The O'Malley Connection

Almost as an afterthought, when Heather and I were exchanging emails on the Reid and Hawkes families, she added one little detail. I'm not sure why she thought to mention it, as she was mainly helping me understand how the various people in the two families related to each other, but I'm glad she did.

She had sent a volley of small commentaries during the preceding hours—including a hand-drawn family tree for the Reid side of the family, that critical component I had been missing. And, of course, she had sent more photos. Those wonderful family pictures.

Late into the evening—for her, at least—Heather sent one last brief message:

Almost forgot! Harry's half sister, Elizabeth, married a William B. O'Malley.

O'Malley! That was one of the surnames I hadn't been able to place in the family constellation. It was such an inconsequential part of the overall scheme of family relationships in that 1936 photo album I had found that I presumed I'd never figure it out. I had just assumed the man was a friendly neighbor stopping in to join in family festivities who had been captured forever in the family's photographic record.

But if you remember Alice Hawkes Reid's page labeled, "Off on a Spree," besides Harry Reid, his wife and the other Alice—the one whose identity we now know, thanks to Heather—there was a fourth person. Mrs. Reid had labeled that fourth person, simply, W. O'Malley.

And here we have a William B. O'Malley suddenly inserted into the family tree. Could "W" stand for William?

Harry Reid actually had several siblings. We've already learned that Alice Reid was his younger sister. Harry's father was actually married twice, and Harry and his sister Alice were among the children of the second wife. Thus, Harry had several older siblings, including, evidently, a half sister named Elizabeth.

Just to check, I turned to IrishGenealogy.ie, where among the digitized civil records I was able to locate a candidate for this Reid family marriage. Yes, there was a William Barnard O'Malley, son of "Alleyn Bernard" O'Malley, who had married a daughter of Henry Reid named Elizabeth.

The groom, at the time of the wedding, was an accountant who lived at 27 Old Blackrock Road in the city of Cork—a street name still in existence today. The bride-to-be, on her part, provided a reassuringly familiar residence name: Grange Cottage, the same location the Reids had mentioned in labeling some of the photographs in that 1936 album.

The wedding took place on August third, 1905, in the Reid family's church in the parish of Athnowen in what is now known as Ovens, County Cork, Ireland. Henry Reid—though it's not clear whether this was Elizabeth's father or brother—signed as one of the witnesses to the ceremony.

If it turns out that the man standing to the left of Harry's sister Alice Reid in the photograph from that 1936 album was one and the same as the husband of Harry's older sister Elizabeth, we now know just a little more about what Harry's brother-in-law looked like.

Alice's Wedding Day

It's been such a delight to see additional pictures of the family I first met by a chance encounter through an antique shop's old photo albums. Thankfully, there were enough details in that family keepsake to help me figure out just who that family might have been. Now that we've connected with Heather, a direct descendant of the family featured in that album—the Hawkes and Reid family from County Cork, Ireland—we have the opportunity to learn more.

Yesterday, I shared a photograph Heather sent me, showing her great grandmother, Sarah Susanna Ruby Hawkes, sitting sidesaddle on her horse. That provided a nice contrast to the later photograph we've already seen of Mrs. Hawkes in 1936.

After my introductory phone conversation with her, Heather provided another photograph which included Sarah on the day of her daughter Alice's wedding. The date was October 13, 1927, and the event was held at Bride Park House, which we've also seen, thanks to the family's photograph album.

At that earlier date, Sarah's husband, John Pim Penrose Hawkes, was still alive, providing us now with the only likeness we've seen of him. In addition, having Heather confirm the wedding date allowed me to find the digitized version of the marriage record for the couple we met as Harry and Alice. Harry, apparently, was formally known as Henry, but likely because he was son of another Henry Reid,  he informally was known by this nickname.

What is interesting to note, on this marriage record, was the listing of the witnesses to the ceremony. The person listed as J. P. P. Hawkes was likely Alice's brother, who himself was named after his own father, John Pim Penrose Hawkes. After the listing of the second witness—what looks like P. L. Ruby, doubtless a cousin to Alice from her mother's side of the family—there is another name listed: H. O'Malley.

We've seen that O'Malley surname before, in a couple entries in the 1936 photo album. As it turns out, Heather has provided some additional hints that there were some O'Malley relatives, so the few mentions in various photographs may well have been referring to family members.

Above: Pictured, on the day of Alice Hawkes' marriage to Harry Reid, were her mother, Sarah Susanna Ruby Hawkes, Alice, and her father, John Pim Penrose Hawkes. Setting of the photograph was in front of Bride Park House in County Cork, Ireland. Photograph, from the private collection of a member of the Hawkes and Reid families, used by permission.

Finding More About the Family Through Photographs

Being introduced to someone dubbed, simply, "Grannie" in the photo album I found in a local antique store, we saw an unnamed woman in 1936, dressed to go to church. Her dark clothing painted a somber picture, yet her posture presented an alert, energetic personality. There was no way to know, at the time I first saw the photograph, that "Grannie" was actually Sarah Susanna Ruby, the seventy one year old widow of John Pim Penrose Hawkes of County Cork, Ireland.

There is something inviting but often misleading about forming mental pictures of strangers, based solely upon what you see in their photographic likeness. I would never have guessed that that 1936 photograph belonged to a person of that age, though now that I've learned the family's history, I can verify that.

It is helpful to be able to view other portrayals throughout the person's lifespan to catch a glimpse of the personality. Thankfully, now that we've learned who the people in that photo album were, and have subsequently connected with a living descendant of "Grannie," we have the opportunity to not only view other pictures throughout their lifetime, but to learn more about them from our new contact person.

Heather, the great-granddaughter of the woman we first met as "Grannie," kindly sent a photograph of Sarah in her younger years—a picture its owner granted permission for me to share with you. Undated, the portrait shows Sarah sitting sidesaddle on one of the family's horses. Apparently an accomplished horsewoman, she was skilled at riding in that difficult position.

When Heather and I talked earlier this month, she mentioned how difficult it was to ride sidesaddle. Interestingly, I had just been at a carriage museum in central Florida in which a sidesaddle from that time period had been displayed. The chance to closely examine the saddle's configuration was fresh in my mind when Heather and I discussed her great-grandmother's riding capabilities. Perhaps this discipline was what contributed to her posture and bearing, all those years later when her likeness was captured, heading out the door one Sunday morning for church in 1936.

Above: Sarah Susanna Ruby Hawkes of County Cork, Ireland, riding sidesaddle in an undated photograph from the private collection of a member of the Hawkes and Reid family; photograph used by permission.

Balancing Act

It's a dream life when one can research her family history, unhampered by obligations of daily life.

Who are we kidding here? That never happens. Especially after having to tap dance double time upon returning home from travels. So, once again, I find myself at the end of a two week span, not having accomplished much more research than I had in the prior weeks on the road. Life is a balancing act, where work, play, study, meetings and mundane obligations all try to cram into the same space at the same time.

Maybe someday, it will all slow down, I tell myself. Or at least I'll develop the knack of simultaneously meeting commitments from multiple facets of my life.

As far as this time's research goes, it looks like my mother in law's tree is winning the name count derby. Her family tree now sports 10,615 family members, after adding a modest forty two additional names in this sequence. My mother's tree is not that far behind—up eighty six to 9,782—so with a little push in the next two weeks, maybe we'll balance out the attention spent on each side of the family.

Of course, not a whit of work has been accomplished on my father's line or my father in law's family. Now, there's a lot of "balancing act" I owe. Only problem is, I'm not sure exactly how I'll be able to break through on those research quandaries.

Monitoring our DNA matches lately has made me wish it were time for another whopping sales offer. At Family Tree DNA, I've received an additional twenty nine matches to bring my total to 1,924—a good number, though certainly not the astounding 206 I received once the winter holiday sale bulge finally worked its way through the FTDNA system at the end of February. Ancestry has slowed down even more, giving me an additional eleven matches in the past two weeks for a total of 500 matches. How's that for round numbers?

Those number patterns get repeated when I look at my husband's matches. FTDNA increased twenty six for him over the past two weeks. He now has 1,227 matches at FTDNA, and 238 at Ancestry, up six.

Still, the up side was that both of us had some promising contacts with matches—one of which was a Flowers line descendant who actually contacted us, a refreshing switch from the usual process. Meanwhile, I've also added two more family members' tests to the list of DNA results I'm tracking as administrator. On top of that, since 23andMe just offered a sale, I sprang for it for a test for myself, so now both my husband and I have tested at three different companies.

With the advent of DNA testing offers from such companies as Living DNA and MyHeritage, I'm not sure we'll spring for yet another two tests for the family. However, since a niece recently asked for my input on her family's tests with MyHeritage, I may as well face the learning curve there and familiarize myself with their readouts and tools—not to mention, brush up on my spreadsheet skills. This is becoming way too much data to just carry around in my head.

Above: Spring in the Mountains, 1912 oil on canvas by Swiss painter Giovanni Giacometti; courtesy Wikipedia; in the public domain.

Off the Shelf: Team of Rivals

The conduct of the republican party in this nomination is a remarkable indication of small intellect, growing smaller. They pass over...statesmen and able men, and they take up a fourth rate lecturer, who cannot speak good grammar.

Don't worry: this blog has not strayed from genealogy to politics. Nor has it lost its sense of history. However, in a déjà vu moment, in reading the introductory pages of Doris Kearns Goodwin's Team of Rivals, I found her quote of this passage from the May 19, 1860, edition of the New York Herald pause-worthy.

The comment, of course, was referring not to any current political aspirant, but was a reflection on the then-recent nomination of Abraham Lincoln for President of the United States.

How different things turned out to be.

In pulling an untouched book down from our family's well-stocked bookshelves for this month's read, I confess to wandering from my own past purchases to those of my husband. I have a reason for that. In a matter of only a few months, I will most likely find myself becoming the president of a small genealogical society. Admittedly, that is absolutely no comparison to a task as monumental as leading an entire nation, but I sense there is something to learn from looking to Abraham Lincoln's historic example.

So this week—as if I didn't have enough books of my own to finish—I found myself asking to borrow a book from someone else's bookshelves. I asked my husband to bring me that "slim volume" about the "team of rivals" Lincoln had assembled for his cabinet.

My sense of the matter is that leadership calls for the skill of being able to assemble well-qualified people with conflicting points of view to accomplish the organization's goals. If we guide our organizations by a body of leaders who collectively see everything eye to eye, we lose the perspective that may come only with dissent. Since so many tend to shy from disagreement, we prefer surrounding ourselves with "yes men." That, as we've seen in the past, is a recipe for group-think Kool-Aid, the kind that makes us drunk with the desensitized feeling that everything will run okay, despite indications to the opposite.

It is unquestionably a skill to be able to assemble a group of leaders who can tackle overarching corporate goals by pulling together in the same direction while also possessing differing outlooks, experiences, and opinions that can spark disagreements and dissension.

Granted, without those divergent views, meetings can run more smoothly and everyone will seem happier. But working in lockstep can also mean not being able to predict missed opportunities—or worse, avoid looming pitfalls. Having the ability to take in a 360 degree view, while providing the antidote to that groupthink trap, also means being willing to expose one's self to divergent viewpoints—plus the risk of disagreement and the hassle of debate that comes with such territory.

When Doris Kearns Goodwin penned the introduction to her book, she listed several qualities she observed in Abraham Lincoln's "extraordinary array of personal qualities" which contributed to his "political genius." For those brave enough to harness the raw power and benefit of divergent thinkers, we can all take a leadership lesson from her list. Here are some of the skills she saw in Lincoln that "enabled him to form friendships with men who had previously opposed him" in his political career:

• To repair injured feelings that, left untended, might have escalated into permanent hostility;
• To assume responsibility for the failures of subordinates;
• To share credit with ease;
• To learn from mistakes.

The author's commentary on Lincoln's political prowess concluded, "the qualities we generally associate with decency and morality—kindness, sensitivity, compassion, honesty, and empathy—can also be impressive political resources."

The lessons on Lincoln's leadership style were enough to fill over nine hundred pages in Goodwin's book. So much for my mistaken memory of a "slim volume" on that team of rivals. While those lessons go far beyond such interpersonal skills mentioned in the points above, they do exhibit one key: much of leadership comes down to relational skills. Whether for a national position or for a more humble mission, these are lessons in leadership which, applied in good measure, would make any organization a more effective—and fulfilling—entity.

Remember Alice?

Call this the genealogical equivalent of Monday morning quarterbacking. We need to deconstruct the logic behind my assumptions in dealing with that mystery photograph album I found in a California antique store.

Granted, it was a pretty good job, finding my way from that lost album to the home of its originator, back in Ireland. But in the process, I did veer off in the wrong direction with some guesses.

Lesson learned: never forget to consider both sides of the family.

As much as I eventually knew the surname of the couple sending the gift of that album—it was Harry and Alice Reid—it never occurred to me to reconstruct a family tree for the Reid side of the family.

I have my excuses, of course. For one thing, there was such a focus on the Hawkes family—Alice Hawkes Reid's family. There were pictures of "Grandma"—her mother. Of course, there were some shots of Alice's perennially grumpy brother, Penrose, without whose unusual name I probably wouldn't even have considered purchasing the album. The group photo of the tea party guests included a listing of several Hawkes family members. There were even photographs of the Hawkes family's dog, Periwinkle, whose kennel club victories helped clinch the identity of the family's surname.

Other than that, the few stray mentions of other surnames didn't seem to provide any research traction.

And then there was the other Alice. The one whose unknown identity twisted me in contortions. I had tried everything—remember, the Hawkes family seemed to have a love affair with that name—yet nothing seemed to work out to provide me with confirmation of those guesses.

Now that I've connected with Heather, a Hawkes family descendant, in almost an instant, I've discovered my mistake. I was looking on the wrong side of the family tree. That mystery Alice was born a Reid, not a Hawkes.

It turns out Harry Reid had several siblings, including a sister who was about six years younger than he. Her name was Alice, and her arrival in the family constellation occurred in 1896.

Considering this gaping hole in my research, thanks to Heather's guidance, I'm making amends by filling in the Reid pedigree chart. Joining Alice were several siblings and half-siblings. And just like the rest of Alice Hawkes Reid's family, some of them dispersed to the four corners of the world, including Canada and the United States.

Hmmm. A clue. Perhaps, when I was considering the "voice" Alice Hawkes Reid used when penning her comments in the photo album, I should have remembered that other side of the family. It certainly makes sense, in reviewing her white-inked words, that the familiar tones regarding first-name-only family members could also have been reserved for the Reid side of the family.

Above: "Off on a Spree," Alice Hawkes Reid had labeled this photograph from their Christmas, 1936, family album. The four people listed left to right were "W. O'Malley, Alice, Harry + self." Alice Hawkes Reid always referred to herself in the album as "self." The woman standing second from the left, as it turns out, was actually Alice Reid, sister to Harry Reid.

Introducing a Grandchild

Her name is Heather. Long before she was born, her grandparents mailed off a small Christmas parcel containing a family photograph album. Who they mailed it to is a question still unanswered, but Heather and I are now on a joint mission to discover who the intended recipient might have been.

That 1936 album eventually made its way to an antique store in northern California, where I found it nearly eighty years later. Trust me: I am neither related to the Reids, who sent it, nor the Hawkes family which was mentioned in the album's pages. Finding the album was a chance occurrence. Considering the parcel traveled about five thousand miles in its journey from its origin in County Cork, Ireland, let's make that a very rare chance occurrence.

It took nearly three months of puzzling over the few hints provided in the album to determine the identity and location of Harry and Alice Hawkes Reid, the couple who originally sent the album. By now, almost all the questions prompted by the album have been answered—some noted in blog posts earlier this year, others resolved by information Heather provided in our several emails and a phone conversation.

Now, the focus is specifically on that last question still awaiting an answer: just how the album made its way to California. Who could it have been sent to? For me to guess—and I tried, every way I could, to figure this out—would have been an attempt so limited, especially because almost everything I know about the family is based on conjecture. But for Heather to assess the situation, it would be based on what she already knows about her relatives.

Heather, by the way, has given me permission to post these details on the rest of the album's story. In respect of her privacy, we agreed to call her, simply, Heather. She is quite as interested as I am in seeing the story about the album's journey completed, for which I am grateful. After all, you've got to admit, it is a curious landing place for an album which began its journey in Ireland. There is more to this story.

Not only will we examine some possibilities for recipients of the album, but Heather has kindly agreed to share some additional photographs of the people we've met in the album's pages.

That, however, I'll save for next week. The first item of business that needs to be tackled in this debriefing of the pursuit is to examine the point at which I missed the mark in my search. You see, I made some assumptions which may have led me in the wrong direction in my search for possible recipients. We'll take a look at the possibilities tomorrow.

Above: "The Dandelion Clock," by Irish-born American artist, William John Hennessy (1839 - 1917); courtesy Wikipedia; in the public domain.