Psalmboxkey's Blog

A warm welcome to all relatives interested in their family history–from 50,000 years ago and then picking up the trail in the 1800s. All pictures and documents can be enlarged by clicking on them. Please let me know of any corrections or if you would like to add anything. I will be updating from time to time, perhaps adding sub-pages with more detailed information.

MAPPING OUR FAMILY FEMALE GENOME

through Mary Scullion, Catherine Kelly, and a French Great-great Grandmother

The Genographic Project

In January of 2010 I submitted my DNA to the National Geographic Genome Project and received the following results. I could only select the X chromosome so the DNA trail follows through my Mother and then Grandmothers.  This DNA analysis would apply to anyone whose ancestor was Catherine Scullion.The map below shows the migration route of our line.

Out of Africa

Starting with L2, found in sub-Saharan area, our descendants moved north out of Africa.  These were the L3 ancestors, who moved probably because climate change. Around 50,000 years ago the ice sheets in Europe began melting, bringing warmer temperatures and moisture to the Sahara. This changed that area into a savanna, and so our nomadic ancestors followed the good weather and game northward.  Our ancestors continued to move north, leaving Africa, crossing the Sinai Peninsula into Egypt. Avoiding the Sahara, these people most likely followed the Nile basin.  These descendants formed Haplogroup N. Early members of this group lived in the eastern Mediterranean region and west Asia, where they likely coexisted for a time with Neanderthals.

After several thousand years in the near East, people belonging to a new group called Haplogroup R began to move out and explore the surrounding areas.  Descending from Haplogroup R was a group of individuals who formed a western Eurasian lineage.  Many of these descendants of pre-HV lived in the Anatolian-Caucasus region and Iran.  Individuals in Haplogoup pre-HV can be found all around the Red Sea and widely through the Near East, the highest concentration in Arabia. Their descendants split off and formed their own group, called HV.  This group, thanks in large part to a brutal cold spell that was about to set in, gave rise to the most prevalent female lineages found in Western Europe. Some descendants of HV had already broken off and formed their own group, Haplogroup H, and continued the push into Western Europe.  This wave of migration marked the appearance and spread of what archaeologists call the Aurignacian culture. This culture is distinguished by significant innovations in manufacturing and standardization of tools.  Around 15,000 to 20,000 years ago, colder temperatures and drier global climate locked much the world’s fresh water at the polar ice caps, making living conditions near impossible for much of the northern hemisphere. Early Europeans retreated to the warmer climates of the Iberian Peninsula, Italy and the Balkans where they waited out the cold spell.  Population sizes were drastically reduced, and much of the genetic diversity that had previously existed in Europe was lost.

Beginning about 15,000 years ago, after the ice sheets had begun their retreat, humans moved north again and recolonized Western Europe.

Today, Haplogroup H comprises 40-60% of the gene pool in most European populations.

The NatGeo site has maps that you can follow in more detail: https://genographic.nationalgeographic.com/genographic/index.html

Connection to our Recent Relatives

Our family names might have led us to believe that our ancestors belonged to the Celtic lineages. However, a quick review of our female line reveals that our Great-great (+ great, for later generations) Grandmother was French.  That information agrees with the genetic results indicating that we are also part of Haplogroup H from the female lineage as it follows through Catherine Scullion.

We think of our relatives as “Scottish”, but family members from both sides also came from Ireland. This makes sense given that the family was Catholic and most Scots are Protestant. Irish migration increased drastically after the Great Famine. Typically, these Irish immigrants settled around the large industrial cities in Scotland as did our relatives, but they were not always welcomed.

The immigration of such a number of people from the lowest class and with no education will have a bad effect on the population. So far living among the Scots does not seem to have improved the Irish, but the native Scots who live among the Irish have got worse. It is difficult to imagine the effect of the Irish immigrants will have on the morals and habits of the Scottish people. –Report  from the Scottish Census, 1871

FAMILY NAMES

Rae-Scullion-Morgan Family

Bernard Rae, the earliest relative that I could trace, was born in Ireland in 1847. At some point Bernard changed his name from Rae to Scullion. Over the years I heard numerous family stories concerning the reason for the name change and why particularly Scullion. Bernard changed his name because either someone in Ireland was good to him, or Scullion was his mother’s name.The reason for the name change had to do with a dispute over sheep! It seems that sheep from one field wandered over to Bernard’s field. He cared for of the sheep over the winter and then claimed them. Unfortunately, charges were brought against the sheep protector.  Not sure exactly why that would cause someone to change their name so a few missing pieces of the story have not be revealed.

Catherine Morgan was born in 1851 in Row, Dumbartonshire, Scotland. Catherine and Bernard married on June 24, 1867, and had seven children: Margaret (Peterson), Thomas (1868), Barney (1870), Mary (1873) (Turley), Dennis (1876), James, John (1877) and Ann (1879).  John Scullion was my Grandfather. I was able to fill out this part of our family tree by finding the 1881 Census taken in Scotland on the nights of  April 3/4, 1881. James and Margaret were not listed on the census but their names were included because they were mentioned in our oral family history.  At the time of the census, the family was living in Row, Dumbartonshire, at 12 Havelock Place. All children were born in Row. Bernard’s occupation was listed as “quarryman.”

Thanks to information provided by Carrie in Glasgow (we share Catherine Morgan as our great-great-great grandmother) the town of Row is now spelled Rhu (Helensburgh). Barney Scullion (1870) married Margaret McDade in 1896 and had one daughter, Mary Scullion, born May 1900. She married Thomas Robertson in 1930. They had a daughter, Jean who was born in 1937.

The map below shows the town of Helensburgh, where the address of their home showed up on Google maps.

Here is a picture of that house from Google maps.

<a href=”http://http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=embed&hl=en&geocode=&q=12+Havelock+Place,+Dumbartonshire,+scotland&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=32.885543,82.177734&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=12+Havelock+Pl,+Helensburgh,+Dumbartonshire+G84+7HJ,+United+Kingdom&ll=56.006798,-4.71762&spn=0.011325,0.040126&z=14&layer=c&cbll=56.006789,-4.717927&panoid=-pCw91zFtQww2nya9aecKA&cbp=12,88.15,,0,0.98&output=svembed
View Larger Map“>

McKenna-Kelly

Again, the 1881 census helped to fill in some of the missing information about the McKenna-Kelly family. Hugh Kelly was born in Ireland in 1844, his occupation was a tailor’s cutter. He was married on July 23, 1866, to Catherine McKenna, who was born in Stonierig, Lanarkshire, Scotland in 1851. Catherine’s mother was French.  Catherine and Hugh had five children: Elizabeth (1870), Catherine  (1875), Holyton, Lanarkshire; Denny, Stirlingshire; Hugh (1877), Stonierig, Lanarkshire; Tom (1879) Dunipace, Stirlingshire, and Jean. Their address as listed on the census was Stirling Row, Stirlingshire. Catherine’s occupation was listed as paper mill worker.

Map shows their address, 82 Roxburgh Street, Greenock, Scotland:

Here’s a picture of the street:

John and Catherine, married on May 20,1898 in Bronhill, Scotland, had eight children:

Ann (McNabb) 1898, Alexandria, Scotland.
Jack, 1899 and died in 1903.
Hugh, 1906 Greenock
Edward, 1904?, Greenock
Catherine (Panzcner) 1907
Jim, 1910, Kilmacolm
Mary (Malinoski) 1914, Clyde Bank
Elizabeth (Redmond) 1916, Clyde Bank

ORAL  HISTORY OF THE SCULLION/KELLY FAMILIES

Life in the Tenements

Mary would often talk about her life in Scotland in the early 1920s.  Her mother was married at 19; her father worked as an iron driller in the shipyards in Clydebank near Glasgow. Mary’s birth certificate provided confirmation of many details including her parent’s date and place of marriage.

Catherine had little formal education, but she was a self-educated person.  She loved music and knew all the tunes from the Gilbert and Sullivan’s operettas. Her father, Hugh Kelly, was killed at a factory or mill that made cloth.  He stopped to tie his shoe on the way out just as an explosion occurred.

Raising her children in the tenements of Clydebank was not easy.  Eddie became afflicted with rickets, a fairly common occurrence for children growing up in the heavily polluted city.  Her son, John, was killed in a fire.  Hughie was injured when his leg was caught under the wheel of a cart. Back at that time, it was common to put eye drops into baby’s eyes to prevent diseases.  Either the midwife or Catherine herself put the wrong drops into my mother’s right eye, which eventually deteriorated and had to be removed.  This disability would have the most profound effect on my mother’s life and she carried this as a heavy burden.

Occasionally John would “take off” to America, without telling the family.  Catherine would put her wedding ring into the pawn shop to tide the family over.  Catherine was loved and respected by her children, her husband, however, not so much. One time her oldest girls were instructed to beg for food, but they were told to go far away from the neighborhood so as not to bring shame to the family. Katie couldn’t bring herself to beg; I believe she told her Mother that no one would give her food.

The family lived in a two-room flat with the bathroom was down the hallway. As poor as they were, my mother remembered that keeping the family name plate outside their door shined up was very important.  Over half the population of Scotland in 1911 lived in one or two roomed homes. One reason the family had difficulty economically was the  prejudice against Catholics in Scotland. For Catholics it was nearly impossible to get a government job, health care or access to higher education. At Christmas the special gift to the children was an orange. Oatmeal was the staple of their diets as was a kind of mutton stew.

I remember my Aunt Annie talking about her mother and the frequent pregnancies. She said she would see her mother “putting on the apron again.” She repeated the story in a way in which an addition to the family was not necessarily a happy occasion for her.

Coming to America

Catherine’s primary concern was how her family could start a new life in America. First, Annie and Katie immigrated to America, where they were employed in domestic service.  The sisters saved their money to bring the rest of the family over including their mother and three siblings, Jim, Mary and Betty. By that time Hughie and Eddie had already immigrated to the US. In 1924 the family made the trip over.  My aunts paid for first-class passage so the family wouldn’t have to go through Ellis Island.  They were afraid that my mother’s loss of an eye would prevent the family admittance into the country and thought that paying for first class passage would facilitate their entrance.

My Mother would retell the story of her Mother waking her up as the Columbia steamed into New York harbor and how her family joined the hundreds of other immigrants on the deck to view the symbol of their new freedom and life–the Statue of Liberty. The hope was that they left the cruelties of the British class system and discrimination their family suffered being Catholic in a Protestant country.  The class structure had offered no opportunity for advancement or health care for the lower classes.

Catherine, 48 years old, lived for only several months after her arrival, but she had achieved her dream: her children were in America.

Our family never visited her grave, but I remember Mom saying that they lived in St. Denis Parish in Havertown. In June of 2011 I called the Church to see if she was buried in their cemetery.  Within a half and hour, my call was returned, and she was located in the J Range 18, Lot 27, laid to rest on December 17, 1923. With her is baby boy McNabb, November 29, 1926.

Ironies Beset Us Visiting the Past

In 1972 I visited Scotland for the first time with the hope that I could find my Mother’s birthplace in Clydebank. Some relatives were doubtful that the old tenements would be standing as during World War II the German bomber squads destroyed many of the shipyards and adjoining buildings. Known as the Clydebank Blitz, over two nights in March of 1941 bombs rained down on the city for more than 16 hours. Over 600 people lost their lives and 48,000 were homeless, most of them shipyard workers and their families.

We drove into Clydebank scanning the numbers on Dumbarton Road where blocks here and there were empty. My Mother told me that there was a government building opposite their apartment. Richard slowed down as we drove up to the Clydebank Town Hall. On the other side of the street 48 Dumbarton stood much as I imagined it with a gritty exterior and featureless windows. Seeing the building made my Mother’s stories of Scotland very real, and I thought about her looking out the third story window at the building across the street.

Mom told me a canal ran near their home, and sure enough not far from Dumbarton we found a bridge over the waterway.

Twenty-eight years later I again made a pilgrimage to Clydebank with my daughter, MaeC, whose name is a derivative of Maisie, her Grandmother’s nickname. We told the taxi driver to take us to 48 Dumbarton, but when we arrived I became confused–the block of buildings were gone and in their place was a plaza. I was saddened by the loss of our “homestead” that had survived the destruction of the 1941 bombing raid. I didn’t see the name of the park until I returned home and studied the picture the taxi driver took of MaeC and me standing in front of the sign which read: Solidarity Plaza. Given our family’s dedication to labor causes, the irony of the park’s name considerably softened the loss of the building.

During the Clydebank Blitz, one of the defenders was the Polish destroyer, ORP Piorum, which was docked for repairs; but she had big guns and fired them on the incoming Lutwaffe. The memorial to the ship’s crew was Solidarity Plaza.

Dedicated to the Crew of the Polish Ship, O.R. P. Piorum
Defenders of Clydebank
Clydebank Blitz 13 March 1941
Re-Dedicated on 12 March 2005
(March 12 happens to be Mary’s birthday)
Solidarity Plaza is a tribute to the people of Clydebank, past, present and future.
Re-furbished by Clydebank Re-Built to mark the start of the Regeneration of Clydebank.

LIFE IN AMERICA

With the passing of Catherine so suddenly after her arrival, this tragedy left three small children without parents. Annie had set up a home in Bryn Mawr for the family and took on the responsibility of raising the children. Ann was married to Jack McNabb sometime in the mid 1920s. She had two of her own daughters, Nancy and Joan.

Family pictures, between the years 1925 to 1950 . . .

In trying to determine the date on the photograph, I researched the studio’s logo in the left lower corner. The vignette’s subtle lighting and pose seemed to suggest greater sophistication than the usual stock photograph of the time. Sarony was the trademark of Napoleon Sarony, a famous photographer in the late 19th Century, who took theatrical portraiture. His son Otto followed him in the business. Evidently they franchised branches in other cities including Philadelphia. A Russian photographer, Marcus Woro, purchased the Philly branch sometime after 1910. Source: http://broadway.cas.sc.edu/index.php?action=showPhotographer&id=42. Photo: from the collection Jack Panzcner.*

In the last photo, John is holding his Grandchildren, Nancy and Joan. Around 1939 Annie traveled back to Scotland for a visit with her father who had settled on the Isle of Wight. I believe he had remarried.  We don’t a firm date on his passing, perhaps 1977. Mary also returned to Scotland in 1939 and visited with her father.

MARY SCULLION (Maisie, as she was called by her kin)

When my Mother finished her junior year of high school and turned 16, she had only once choice: to quit school and start to work.  The concession: Annie allowed her to finish out the year as she turned 16 in March.  Quitting school before graduation was common during the 1930s, but the decision crushed Mom.  She was an avid reader; and although education may not have been considered important, for her graduating from high school meant everything.

Mary started work in Devon at the Benjamine C. Betners Paper Box Manufacturing Company in the paper bag production line in 1931. I remember Mom telling me about working at the factory, and how they had to keep ahead of the machines or paper bags could implode all over the place. My mother saved many pictures from that time and took care to place them in albums. Coworkers shared a camaraderie, and many of her pictures, like the one below, show her friends lounging together and quite happy.  Mom made lifelong friends while working at the factory.

The workers at Betner went on strike, and it seems they had that cohesiveness making solidarity for their cause stronger.  Looking at these photographs made me consider today’s work places. How many of us spend time relaxing with our coworkers or  take pictures of times together? Many work places create structures and policies that defeat solidarity.  False hierarchical job categories, company run employee councils, paternalistic policies are just some ways that weaken solidarity, whether blue-collar or white-collar jobs.

While working in the factory, Mary attended night school to learn secretarial skills; and in July 1942 she applied for a position as typist at the Navy Yard for temporary war time employment. One of her girlfriends in the typist pool suggested that they join the Central Philadelphia YMCA Outing Club, an active organization of young people interested in hiking and other outdoor activities.  Mom’s photograph book of the era before 1943 was full, but she had tucked a couple small brochures of scheduled hikes at the very back of the album. On the last page of those pamphlets listed the name of the club chairman: John Malinoski.

Mary gets Married

As chairman of the outing club, John took volumes of photographs of their hikes and events. John wrote on the photograph below “Morgan’s Mill, October 3, 1943”.  A later note on the margin of the picture stated: “first day we met.”

This next picture, taken in the winter of 1944, is one of my favorites– myself being an ice skater.

On September 1, 1945 Mary and John were married in Llanerch, Pennsylvania, on the lawn of the house where Mom lived in a small apartment.

The guests: George Malinoski, Ann McNabb, Mary, John, Bruno, Martin; (kneeling) Erwin, Joan, Dorothy (mom’s friend), Katie.

FAMILY WEDDINGS

FAMILY GATHERINGS AND NOTES

When Louise and Irwin were married, Nancy and Joan stayed with us to attend the wedding. My father snapped this picture before we left for the Church.

Horn & Malinoski Family (New Hartford, NY) 1963

REVISITING THE LOCUST CREST TAVERN, MEDIA, PA

Back in the 1950s, Katie and Bruno owned the Locust Crest Tavern, resting on the corner of Middletown and Sycamore Mill Roads in Media. Katie managed a small fruit and vegetable stand in the parking lot. The tavern, considered a Delaware County landmark, has been around for many years and was once an ice cream parlor. I remember as a child we would frequently visit the fruit stand, and we run up to the stone well on the small hill, sometimes finding a turtle in the filled-in well.

In October 2013, Jean and I visited the tavern, now renamed La Porta. The owner said that she had a picture of the fruit stand, and we hope to return to see that photograph. Slides show the interior and exterior of the building. Judging from the beams and fireplace, may be possible to figure a date for when the original building was constructed.

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THE SETTING SUN

Katie and Bruno Panczner and Mary and John Malinoski are buried at Saints Peter and Paul Cemetery, 1600 Sproul Road, Springfield, Pennsylvania.