Tuesday, January 9, 2018

52 Ancestors: Week 2: Favourite Photograph

52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks was created by Amy Johnson Crow and is a series of weekly prompts to inspire genealogists and family historians to think and write about an ancestor and then share it online.


I have been participating in Amy's 52 Ancestors challenge since 2014, so I thought I would look back and revisit some of my previous posts about photographs.

In 2015, I posted  52 Ancestors No. 14: A Favourite Photo: My Grandparent's 1929 Wedding 

In 2014, I wrote a LOT about photographs:
Suffice to say that I have MANY, many favourite photographs and to narrow it down to just one favourite is quite literally impossible.

Today, I want to share one photograph that I have framed and always featured on a bookshelf near my favourite chair. It is a photograph of me, my great-grandmother Mary Elizabeth (Broderick) Moynahan (1869-1960) and my dear cousin Lorri. I love this photo because it is a photograph of the only great-grandparent alive when I was born and her hugging me and my dear cousin Lorri!

Sadly, all of my other great- grandmothers had passed at least a decade before I was born.
 And, in terms of all my great-grandfathers, they too had all passed long before I was born.
Here are the images of some of my great-grandparents whom I never met (Except for Mary Elizabeth (Broderick) Moynahan)

And here is the photograph of the only great-grandparent that I was blessed to meet.

Left to Right: Me, Mary Elizabeth (Broderick) Moynahan (1869-1960), and my cousin Lorri (Moynahan)
Mary is ninety-one years old in this photograph. In all other photograpghs of her, she was a big woman, "hale and hearty" as they would say, just like her mother before her (Mary Hussey 1841-1913) 

In this picture she is at her most frail but still strong enough to squeeze and hold me at the waist and hold my cousin Lorri on her lap.

The photograph was taken on her porch at 539 Campbell Ave., Windsor Ontario.

I have to say that I have had a life-long love of paisley and I can't help but wonder what Mary's beautiful paisley dress would have looked like in colour.

Researching the Broderick branches of my family tree has been incredibly exciting and rewarding, especially learning about Mary's father Martin Broderick (1831-1915) in the Fenian raids and her mother Mary Hussey's (1841-1913) promise to leave Ireland and meet her love in the Americas.

Oh how I wish I could have asked great-grandmother Broderick SO may questions about her life and her family. But I was just a wee little girl and so incredibly lucky to have received her love and hugs.

Previous Blog Posts on
The Brodericks of Essex County, Ontario



Posted by at
Labels: , , , , , , ,

2 comments:

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)