The Mothers of My Mother

In genealogy, as far as ease of research goes, it’s fairly easy to find your line of fathers, by tracing your surname through history. These lineages have been documented for centuries in church records and government census reports. Barring fires that destroyed documents- which was, unfortunately, fairly common. Most of the 1890 Census was lost in a fire at the Commerce Department in 1921.

What was sad, in my research, was discovering how many female names were lost in history. Most of those are noted as, for example, Mrs. James Chilton. But those women had names and lives, and I want to know them. I am saddened by the periods of our history where women were seen as commerce to bargain with and property of their spouses, if for no other reason than, without man or woman, none of us would be here. To me that puts us on equal footing. As much as I wanted to know my line of fathers, I also wanted to know my line of mothers.

I know the woman who bore me (and raised me, and loves me still). I know my Grandmother, the woman who bore my mother. But I also wanted to know the woman who bore my grandmother, and the woman who bore her, and the woman who bore her. What bodies did the souls of my ancestors incubate within, before emerging into the world? Practitioners of Ifa, a religion shaped around ancestor worship, believe that you cannot know yourself if you cannot name seven generations of your ancestors. And so, I wanted to know the mothers of my mother.

I was able to find two more generations of my mother’s maternal line before I hit a dead end. When I was young, I knew my Grandmother’s mother wasn’t alive but I didn’t know anything about her family beyond the fact that her father’s family was German. My Great-Grandmother was Margaret Loretta Burke. She was born in Lockport, New York in 1893. She married Robert George Art, the grandson of a German immigrant, and before they married she worked as a glove maker. Margaret and Robert had four daughters before her death in 1938 at the age of 44.

I discovered Margaret’s mother on a census report, Eliza Conners, born in December of 1866. Eliza was 100% Irish, a first-generation American. After she married in 1884, she and her husband Frank Burke lived on Washington Street in Lockport, NY (I wrote about going to find their home in last week’s blog). Frank Burke was also Irish. He was a city laborer, who worked on the canal, and later, specifically, as a lock tender. They had thirteen children, eleven who survived.

Eliza’s mother, my 3x Great-Grandmother, was Mary D. Dowd of Ireland. She was born in 1834. Her husband, David Conners, was also born in Ireland, but I don’t know if they married there or in America. All of their children were born in New York, where he was a laborer. Mary’s father, Barney, resided with them in America.

Mary’s mother is unknown to us, for now. She is my sixth generation backwards. I am content to know the line waits with her in the soil of Ireland. I find myself wondering if her mother also resided on Irish soil, and where that family line will find itself if I can open the door to push further.

Meeting Great-Grandma Margaret

My hometown at the holidays.

I am Sarah, daughter of Margaret, daughter of Patricia, daughter of Margaret, daughter of Eliza, daughter of Mary, daughter of mother unknown. I never knew my Great-Grandma Margaret. Neither did my mom. Margaret Loretta Burke died when her youngest daughter, my Grandma, was eight years old.

The Burkes were Irish immigrants, who moved into Western New York to help carve the Erie Canal out of the bedrock. In doing my genealogy research, I discovered that the Burke family had lived on the same street since coming to the town, for multiple generations, mostly in the same house. That house was right around the corner from where I grew up. I realized that I must have passed it every day while visiting my childhood best friend. (I also learned that Margaret worked as a glove maker before she married in 1913.)

When I was home for the winter holidays I took a walk at dusk, amid the mounding snow, to see if the house was still standing. I had hoped it was. I had imagined that I would see it and say, oh, this house!, as if we had some previously unexplained bond. Or, at the least, that I would be able to touch the rail and say, my people lived here once. My Great-Grandmother dreamed here once.

But there was no house on the lot. Whatever had existed there, didn’t anymore. There was a newer house on a double lot set slightly back from the road, the only modern house in comparison to the other homes on the street. The lot my Great-Grandma’s house would have been on, sat at the extreme right side of the house (when facing it), and where the driveway is.

The funniest thing about that house, though, is that it’s only one of two houses on that block I have seen the inside of. One night when I was a kid, I was invited to a slumber party at that house for a girl I didn’t know very well yet. I remember sitting in her bedroom and talking. We played games and I won a Men Without Hats album. I realize now that when I slept that night, I was laying over the Burke family land. The girl’s bedroom was right where the lot would have been- 154 Washington Street.

In retrospect, that is pretty cool.

My spiritual work involves magic, which I consider to be the manifestation of our desires through action. The act of searching for my family and ancestral history has been helpful in creating doorways that have allowed me to better connect to the spirit world. When I took that cold winter walk around the corner to find my Great-Grandma’s home, I opened a doorway to that spiritual energy. 

Two months later, I met my Great-Grandma Margaret in the dream world.

I am at an event, like a wedding or a family reunion. There are a lot of people here. I am at a bar table, talking to a woman with a young face… about my age. She has short, curled bangs and her hair is curled up at the ends around her face. I cannot tell if it is short or if it is pinned up. In this room of people, she glows with a Technicolor hue (a sign for me it is spirit). Her hair is glowing a dark, deep chestnut.

I have a moment of clarity within the dream and I ask her pointedly, with a knowing, if she is Margaret. She says yes, staring into my eyes. She smiles at me. She says her name is Margaret. I tell her that she looks younger than I ever remember my Grandma being. She asks me how my Grandma is doing, squeezing my wrist warmly with her hand. She is very still in this room of movement, but I sense a nervousness beneath the exterior, as if I have called her here and she is not sure why.

I have a dream-memory of having seen my Grandmother earlier that night and I tell Great-Grandma Margaret how she seemed to me. In the dream I am worried about my Grandma and I think maybe this is why I have called her here. I say as much to Margaret and I thank her for coming to meet me. I tell her that my mother was also named Margaret. She thanks me and touches my face. She leaves to go and check on Patricia. The party continues, but the Technicolor edge is gone. The spirit has left the dream room.