Walking in my ancestors' footsteps

When I first located James and Sarah Hickey and their family in the census, I was very surprised to learn that my great-grandmother (Bridget Hickey) worked in a cotton mill as a child. In 1880 the Hickeys were listed in Howard County in a village known as Elysville. Bridget, who was 10 years old at the time, worked in the mill along with 4 of her siblings. According to the census enumerator, the population of Elysville at that time was 322.

Through further research, I was able to discover that Elysville (also known as Alberton, then Daniels) was a mill town on the Patapsco River. Most of the village was in Howard County, but part of it was in Baltimore County. The mill that Bridget Hickey worked for was most likely the Alberton Cotton Mill, which produced cotton duck well into the twentieth century.

I also learned that a Catholic church once stood on a hill within the boundaries of the town. St. Stanislaus Kostka Church had quite a rich history. It was built in 1879 to serve the Catholics living in Elysville/Alberton. It was built up on a steep hill, on land donated by James Gary, the owner of the mill. The church did not have a resident priest, but was rather served by priests from Woodstock College, a Jesuit seminary a few miles away. In the winter the priest would skate down the frozen Patapsco River on ice skates to say Mass for his parishioners.

The church was dedicated in December 1879 by Cardinal Gibbons. About 100 people attended the Mass and dedication that day. I like to think that James and Sarah Hickey and their family were among the number in attendance.

The interior of the church was destroyed by fire in 1926. The outer stone walls, however, remained intact for many years. Recent newspaper accounts indicated that the ruins of the old church were still visible today within the boundaries of Patapsco State Park.

I was fascinated by the stories of the ruined church and wanted to visit there. It took me quite a few years, but I was finally able to visit the site about 5 years ago.

The forest is beginning to take over the site, but much of the walls still look as they did over 100 years ago when my ancestors first saw them. James and Sarah may have climbed these same steps to attend Mass here. There is a small cemetery beside the ruins of the church. James and Sarah's oldest son, John, and some of his family are buried there.

Family "hi-story"

When I first started homeschooling over 20 years ago, I used a "boxed" curriculum. (That is, all the materials came in a box: textbooks, lesson plans, even pens and pencils.) Since this was a new experience for me and I had no teaching experience, having lessons already planned out for me had its advantages. The disadvantage, though, was that the person planning the lessons did not know my children and did not necessarily have the same teaching style as I did.

After several years of this approach I found myself becoming more and more frustrated with the lesson plans. I was especially frustrated with the curriculum supplier's approach to history. There was a big emphasis on memorizing names and dates. Yes, I know it's important to know when certain events occurred, but I was more concerned that my kids understood what made those events or people important, and how they affected the lives of ordinary people. After all, history is really just a story (hence the title of this blog, emphasizing the "story" in history).

After 3 years of homeschooling, I discontinued the boxed program and put together my own curriculum. For history we read biographies, historical fiction, and the lives of the saints. We looked at how the people lived during a particular time period: the clothes they wore, the foods they ate, the houses they lived in, etc. The kids created beautiful, illustrated timelines to place events and people in context. Instead of taking tests, they applied what they learned by writing historical newspapers. By this method, I hope that I instilled in my children a lifelong love of history.

In the same way, genealogy is not just about names and dates. It is family history, the story of a family. Many genealogists get so caught up in the search for names and dates that they miss out on the most exciting aspect of genealogy; that is, walking in their ancestors' footsteps and getting to "know" them. I'll admit that I get pretty excited when my "sleuthing" leads me to discover a new name or date in my family tree. However, it's even more exciting for me to find a story in a newspaper about a family member, because it gives me another little glimpse into his or her life.

Since I started "doing" genealogy over 10 years ago, I have always wanted to write a fully annotated family history to pass on to future generations. I want my children and their children to know the story of those who came before them.

Many of the published genealogies that can be found at libraries or historical societies are collections of charts with names and dates. They can be of great value to other genealogists, but they are not the types of books you sit down and read.

I wanted my family history to be different, to be a "story" that my family would want to read, but how to do it was the challenge. I am not one of those people who was blessed with a diary or letters written by my ancestors.

In recent years, I came across 2 books that showed me how to write a family history as a story. You Can Write Your Family History and Bringing Your Family History to Life Through Social History both explain how to fill in the gaps in a family history.

So for the past few months I have been reading up on things that would have impacted my ancestors (the Irish potato famine, daily life in the 19th century, etc.). I have visited some of the places where my ancestors lived and worked. I have also done a lot of research in old newspapers. Little by little, I feel like I'm getting a picture of what my ancestors' lives were like.

I hope that within the next year or two I will be able to complete a book about the Hickey family. So far, I have written the first chapter, which is about the Irish potato famine and James Hickey's journey to America. The next chapter will be about Sarah Fox and her family, about life on her father's farm, and about her meeting and falling in love with James Hickey. The rest of the book will be about James and Sarah's life together and about each of their children and their families.

So wish me luck with my project and help me to stay on task.

It's a small world

One of my favorite things about genealogy is connecting with other genealogists and with cousins I didn't even know I had. Over the years, I've met quite a few distant relatives, some of whom have become very close friends.

Genealogy has made me realize what a "small world" it really is, as the saying goes. A few years ago, I found some Hickey cousins through a message board online. They put me in touch with another cousin who lived in Maryland. When I contacted the Maryland cousin, she said that she wasn't doing genealogy any more but had a niece that was. When she told me where her niece lived, I was shocked. She lived in the same small town as me, less than 5 miles from my house! I called her up and was able to meet her, as well as her mother and uncle (who were my mother's second cousins).

A few years later I was researching James and Sarah Hickey's daughter Elizabeth. While searching the 1930 census for Elizabeth, I discovered that she was living on Aldershot Road (near Catonsville) that year, with her daughter Elizabeth Minogue and her family. This was quite an interesting development, because my husband and I had lived one street up from Aldershot when we lived in Maryland.

This discovery brought to my mind an incident which had occurred about 20 years earlier, shortly after we bought our house in Maryland. At that time, there were a series of arson fires in our neighborhood, mostly small blazes set in nearby dumpsters. One day, though, the property behind us caught on fire. We called the fire department, but by the time they arrived the garage was ablaze and the flames had spread to the back of the house. The next day we learned that an elderly woman had been asleep in an upstairs bedroom and had been rescued by the firemen.

When I discovered that Elizabeth Hickey and her daughter had lived on Aldershot, I wondered which house they had lived in. The next time I was in Maryland I drove down Aldershot and checked it out. I could hardly believe it when I saw that it was the house directly behind our old house, the same one that had caught on fire. I later learned that the woman rescued by the fire department was none other than Elizabeth Minogue, the daughter of Elizabeth Hickey and also my grandmother's first cousin. I only wish that I had known at the time that she was a relative. I would like to have gotten to know her.

A forgotten hero

James and Sarah's Hickey's tombstone at Holy Family is one of 3 Hickey stones in the cemetery. James and Sarah's stone is on the left. The larger stone on the right marks the final resting place of their second son, William, and his wife Grace.

In the center is a stone inscribed with "James / Beloved son of Wm. H. & Grace / Hickey." According to the dates on the stone, James died in 1895 at the age of 7.

When I first saw the stone for little James many years ago, I had wondered what had caused his death at such a young age. My guess was that he had succumbed to some childhood disease, like so many other children in that time period. It wasn't until a few months ago that I accidentally happened upon the true story of this child's death and of another cousin who was all but forgotten.

James ("Jimmy") Hickey was the oldest of 5 children born to William and Grace Hickey. George Thomas Miles, born in 1880, was the oldest child of William Hickey's sister, Catherine, and her husband, Samuel Miles. George had a little brother, Samuel, Jr., who was about a year older than Jimmy Hickey. The three cousins lived in Baltimore, a few blocks away from each other.

The Baltimore Sun described George Miles as "unusually muscular" and "a plucky fellow." On the morning of July 22, 1895, George took his little brother and Jimmy Hickey fishing at Gwynn's Falls. The 3 boys found a place to sit, on a rock near the public bathhouses. About noon Jimmy got up to move to a different spot on the rock. Unfortunately, he slipped and fell into the water.

George, with no regard for his own safety, immediately jumped in to save his little cousin. Sadly, though, George was not able to reach Jimmy in time, and he lost his own life in the process. Samuel Miles had run for help, but it was too late. Both boys had drowned before help arrived.

Two days after this tragic accident, the two cousins were buried at Holy Family cemetery. According to the newspaper account of their funeral, the boys were buried side by side in the same grave. However, the only name on the tombstone is that of James Hickey. How sad that the boy who gave his life trying to save his little cousin does not even have a stone to mark his grave.

I am currently working on a book about the Hickey family. I plan to include George and his story in the book, so that others may know of his heroism. I want to make sure that George and the many other "heroes" in the family are not forgotten.

The Joy of Discovery

In searching out my ancestors over the years, one of my favorite things to do has been to visit cemeteries. I know that may sound morbid to some, but I find them fascinating, especially the older ones with their decorative monuments.

Today I returned to a cemetery that was the site of a wonderful discovery for me almost 10 years ago. It was at this cemetery that I first "met" my great-great-grandparents, James and Sarah Hickey.As I said in my last blog, I had started out searching for my ancestors "Male Hickey" and "Female Fox." How was I to find them, though, without knowing their first names?

I did some research and learned that a good genealogist always starts with what she knows and works backwards. I knew that my grandmother's parents were Jesse Dell and Bridget Hickey, so I started with them. I was able to find out a lot about the Dell family, but Bridget's parents were still eluding me until I sent away for a copy of Bridget's death certificate.

When the death certificate finally arrived after many weeks of waiting, I had the information I sought: Bridget's parents were James Hickey, born in Ireland, and Sarah Fox, born in Pennsylvania.

Bridget and her husband and many of the Dells were buried in the cemetery of Wards Chapel Methodist Church in Harrisonville. I made many trips to the cemetery to transcribe tombstone inscriptions. While searching old maps of the area around the church, I had noticed that there was once a Catholic church on the other side of Liberty Road, just a little south of Wards Chapel. Since the Hickeys were Catholic, I wondered if this may have been their parish.

The day after Bridget Dell's death certificate arrived, my husband and daughter and I made another trip out to Wards Chapel. On the way to the cemetery, I decided to look for evidence of an abandoned church.As we were driving up Liberty Road, I spotted the remains of an old church building and a sign which said "Holy Family Cemetery / Roman Catholic / Founded 1876." We decided to check it out, and pulled into the driveway beside the building.

As I walked around the cemetery, looking at the stones, I said a prayer that if any of my family members were buried there I would find them. As soon as I finished my prayer, I turned around to look at a row of stones beside the church. What I saw sent chills through me. There, right in front of me, was a stone marked with the name of Hickey. On the front was the inscription: "In loving remembrance of our father and mother."

One of the sides was inscribed with the name of James Hickey and this beautiful epitaph: "Farewell dear father / sweet thy rest. / Weary with years / and worn with pain. / Farewell till in some / happy place / We shall behold thy face again.

"The other side was inscribed with the name of Sarah Hickey and the following: "Oh mother thy gentle / voice is hushed / Thy warm true heart / is still / And on thy pale and / peaceful face / Is resting death's cold / chill."

I could hardly believe my eyes. At last I had come "face to face" with the couple that I had been seeking for so long. James and Sarah had spent over 40 years together as husband and wife. In death, they were not separated for long. James died on November 5, 1893. His beloved Sarah died just 3 weeks later, on November 28.

About me

Those who know me well know that I have a passion for genealogy. For the past 10-15 years, I've spent thousands of hours "hunting down" long-lost ancestors and relatives.
I first became interested in my family history back in 1995 when I attended a family reunion. Some of my cousins had compiled a book with family trees, photos, and stories for the reunion. In the book was a story about my great-great-grandparents, whom I had never heard of.
According to the story, "Female Fox," a Quaker from Philadelphia, had met "Male Hickey," a Catholic from Ireland, on a boat coming to America. They had fallen in love and had run off to Ellicott City to get married, after which the woman was disowned by her parents for marrying a Catholic.
I was intrigued by the story of this anonymous couple and their forbidden love and wanted to know more about them. The challenge was how to find them, especially given that I had no first names and that their last names were both very common.
Through many years of research and lots of detective work, I was able to identify the couple as James Hickey and Sarah Fox. Little by little, the details of their lives and the lives of their 11 children have come to light. As is often the case, I discovered that the story I had read about the Hickeys was a combination of fact and fiction. The true story of their lives, though, was no less fascinating (at least to me).
I think my fascination with genealogy goes back to my lifelong love of history. As a young girl in school, I always enjoyed field trips to places like Gettysburg and Harper's Ferry. In my later years, I enjoyed reading historical novels and watching historical shows on TV.
Another of my lifelong interests has been mystery and detective stories. As a girl I read all the Bobbsey Twins and Nancy Drew stories. Later I read Agatha Christie's mysteries and enjoyed watching Perry Mason and other detective shows on TV.
Genealogy is the perfect blend of these two interests. Looking for lost relatives involves following clues and using a lot of deductive reasoning. It's like being a detective in a mystery story. It also involves history, not so much wars and famous people, but the history of everyday people like you and me. I'm beginning to learn what life was like for them, the challenges they faced, and the sacrifices they made.