2673 Bainbridge Avenue in 1905, The Bronx, New York City, NY. McConaghy. Hilliard. Northern Ireland

America and immigration from Northern Ireland. Dan likes to know everything about everybody. This is about his great grandmother. Every family has its stories. Ours on this one side stems from Northern Ireland, proudly English roots, or indigenous landowners, and very protestant. Find the old pictures. Then look up the address and find someone who says the house was built in 1915.  Our records, not so: 1905. Complete with beams on the long wagon, with horses.  Then ask, what did it cost to build a single family home in the Bronx in 1905? No idea, but this is a fine middle-ground house. There used to be a snowball bush in front, my mother, Marjorie, would say.

We know that my grandmother was funded from Ireland, with recurrent visits by her natural father, William Brien (of the Lodge), and that she spent down what he provided when her husband died in his early 40's, and she had 5 surviving children to support in that house. Her mother, known as Nana, and an aunt, I believe, also lived there, top floor. My mother imitated Nana calling, "DorothEEE? DorothEEE" for Dorothy, the second daughter, who was the favorite gopher.

2673 Bainbridge Avenue, the Bronx, New York City, single family home, being built in 1905

My grandmother, Lucinda Louise Hilliard arrived second class on the ship with her mother, Margaret  (we have the ticket) at 18 . Margaret, was all of 32 by then, which tells you something.  It might have been a #me-too situation except Mr. Brien was honorable given the times, and supported my grandmother and visited her here, and was always concerned and respectful as to Margaret Hilliard.  Louise married here, to Robert McClure McConaghy. Had they known each other in what is now Northern Ireland?   Support?  Secret, but generous. Mr. Brien gifted stock, that Grandma sold off to support the children and others, until the two sons found out, and then worked to pay their own way at Columbia.late in high school, Girls did not go to college.

Louise Lucinda Brien Hilliard, before she became a McConaghy

Little Robby, the eldest child, died at 6  in about 1914 (flu) and is buried with most of the others at Woodlawn in NY,. There is still a stained glass little lamb window in his memory in the Sunday School at Bedford Park Presbyterian Church, the Bronx, and we asked recently if couldn't room be in Robby's plot for cremains of another descendant. Apparently, in the less than finest Dickens tradition, the Board was horrified at allowing such a thing. La de dah. We will ask again.  Cemeteries are still peopled with the dead. You can write them on our behalf at https://www.thewoodlawncemetery.org. The time has not yet come.  It is not too late.  The little lamb placed on Robby's headstone, is gone, though.  Careless mowers, grim reapers.

Member of the Board: Certainly NOT.

Listen -- What is that you say? This old regular and irregular family wants to add one more, as cremains in due course, in a little box tto be set in a plot with what is left of a casket with a 6-yr old planted there in 1914? Surely the little lamb, Robby, would like company after 106 years?