Alice [Connor] Vander Meulen’s Story (Part 1)

A few months before my grandmother’s death, my mother (Dorothy [Overbaugh] Vander Meulen) worked with Alice [Connor] Vander Meulen to write down some of the family’s history and stories. The result was a small book, “Alice’s Story.”

Since it focuses on Alice’s family of origin, the John and Mary Connor Family, I am publishing the majority of it (with some edits, corrections, and enhancements) here, with roughly one chapter per post, with Dorothy’s permission.

This first post of “Alice’s Story” is derived from the book’s Introduction and First Chapter. (The entire book in electronic form is available upon request from me to all descendants of John & Mary Connor.)

Copyright (c) 2021 Allen Vander Meulen III and Dorothy Vander Meulen: All Rights Reserved

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Introduction

When I started this history of my mother-in law’s family, the Connors, and her early life, I had no idea how much time or effort would be involved. nor was I sure how much Alice would remember. I was aware that since she was 89 years of age, at the time, we needed to hear her story while it was still possible.            

Alice cooperated quite willingly, happy to relate what she could from the distant past, and pleased that this was a gift she could give to her family.  She was not always able to remember dates or sequence of events and some facts were fuzzy, so there may be errors in the text.  Also, when asked how she and her family reacted  to certain newsworthy events going on in the world around them, such as the sinking of the Titanic and  W.W.II,  the bombing of Pearl Harbor, she was unable to remember having much impression of them.

This story … preserves part of his rich heritage for his children and grandchildren. Time constraints forced me to cut Alice’s story off in the early 1940’s.   In that context, I see this history as a beginning, to be expanded upon by the collective memories of her children and other members of her family who loved her and want to share in this.  This should be a “work in progress”.  Please make corrections, add your own special memories and pick up where this story ends.

 -Dorothy Vander Meulen, September, 1995

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Chapter 1 – Early History

Not much is known about the Connor family before Alice’s father arrived here from Northern Ireland in the 1880’s when he was 16 or 17 years of age.   What information we do have about the Ulster family is contained on a tombstone in the cemetery at the Mullaghbrack Parish Church, Church of Ireland, in Markethill, a small town just east of Armagh. A handwritten transcription of that headstone reads as follows:

In Loving Memory of

John T. Connor
Market Hill
Who died 2nd March 1890
Aged 66 years

Also his wife
Agnes
Who died 10th August 1905
Aged 71 years

Also two of their children

Thomas
Who died 4th January 1868
Aged 7 years

David George
Who died 15th August 1872
Aged 14 years

Also buried in this graveyard, but without a headstone, is John Connor’s twin brother, Robert.  The burial records at the church state he died 1st June, 1944 at age 77 years.  Robert apparently served in the English navy and never married.  Alice thinks there is a sister of her father’s buried in another grave yard in Markethill.

Besides the children listed on the Markethill tombstone, another list I discovered named the following as siblings of John Connor:  Harold, Robert, Samuel, Mary Ann and Margaret.  Mary Ann preceded John to this country.  She married and lived in Blue Island, Illinois.   She was Alice’s Aunt Minnie.

When John Connor left Ireland, he went to Canada to stay with another brother who had emigrated earlier.  This was Harold, or Harry as he was known to the family. Harry was a policeman in Montreal and John stayed with him for several years, at least, before heading south into the United States.  Margaret was probably the sister mentioned above buried in another cemetery in Markethill.  I have no information on Samuel.

John Connor was born in Ulster June 18, 1867.   Alice said that he did not talk about his life there and she did not know why he came to this country.   We know a bit more about Alice’s mother’s side of the family thanks to her cousin, Jeannette Jennings Mathers,  who sent Alice a family history of the Carlow’s and Jennings families in the late 1980’s. 

The Carlow’s according to Jeannette, claimed that their family name came from a Spaniard who was shipwrecked on the south east shore of Ireland, along with other sailors from the Spanish Armada.  Theirs was a thwarted attempt to invade England in the time of Elizabeth the First, at the end of the 16th century.  Carlow is also one of the counties in Southeastern Ireland, and  the family name was most likely a misspelling of Carlo.  Jeannette states that  the Spanish connection is evident in the black hair and the “Spanish yellow eye” which some members of the family have had down through the years.

Alice said that her maternal grandmother was Elizabeth Carlow and that she was born in St. Catherine’s, Canada in 1849. Her maternal grandfather was James Harrison Jennings who, according to Alice, was born in Brockport, N.Y., which is about 70 miles east of St. Catherine’s on the south shore of Lake Ontario.

This information differs from what Jeannette Jennings Mather says:

“…Grandfather Jennings apparently didn’t know where he was born or the story changed according to the circumstances.  He was born in Ireland; he was born in Upper New York State, or if the truth be known, he was actually born in Rutland, Vermont in 1844.  At least that’s what the records show. ”

Jeannette goes on to say that the Jennings family came from the little town of Swinford in County Mayo in the area known as Conant.  She states that the Jennings name apparently came from the same name root as the Gennis family and there are various spellings in the old, old heraldic writings for the name Jennings.  Jennings apparently is Welsh and English rather than Irish in origin.  She continues that the Welsh connection seems to be fairly well established; since a great, great or great, great, great grandfather  married a Welsh girl because the Irish horse breeders and traders often went to Wales to deal with the growers or rearers of Irish/Welsh ponies.  The Jennings family did raise horses.  The physical characteristics the Welsh connections brought into the family were hazel eyes and straight, dark hair.

Mary Theresa Jennings, Alice’s mother, was born in Tidioute, Pennsylvania on September 6, 1872.  Her mother, Elizabeth and her father, James, produced a good sized family:  there was James (Harry) the oldest, Mary Theresa, Alice,  John ( Sylvester who is Jannette’s father),  Elizabeth (Nell),  Felix Carlow (Alice’s Uncle Emmit), Frances, and Agnes, who died in infancy in March 1885.  Elizabeth Carlow Jennings died aged 37 in 1885 after the birth of her 8th child.  Mary Theresa was 12 or 13 at the time and she, along with her siblings, was raised in a Roman Catholic orphanage after that. 

James Harrison Jennings took a second wife, Anna Flanagan, on April 11, 1887 and they raised another five children:  Agnes, Thomas Albert, Edward and Martin (twins) and Loretta.  Loretta married a Reynolds of tobacco fame after having a career as a model.  Mary Theresa was never very close to the second wife or her half brothers and sisters.

James Jennings was a butcher with a shop in Warren, PA.  He was murdered in Warren on March 31, 1908, his body later found in the Allegheny River.  The motive was apparently robbery and the killer was never caught.  Alice did not know how he was killed.  She does not remember her mother discussing the death very much and Mary Theresa Connor never went to the funeral.  The Connors lived in Chicago at the time and several reasons may have been why she did not …the cost, her pregnancy with a fifth child, or estrangement from her father and the second family.

Alice’s maternal forebears originally came from southern Ireland and were Roman Catholic.  Her paternal forebears were Ulstermen and Anglican.  Anti-Catholic feelings ran deep in John Connor and were firmly held for all the years he lived in this country. 

Alice remembers her father telling her a story of being in a Boston bar when the great John L. Sullivan walked in.  He didn’t speak with the famous boxer, but was obviously impressed by his presence.  She is not sure when he left his brother in Canada and came south to the United States.

Before he married Mary Theresa Jennings John Connor worked in a mental institution somewhere in New York State as an attendant.  He told his children that,  “You can’t turn your back on the patients; they needed to be where you could watch them.”

We do not know where or how Mary Theresa Jennings and John Connor met, but after marriage they lived for a time in Avalon, PA.  Avalon is on the Ohio River just north of Pittsburgh.  John worked as a motorman on streetcars, possibly in Pittsburgh.  Alice thinks that he became a U.S. citizen some time soon after he married.  The family moved to Chicago, Illinois in the early 1900’s.  Their first 3 children were born in Pennsylvania; Alice was the first child of theirs born in Chicago.

Copyright (c) 2021, Allen Vander Meulen III and Dorothy Vander Meulen: All Rights Reserved