Outcast

52 Ancestors 52 Weeks

Week 7-Outcast


In 2019, we did some cosmetic work to the bottom floor of our antique home. We wanted to find a large mirror to hang over the buffet in our dining room. My friend and I went to Crompton Collective in Worcester, Massachusetts in search of an antique mirror. While searching through the various booths in Crompton, we came across a beautiful stained glass window. I fell in love with it on the spot. After a few moments, I decided that I was going to hang this stained glass window above the buffet instead of a mirror. After returning home with my purchase, I contacted the seller about to see if I could find more information about where the window came from. The seller informed me that it was from a Worcester Church that had been dismantled 50 years ago.


With that information, I did a search online for churches that were demolished around 1969-1970. I found an article from the Worcester Telegram dated April 29, 2017 written by Mark Sullivan that told the story about St. Ann’s church and how it was torn down in 1970. Located at the corner of Gage Street and Eastern Avenue, St. Ann’s church was very close to were my Irish ancestors lived on Shrewsbury Street. The article mentioned that the parishioners were predominantly Irish after the 1880s. These newly learned facts made me smile. Perhaps some of my family attended St. Ann’s church where my antique stained glass window came from.


A few years later, while completing my certificate in genealogical research, I needed to get a marriage certificate for my Great-Great Grandparents for a research report. After reviewing the record online again since learning more about genealogy, I saw a very interesting detail that I overlooked before. The name of the church they were married at was listed in the record. Have you guessed what church it was yet? That’s right, St. Anne’s. St. Anne’s was originally spelled with an e as the church initially served a large following of French Canadian immigrants.


The outcast window from St. Ann’s church that was founded in 1856 in Worcester, Massachusetts and demolished in 1970 made its way to my home. What a genealogical treasure I found that day at Crompton Collective. Thank you, What’s in the Crate for saving a piece of my family history.








#52Ancestors #FamilyHistorian #Ancestry #FamilyTree #FamilyHistory #GenealogyResearch #ProGenOfNE #CromptonCollective #worcesterma #MillburyMA #Antiques #StainedGlass #Outcast #FrenchCanadianAncestors #IrishAncestors #MarriageRecord 




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Social Media

Image
52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks Week 6: Social Media My cousin AJ recently sent me this screenshot of someone else's social media post. It made me laugh so much!   Family history research is usually born out of a desire to learn the history of your ancestors. Who they are, where they are from, and what they did in their lives. Many of us family historians become novice and professional genealogists with a desire to share all we have learned with our living family. Sometimes it is very hard to pinpoint what to share with our relatives because over time you can accumulate a great deal of information.   For me, social media has been a fun way to share snippets of family history with living relatives and friends. Social Media has also turned into a way to connect and get to know some newly found family. Many of my social media connections are made up of cousins with shared ancestors going back several generations. Social media has also provided us with a fun way to share a laugh...sometimes w
Read more

Gone Too Soon

Image
52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks Week 9: Gone Too Soon I’m sure every family has someone special that has left this life before we were ready. My family is no exception. I couldn’t even whittle this list down to a trivial number of people from my family. In a short span, my husband and I lost 4 members of our immediate family. My children lost 3 grandparents and 1 uncle between 2014 and 2016.   The biggest loss for me from the “Gone Too Soon” category is my mother. Now I know when I say that she did live until she was 68 you might think that isn’t necessarily gone too soon, however, that still seems young by today’s standards. I know I wasn’t ready to live the rest of my life without her at the age of 42.   Just 11 weeks after my mother passed, my husband’s mother, Patsy, unexpectedly passed away at the age of 64.   Within 6 months of Patsy’s passing, my youngest brother in law, Daniel, was struck by an automobile where he suffered a severe traumatic brain injury. At the age of 24, Daniel woul
Read more

Out of Place

Image
  52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks (Week 3) Out of Place This week's theme is out of place. The first thing I thought of was how my Great-Great Grandparents, Oscar E. Bigelow (English) and Mary Power (Irish), are not buried together. It seems Mary was Catholic and was buried in St. John's cemetery in Worcester, MA. When her husband Oscar died, the family was not allowed to bury him with his wife as he was not Catholic. Instead, Oscar is buried in the neighboring Hope Cemetery. What cracks me up is that these 2 properties abut each other. In one section, the 2 cemeteries are literally separated by a cyclone fence. It's the same soil, same grass...that fence must be pretty mighty. What seems out of place in your family tree? #52Ancestors #Genealogy #progenofne #Ancestors #FamilyHistory #WorcesterMA #CemeteryRules
Read more