
2. George, & his wife Minnie (Kiley). George was a veteran of WWI.
3. Everett "Boxer," never married.
4. Lillian, & her husband Lawrence "Larry" Sears.
5. Edmund (my grandfather), & his wife Mary Guidetti is in the far left chair.
6. Bernard is the one missing child. He married Yvonne Donoghue.
7. Mary and her husband, Leroy Owens.
8. Irene, never married.
9. Helen & her husband, Amerigo "Dick" Guidetti. His sister is also my grandmother - confused yet?
10. Agnes, and her husband, Louis Derragon. Louis was a Navy recruiter during WWII as a result of his asthma.
Whew! In another blog I'll detail the remaining folks in the photo. These Smiths have done me in!
I do have to say that I remember everyone of my grandfather's siblings, and am so very thankful that I was able to grow up around them.

The Ubiquitous Smith

Before I can really tell John Smith's story, I have one more Eureka! story to tell. I was in Calvary Cemetery in Brockton, MA. This is one of those old New England Catholic cemeteries that goes on for blocks. The cemetery office had experienced a fire in the early 20th century and had lost most of its records. I was searching for some of the other Irish cousins, the Ordways, and it was only by sheer happy circumstance that I had been able to find them. This was long before digital cameras, so I was copying down the information from the headstone. I happened to look up, and my eye spotted a Smith headstone a few rows over and across from where I was standing.

Nonsense, I snorted, as the thought came to me that I should record what was on the Smith headstone. If I stopped all my other research to record Smith information, I'd never get anything done! I went back to writing. Again I looked at the headstone. Another snort, and back to writing. Then it was as if two hands grabbed my head and made me look at the headstone a third time. Sigh. I felt as if the only way I would be able to record the Ordway information was to go over and record the information on the Smith headstone.

It listed Margaret Dunn and Catherine, Bridget and Mary Smith. After recording this information, I was able to finish the Ordway transcription in peace! Later that evening, as I was telling my dad about the Smith headstone, his face lit up like a lightbulb. Oh yes, he said - that was John's mother and sisters! He had forgotten that they were buried there until I had read the names. He remembered hearing a story about his grandfather having to drive into Boston to identify the body of his sister Mary, but since my dad would have been about six at the time, it's easy to see how he would have forgotten this story. Otherwise I had no clue that John's family came to the U.S. Maybe this fall I will be able to go back to Calvary and take real pictures of both headstones.
The moral of this story: listen to that little voice!!