Ramcharan-Crowley

FAMILY VIGNETTES
Catharine Dinan Crowley, "Katie," my grandmother, was born about 1880 on her family's 58 acre farm, Dillanien, at Carrignavar, County Cork, Ireland, still owned by the descendants of her brother. Since she didn't know her exact birthday, she chose Nov. 11, Armistice Day, to celebrate, and we had a big family party every year. At her father's death, her one brother inherited all the land according to Salic Law, so she and her seven? sisters had to migrate. Aboyna (Abbie) married a widower named Goggin from Whiddy Island in Bantry Bay, and migrated to Illinois, where they started a bar for railway workers down by the tracks in Peoria. Grandma worked there when she first came from Ireland, but didn't like being kidded about having been a barmaid. In Ireland, she'd been a nanny for the Cronin children, and tutored them in French. She taught us to bless ourselves in both French and Gaelic. (In nomine nahair, avis avic, avis a sprignave, amen) Four of the girls became nuns, three of them Mercy Hospital sisters in Denver and Pocatello, Idaho, where we visited them in 1939. Sister Joseph was tall and witty and had total recall on baseball; Sister Angela was short and sweet (namesake of Angela Crowley Kenny of course); Sister Mary Margaret was cool and calm in Pocatello Idaho. I never met Sister Luke, dead before my time; she had changed religious orders, but I don't know from which to which. The Mercy sisters told stories of begging on the streets and in train depots to get money for building their hospitals in the mining towns, and they certainly were capable of it. Dad brought them to Peoria for visits several times, and great times were had. They loved a little drink of bourbon before dinner, as did Grandma, who would hold out her emptied glass with her shaky hand making the ice clink, and say, "No more for me, Mike," which of course brought forth a refill. When we got into the car in front of the Denver Mercy Hospital to go back to Peoria in 1939, the two stood waving on the front steps, saying "See you in Heaven." May it be so! Grandma's other sisters were all great ladies in their ways.

Another aunt I didn't know was Auntie Ellie, Ellen Dinan Healy, mother of the beloved Julia (Aunt Du) who was secretary of Crowley Bros, for many years; Mary Healy who did housework, cleaned Crowley Bros., also waitress, and Margaret Healy who made women's dresses in a local sweatshop. They lived together in a pretty house on Kansas near my gradeschool, and across from Cora Perkins' fried chicken restaurant (in her home), where Mary also was a waitress. They were famed for their lavish meals, everything swimming in cream and/or whipped cream (my mother deeply disapproved), and cakes, pies, and home-canned fruit and jam. At age 80, Grandma fell coming out of their bathroom, and broke her hip. While trying to walk again, she died from a heart attack.

Another sister, Catherine, married a French Canadian named Ernie Bergevin, and they lived cattycorner across the street next to Bess and Jim Tobin, a plumber who worked for Crowley Bros, and later started his own company with his three sons. Bergevins had two kids, Eleanor, a svelte dark-hair gal who married well out-of-town, and Ernest Junior, known as "Junie," who married a fine Puerto Rican girl while in the Navy and had a few children. Ernie (pere) fell over dead running to catch a bus; his son drank and died young too. I suspect his kids are the only other provably non-whites in the family besides ours. I think there was a Healy son, maybe named Bart--must check.

Another sister, Loretta, married Frank Kurtenbach, a Crowley Bros, plumber so German Dad said he ate sauerkraut for breakfast, and their daughter Betty Ellen went to St. Bernard's with me, and married Felix Hyfill who went to Spalding with me.

Still another daughter, Bridget, married a wealthy farmer named Danny Driscoll of Brimfield, IL, and had two children, a son named Leonard who married a Protestant with whom he didn't have children, so his sister Eleanor, who married Shelby Buckman, inherited all the farmland. I didn't know Bridget, but Eleanor was a bubbly lady who travelled to Europe with Aunt Ri. She had two kids, a daughter I don't know, and Bill Buckman, a very successful travel agent in Chicago. When we went to Hollywood in '39, we looked up a cousin of this line, Marian Driscoll who by that time was the world-famous radio comedienne Molly in "Fibber McGee and Molly," with her husband Jim Jordan. Dad having hired them early in their careers, they entertained us very well in their mansion in Tarzana, and got us into a studio where we saw Loretta Young and the costumes from "Wuthering Heights." We also looked up Peorian Dee (de Forrest) Weed's brother, author of "Dirigible," (or "Ceiling Zero?") in a wheelchair from an air crash. You can imagine how insufferable we were when we got back to Peoria with all this, plus Santa Fe and Taos, "real Indians," Tijuana up the coast road to Victoria, the World's Fair in San Francisco, Yosemite, the Rockies, and the Nuns. Then the Germans invaded Poland, and I went off to Northwestern.

Still another of Grandma's sisters was Auntie Abbie Goggin, mentioned above, who had married a widower Uncle Maurice (pronounced Morris) from Whiddy Island in Bantry Bay, and gone to America before the others. By the time I knew her, she was a cute, witty, talky little lady (like Grandma, no more than 5 ft. tall) who had decided that her name was Aboyna. She could speak Gaelic, called Irish by everybody. Her two daughters were (1) Mayme Ague, married to Lloyd Ague, an English-ancestry Protestant, but accepted. They lived in a beautiful house on Ayres Ave. just off Moss where we later lived, and my mother's sister Kate Ryan lived just across the street. Their daughter Audrey, beautiful, a bit proud, but always impressive, married one Matt Powers, an exec of an insurance company. They became millionaires, had three sons, one disabled. Mayme and Lloyd also had a son, Lloyd known as Bud, who was a particularly likeable sort, witty and charming, married a fine lady, but both died relatively young.

Mayme's sister was Julia, known as Jewel, who married another Protestant, Charlie Carter, who founded a very successful brickyard in East Peoria where Dick Capitelli's father worked. Hence Jewel became Dick's Godmother! And Mr. Capitelli died in his '60s from lung disease from breathing in all that brick dust. Carters lived in another nice big square wooden house on Western Ave., and had two daughters (1) effervescent Jane, who married Thomas Carney and is still alive in Peoria, and (2) quiet Kathleen, who had TB as a teenager, married an out-of-towner, and after a disagreement with her sister over their estate, left town and was rarely heard of again. We always visited the Agues and Carters at Xmas, and ate marvelous cakes, cookies, and my first (very small) tastes of sweet wines like port and golden sherry. They were fun people, their kids were role models, and unlike most of our other relatives, they lived in beautiful houses on nice streets on the West Bluff--classy!

I think this is the extent of my father's Dinan cousins, except for the Learys, who were Grandma's first cousins rather than sisters. I can't remember Grandma's cousin's name, but her two daughters, Nellie married a Kaiser, mother of Eunice Kaiser Kennedy, Raymond, and Vincent, and who had a nice jewelry shop, and Julia Huverstuhl, mother of Margaret, a nice girl who had tuberculosis and died spectacularly having a haemorrage while going through the revolving door of a department store. The two sisters lived next to each other in bungalows up many steps a few doors east of Pat's house on Martin Luther King.

Grandpa's siblings were the three Boston ladies
described above, Mary Long, Bridget "Delia" Kelleher, and Margaret Berkeley, plus Uncle John, who came over a few years after Grandpa on the Algiers, and was a policeman, but with a drinking problem. He'd work for months, then get drunk for three weeks, a "bender." He was interested in Grandma's sister who became Sister Angela, but she rejected his attentions, so he said the Dinans were "a bunch of damn Danes." After Grandpa died young, John lived in Grandma's house, and she always rushed home to get his dinner ready on time. No one knows their real relationship- -probably entirely innocent, but who can say? Grandma made many jokes with the six other widows in St. Pat's Parish and the seven widowers.

Another brother was Uncle Bill, a paunchy old man with a handlebar moustache who lived with Irene Crowley Blust, whose father was yet another brother, Uncle Mike, who married Mary Goggin (cousin of Uncle Maurice Goggin who married Auntie Abbie Dinan) who had come to this country as an indenture to a textile mill in New England. This couple had many sons, Jerry who married Ruth 0'Byrne and was head plumber at Crowley Bros., Willie who married Crowley Bros, secretary Alma Gallagher and had Diane Fredericks and also started a successful competitor plumbing company, (Richard?) who married ? and died young of TB, and two old bachelors, Tim and Jack, who worked as laborers, drank a bit, and lived at Irene's. Her husband Johnny Blust was a service man who "lost his mind," and their son Bill called me a few years ago, lives in Joliet, and his son is or was a journalist in Woodland. Amazingly enough with all these men, the only other Crowley males in the next generation besides Jerome, Billy, and me were produced by Mickey, another brother, who married Gertrude and lived in Dad's childhood home on Butler St. They had a daughter, Dorothy, and three or four boys, now old men around Peoria.