My own little Lottie and it’s a long way to Tipperary

It’s been an eventful few weeks here at the Funny Farm as I trace my family tree. Not only was I able to find the birthplace of my great, great, great grandfather John Maloney in Ireland – Tipperary! – I also discovered that my great, great grandmother Annie Larkin Maloney’s had a niece was named Charlotte  Mountain - or, as the family called her, Lottie. (It was inevitable, wasn’t it, since it was a Lottie that started this whole mess.)

Annie’s sister Margaret – or Jennie, as the family called her, married a man named Edward Mountain. Lottie was one of their daughters. These people are so distant from me, time-wise; Charlotte Mountain was born in 1893. But they seem so real to me the more I get to know them. It’s like having a whole neighborhood living inside my head.

That’s the latest on my family tree – what are some interesting things you’ve been learning about your family?

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The scent of my family tree – a little dust mixed with a lot of history

Pittsfield, MA c.1860; lithograph of painting by artist James Colt Clapp

There’s a spot in my house, as you walk up the stairs to the second floor and make the turn on the landing, where, if the conditions are right, it smells like my grandparents’ house.

It’s the smell of tiny dust particles suspended in the air, warmed by the bright sun that shines through the windows that overlook the driveway (and my neighbor’s house). It’s a quick scent of a sleeping dog and wooden banisters polished smooth by a hundred years of hands grasping on the way up and on the way down. It’s the smell of plaster walls and dark attics and creaking stairs, if creaking stairs have a smell. Which I think they do.

It only lasts a moment – less than a second – but when I smell it I’m transported to their house in Pittsfield, MA, an ancient triplex row house where my mother grew up, where her father lived. It’s the house her grandparents and great grandparents and great great grandparents either lived in or next to or around the corner from.

I think the smell of my grandparents’ house is actually the spirit of all of those people who slept, ate, laughed, cried and lived in those rooms for more than a hundred years. And as I’ve been tracing my family tree, those spirits have come alive for me in a way I didn’t expect.

It’s one thing to create a family tree – a bracketed chart that lists the basic details of my grandfather’s parents, their parents, their parents and their parents.

But those simple details – date of birth, date of death, date of marriage – don’t even begin to share the information I’ve amassed about their children, siblings, family. Where they lived, where they worked, how they died, and what the world was like when they walked the earth.

Take one set of my great, great, great grandparents on my mother’s side, for example.

Tracing my family tree one leaf at a time

My great-grandparents, James Francis and Mary Ellen Maloney Sheerin.

All of this cemetery walking I’ve been doing has piqued my curiousity about my own family tree.

Over the years, I’ve dabbled in tracing my roots. I’ve had some relatives who have done a lot of work and they’ve shared some information – although no one really wanted to share the bulk of the information. Just bits and pieces here and there.

And tracing your ancestry is like a mystery with a thousand plot twists and a million roads that will all lead to a legitimate clue. You’re only hinderance is time and patience.

So last week, I pulled out the old notebooks and folders and headed to the Rochester local history department, and then Brighton Memorial Library, because they have a free library edition of Ancestry.com.

I’ve been working on one mystery in particular: why my great, great grandmother is known as both Mary Ann McDevitt and also Mary Ann McDade.

Here’s the mystery: on the birth records and marriage records of the children of my great, great-grandparents John P Sheerin and Mary Ann McDevitt, her last name has been listed as McDevitt, McDavett, McDavid and McDade, McDeid, McDaid.

The first time I came upon the McDade variation, I passed the record up, because it was a birth record for a son, John, born in Willksbarre, PA. Wrong last name of the mother, and the other children I’d already found were all born in Berkshire County.

Then I found a photo that my mom’s cousin Suzanne had given to me before she died: a photo of two women she identified as “Mary Ann McDevitt (McDade)” and her sister, “Nellie McDevitt (McDade).”

Huh.