The Great-Grandparents

M.P.K.

1. Michael Patrick K. (1886-1959) was an electrician and a poet. He was the fifth of six children born to Irish immigrants, and lived in Manhattan and Brooklyn. His younger brother Edward died heroically in World War I; Michael later named his son after him (my grandfather).

M.V.H.

2. Marie V. Hankinson (1885-1963) was a mother of six and, obviously, a great hat-wearer. She was born in New York City, the eldest of eight children. Two of her and Michael's children are still alive. My grandmother (her daughter-in-law) remembers her very fondly.

E.R.

3. Carl Newton Bruns (1903-1985) was a golf pro who was born on Long Island.

4. Eleanor Ryder (1903-1928) sadly died of influenza at the age of 24, leaving three children. She grew up in Yonkers and had one sister, Beryl. I'm not sure, but I think I may have inherited her nose.*

E.V.B.

5. Eugene Valentine Bourque (1893-1966) was an Acadian and worked in insurance. He was the last in the family to speak French. He and my great-grandmother moved from Quebec to Albany when my grandfather was a child.

L.M.B.

6. Lola May Barnhart (1894-1982) was a mother of two sons, one still living, and a member of a very old German family in Canada. (Barnhart's Island, named for her ancestors, now home to a power plant, used to be covered in Barnharts.)

E.G.W.

7. Ernest Gracey Waldie (1879-1970) owned a sheet metal shop and was a Freemason. His parents were Scottish immigrants who lived in Canada. He was 18 years older than my great-grandmother Ruth. They had a daughter and a son, the latter of whom is still living. My mother calls him and Ruth "the salt of the Earth."

R.C.H.

8. Ruth Card Hamblin (1896-1987) was a teacher at the school that my grandmother, my mother, and I attended (I only for one year). She was our family's genealogist, who sparked my interest in genealogy, although I never met her.


*I have an obsession recently about my nose and where it comes from. It's distinctive and quite obviously comes from my father, but I have trouble tracing it after that. My mother's nose comes from Ruth. I think my eyes are my mother's but the shape of my brow looks like Marie's. Anyway, this is all very self-centered, but I find inheritance very interesting.