Aunt Mary's Memoirs, Chapter 2, XVIII

My sister, Rose, married John Ryan in January, 1938. We were living in Baltimore at the time and drove up early in the morning, leaving our five children at Grandmother Renz's while we attended the wedding.
Joe married Betty Knox of Germantown in September, 1940, and the following year, Edmond and Frances Kearns were married in West Philadelphia. November, 1942, Frank and Claire Spratt were married at Holy Cross Church, Mount Airy. Claire had always been a family friend and was a classmate of Rose's.
Betty had spent some time in the Army Nurse Corps in England during World War II, then returned to hospital duty in Washington, D.C. Here she met Ed Hitt from Alexandria, Virginia and they married in May, 1946 and made their home in Rockville, Maryland.
All the family were married and the Byrne Estate was sold to the City of Philadelphia for the purpose of building an incinerator. Final settlement was made in 1956.

End of Chapter Two
(Note: There is no Chapter Three; Aunt Mary's narrative ends here.)

Aunt Mary's Memoirs, Chapter Two: XVII

The property on Domino Lane was rented, the houses as dwellings. The pasture was blasted for rock and became a stone quarry; the city of Philadelphia paid for dumping trash on another section. Frank had moved the livestock and machinery to a farm in Lansdale. Ed and myself and our young family lived on the Byrne estate for a few years trying our hand at the chicken business. Moneywise, this was a failure, but our kiddies did benefit from plenty of fresh vegetables and lots of clean country air. This was the time of the Great Depression.

Aunt Mary's Memoirs, Chapter 2: XVI

My mother had continued living on the farm on Domino Lane after my father's death. Frank was the farmer and he made this his life's work. Jim had graduated from Villanova University and married. Joe learned the carpenter trade and worked in Germantown and later was a policeman. Edmond helped on the farm while attending evening classes as Drexel Institute for Engineering. Rose had a bookkeeping position and later was a hairdresser. Betty went into nursing at St. Agnes Hospital in Philadelphia.
As Mother became very ill, Rose gave up her position and stayed home to take care of her. Mother suffered for over a year with cancer and died in January, 1931.

Aunt Mary's Memoirs, Chapter 2: XV

Wednesday, November 25, 1925, was our wedding day. The day before Thanksgiving we were married at Holy Family Church and a reception for relatives and close friends was held at home. We then went off for a four-day honeymoon. Expecting some trick by my brothers, we were hurrying out when I slipped on a wet icy spot as there had been a light snow that morning. I fell and got a hole in my stocking and so it was we left for New York City to start off our life together. After returning, we lived with Ed's mother, father, and two younger sisters, Elizabeth and Marion, until we bought a home of our own in Germantown the following year.

Aunt Mary's Memoirs, Chapter 2: XIV

Here we grew up, enjoying farm life, attending church and school in Manayunk, and making friends. Walking home from Sodality on Tuesday evenings my girlfriend and I would be joined by some of the local boys; this is how I met Ed Renz. He was sixteen years old at the time and lived at Ridge and Fairthorne Avenues. We began to date. He took me to see plays in Germantown and walks on Sunday afternoons. This lasted a year or so, then we went our separate ways. After many friends, parties, dances, and social affairs, five or six years later we started to go out again. One August evening after a swimming date, he surprised me by asking if I would marry him.

Aunt Mary's Memoirs, Chapter 2: XIII

Uncle Joe married a girl from St. Johns' parish, Manayunk, and they also lived in Gladwyne. Uncle Jim had moved to Wise Mill Road, Roxborough, so the three young families visited one another often by horse and carriage. Grandmother Keating Byrne was getting up in years and lived with Aunt Mary and Uncle John Hughes in South Philadelphia, but came frequently to spend a few days at our house, so I was told. I was not yet three years old so have no remembrance of her. She died early in the year 1905. It was about this time my father bought a farm on Domino Lane and we moved to Roxborough. In July, 1905, brother Joe was born.

Aunt Mary's Memoirs, Chapter 2: VII

The young couple lived on the farm in Bala, and my brothers, Tom and John, were born there. Jim was born after the family moved to Hollow and Mill Creek Road, Lower Merion Township. It was on the day he was christened that a lad, fifteen years old, fresh from the Ould Country came to the farm and asked for work. My father hired him and he stayed with the family until his death at aged seventy. This was "Mike" Sheeran.
Soon after this, at the turn of the century, my mother's youngest sister, Maggie, came to live with them. She was only sixteen years old. When I was born in May, 1902, Aunt Maggie was my godmother along with mother's brother, Patrick, who had also come from Ireland and lived in Atlantic City, N.J.

Aunt Mary's Memoirs, Chapter 2: VI

About this time a young Irishman named John Hughes was the bartender for my father's sister, Fannie, and her husband. When my Aunt Mary met this handsome lad they promptly fell in love. As John had promised his younger sister, Lizzie, when he left Ireland, that same day he would send for her. He now did so and when my father met the pretty Irish colleen he lost his heart and asked her to be his wife.
My mother had spent her childhood in Dungannon, County Tyrone, Ireland. Her father was a farmer but also worked as a carpenter. He had married Mary Ann McElkenny, the daughter of a tailor who lived nearby, and they had seven children. John was the oldest son; Lizzie was ten years younger. She was 22 years old when she became my father's bride. He was thirty-two.

Aunt Mary's Memoirs, Chapter 2: VI

Pop's oldest sister, Margaret, entered the Convent of the Good Shepherd. Fanny married Daniel Kelly, a twenty-year-older man who owned a saloon. The oldest brother, Jim, married early and kept a shoe store. Willie married and was a huckster. Henry went out west to seek his fortune and was lost track of.
My father was ten years old when his father died. Grandmother Byrne was a strong willed woman and reared her family well, along with her two nephews, the Dempseys who were orphaned in Ireland. It was in 1882 that she sold the farm on Stonehouse Lane, South Philadelphia to her oldest son, who now had a growing family. She started my father on a farm on Falls Road, Bala, Pa., with his sister Mary to keep house for him. Then she set up the youngest son, Joe, on a farm in Gladwyne and she lived with him until his marriage. Uncle Joe served milk to the people of Manayunk; my father's route was the Falls of Schuylkill.

Aunt Mary's Memoirs, Chapter 2: V

My father's Aunt Margaret Byrne Flanagan had a grocery store at 42nd and Market Streets. It was with this aunt that his sister Rose took refuge from gossiping neighbors when she was jilted by her young man, practically at the altar.
A cousin, John Duffy, was a cattle dealer and when I was a small child he would come to our house to see about buying or selling cows. He was stout, had white hair and a mustache, and smoked big cigars. I always knew he was visiting when I smelled that pleasant aroma as I came home from school.
Other cousins of my father were the Deerings of South Philadelphia whose entire family was murdered by a disgruntled farmhand. The story of this gruesome deed never failed to thrill me.

Aunt Mary's Memoirs, Chapter 2: IV

As my grandfather grew to manhood in Dunlavin, County Wicklow, in the early 1800's, he was instilled with an appreciation of his heritage and pride in his forebearers and he passed this down to his children. He was the son of a surveyor and a land-measurer; he fell in love with Mary Keating from County Kildare. After their marriage they came to America, settled on a farm in South Philadelphia, and were blessed with many children, my father being third to the youngest.
My grandmother's parents, brothers and sisters, also emigrated to this country, as did some of grandfather's relatives. There are records in the Journal of the Early American Catholic Historical Society of Philadelphia of a Mrs. Mary Byrne O'Toole, who died at the age of 105 years and is buried in Old Saint Mary's Graveyard, 4th & Spruce Strs., Philadelphia, Pa,

Aunt Mary's Memoirs, Chapter 2: III

I learned that most families felt their own particular lineage was superior to all others; and of course it is, and everyone should feel this way.
However, there was just cause to be proud of the Byrne family. We are descendants of a brave and courageous ancestry. Many stores are told in Irish history of the dauntless courage and glorious valor of the O'Byrne clan as early as the twelfth century. The title of the chief was Lord of Ranelagh and the family seat was Ballinacor, in Glenmaure. The lands known as O'Byrne Country were situated among the Wicklow Mountains and many battles were fought and won there. Over the years the "O" had to be dropped from the family name when the British government seized their lands and possessions and forced them to come under English rule.

Aunt Mary's Memoirs: Chapter 2: II

Papa's two sisters we saw frequently: Aunt Rose had never married; Aunt Mary married my mother's brother and they had no offspring of their own. This was a disappointment to them with the result they took a great interest in all the nephew and nieces. The oldest brother had eleven children; the youngest brother had three girls; and there were two boys and a girl of another brother, besides our large family. Aunt Mary and Aunt Rose gave parties and although we were younger than our cousins, we were often invited to these gatherings in the pretty parlor in South Philadelphia to play games and enjoy the good eats. The older boy cousins brought their lady friends and as they married, the brides would then be included into the groups.
No Byrne ever married into another family but rather he brought his wife into our Clan and must meet with the proper approval by the elders. It was not until I was long married and with children of my own, and most of the aunts and uncles had passed on, that I felt free to be myself.

Aunt Mary's Memoirs, Chapter 2: I

As a young girl I had heard aunts, uncles and older cousins speak of the Byrne family as something special. Indeed, as I recall, being a Byrne was almost on a par with being a Catholic. Listening to grown-ups' conversations, I sometimes detected a different set of rules for the family than for those outside the clan. What was a misdemenor or wrongdoing by a cousin was often laughed off in the telling as a prank and excusable, wheras the same act by somebody else would surely bring criticism and condemnation.

Aunt Mary's Memoirs: XXV

In the spring of 1924, Papa died. There had been a late heavy snow and he had shoveled paths from the house to the milkhouse and barn, piling it three feet high on either side. He caught a cold, pneumonia developed, and he died within a week.
I had been away at a party at a girlfriend's house on Saturday night and had stayed over Sunday with her. When I came home and learned my father was so ill I immediately went to his room. He was always proud of being a Byrne, and now told me to never forget who I was and to take pride in my family heritage. I was a young lady at this time and worked as a secretary in an insurance office in Philadelphia and had several young men courting me.
End of Chapter One

Aunt Mary's Memoirs: XXIV

I sometimes feel that I was more or less favored, being the first girl after three boys: I was given music lessons, practicing on the big square piano in the cold parlor. Later that parlor served for our dancing and Sunday night parties when my brother Jim and his friends and my friends would get together. I would make a cake in the afternoon and with tea or cocoa, many a good time we had. Tom would occasionally stay and join us, but usually he was too grown up for our little affairs. In the summertime we would set a long table outside on the lawn and sometimes had as many as twenty or thirty young people present.

Aunt Mary's Memoirs: XXIII

Mother wore high-necked shirtwaists and long, flowing skirts with high button shoes, as this was the fashion of the day. I had large bows of ribbon for my hair and wide silk scarves or sashes around my chubby waist or slightly below. The style of bathing suit for a trip to the seashore was more like a dress with full bloomers underneath, worn with stockings, shoes and a cap, of course, to hold our long hair.
One birthday I was given a pretty parasol, white with huge pink roses and green leaves. Ladies carried these for protection from the sun. Another cherished gift, at Christmas, was a knitted wool cap and scarf. When I wore this with my fur muff which was lined with silk and had a small purse embedded in it, I felt proud as I could be.
There was a beautiful velvet bonnet which was very becoming to me, it was said. It had been a hand-me-down from a cousin, as was the good red chinchilla coat with the bright brass buttons. I received many good clothes from this cousin, who was a few years older. As my cousin outgrew these pretty things, Mother was only too happy to have them for me.

Aunt Mary's Memoirs: XXII

One thing I remember: I was usually in charge of the younger ones during Mother's absence and she always brought home some goodie. Her last errand in town before boarding the homemade trolley was to stop at Hanscom's Baking Shop and buy some cinnamon buns, tarts or cupcakes. She would come down the lane at the end of the day carrying a few packages, the rest to be delivered in a day or so, tired but satisfied she had accomplished a lot and enjoyed a day out for a change. I learned many years later to know that same feeling myself, and my mind would go back to those early years of Mother coming home with the "treat" for her kiddies, having had a tiring but pleasant day herself as a break from the daily chore of tending her large brood.

Aunt Mary's Memoirs: XXI

Living so far out in the country, away from the city streets, it was surprising the number of tramps, beggars and peddlers who would walk back the lane: brush salesmen, coffee and tea men, and also spice and ointment dealers found their way there to sell to the farmers' wives. As Pop went out every day he usually brought home the meat and extras we needed, and growing our own crops we were more or less self-sufficient. Mother shopped for some of our clothing in Manayunk at Fosters or Proppers department stores and she made most of the clothes for us girls herself. For larger items like coats, hats, a good dress, or shoes, and suits for the boys she would take a trolley from Manayunk and ride into town. She liked Strawbridges and Gimbels, and had good taste in her selections, with the result that she always dressed neatly and so did her children. We didn't get too many clothes but when we got new things they were good and were made to last.

Aunt Mary's Memoirs: XX

I can remember going with Jim after confession on a Saturday afternoon to the library on Green Lane. After going over many books and making our selections we came out into the late autumn afternoon or evening air and found it quite dark, which meant a long walk home through the woods and long lanes with the expectation of goblins lurking behind every tree. We kept up a continuous conversation all the way just to boost our courage. How welcome the lights in the kitchen looked as we came in sight of the house. After a good warm supper which Mother had kept waiting for us, we sat down to enjoy the new adventures in the books we had chosen...Deerslayer, Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn...