Great Aunt Rose's House - Zeralda St near Wayne Ave., Nicetown, before 1959, from Cousin Peg Stoner, Left to Right, Rosalie Kremer, Rose Meehan "McShay", Joyce Kremer, Aunt Annie Cotterall, Rose's Sister, back to camera.
On a tangent, It took some time talking to a distant cousin on the Internet to find out the origins of the Meehan cousin who worked at Sears on the Boulevard except for WWII all his life and he and his wife were my godparents, the origins of his family. He and his sister were taken into my fraternal grandmother's house to be raised and cared for when their parents died and they were orphaned. The relatives that would have taken them in were Protestant and my grandmother would have none of that. They were Catholic and going to stay so. No social networks in those days or payments from Social Security for dependent children who lose one or both parents.
Great Aunt Rose had left her children in the care of her Meehan clan and set off to the big city of Philly to make a living. She eventually settled into the position of cook to the household of a Mr. Bell who was I think President of Philco Radio after Philco rose from the ashes of the old Atwater Kent Radio (state of the art) factory over in Nicetown. With her savings Aunt Rose bought a house and brought her three sons home to Philly. She got her oldest son a job at Philco and he worked there after WWII until his retirement in the 1970s with pension from Ford who had bought out the Philco company in Philly.
Her other two sons worked at the Post Office post WWII and died young. Probably from the result of alcoholism. In and out of Veterans' hospitals from oral histories. Possibly PTSD too considering they were Marines that saw action at Guadalcanal and other battles in the Pacific theater of war.
The alcoholism and domestic abuse of her husband is what drove her to Philly for a better life for herself and her kids.
Somewhere along the timeline she legally changed her surname to the McShay spelling, different from her married name of McShea. Family oral history said that she did so on advice of a relative, a young monsignor in order that her divorce that she would not be talked out of would not affect the young monsignor's political ambitions when public notice of petitions for divorce where published in local newspapers. The difference in the spelling of her name would be plausible deniability for the young priest as to her not being his relative. We always thought that this priest was Bishop McShea whose cronies in the Vatican gave him Allentown as a consolation prize when they imported the Polish bishop from Cleveland to succeed Cardinal O'Hara and not a local Irish boy.
The family oral history was not too accurate. I had to finally determine that Joe McShea was not a close relative as told to me by various relatives, though none knew exactly what the genealogy was. Lots of research needed in the end, because he seemed to keep his own family history close to his vest considered how his daddy was on one of the Sheriff's posse (deputy) who went postal on Coal Mine Strikers in 1897 at the Lattimer Mine Massacre. The only Catholic deputy on the Sheriff's crew btw.
I do not believe Aunt Rose ever paid into Social Security and as such she was dependent in old age on savings and sharing her house with her oldest son and daughter in law.
Strange old 1890s house. Four bedrooms. And I think that one of the bedrooms and the bathroom on the second floor got their natural light and air from a giant skylight that opened in the middle of the house above the dining room on the first floor, its only natural light. No ground floor window for the dining room. The giant skylight thing covered like 50% of the ceiling of the dining room.
And Aunt Rose shared her house with her widowed sister Annie Cotterall. Story on Annie was her she had one daughter who died. She had deeded her house to her daughter as a wedding gift. When her daughter died at a young age, her son in law evicted Annie from his inherited form his wife's house. No social safety nets back then. Rose took in Annie and they were companions as such in old age. I do remember Annie was sickly but no medicare in those days. etc. Just family.
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