Great-Uncle Philip unlocked by AncestryDNA connection

AncestryDNA rest results have paid some dividends pretty quickly after enabling me to contact a previously unknown second cousin, and learn of the man she only knew as "Grandpa Far Away."

My grandfather, James Mahoney, was one of five children born and raised by Thomas Mahoney Jr., and Agnes St. John in Worcester. All five were born during the Roaring 20s and raised in the Great Depression. My grandfather was the youngest of the litter, born 25 June 1929 — some four months before the Wall Street Crash that officially began the Great Depression. I've had some information regarding some of his siblings, but two have largely remained enigmas: Thomas (born 1924) and Philip (born 1926). All I had for either of these guys was their dates of birth, first name of their spouses, and when they died. No maiden names for their wives, no idea on who their children were, no idea where they passed away, what they did for a living, or anything else.

Through one particular AncestryDNA match, I was able to connect with Jennifer, my great-uncle Philip's granddaughter. She has been able to fill me in a bit with the maiden name of Philip's wife, Pauline, and the dates of her birth and death. From there, I quickly found her obituary, which gave me a good deal of brand new information. Through this cousin, I was also able to learn of Philip and Pauline's four children, further confirmed through Pauline's obituary.

In Pauline's obituary, Philip is not mentioned whatsoever. Instead, it mentions a second husband who had passed in 1997. Turns out that soon after their fourth and final child was born, Philip had decided he was not happy with the family he had carved out for himself. He drained the family bank accounts, took up with a neighbor, and left the family flat. He moved to Arizona at some point, probably as part of this seemingly abrupt abandonment of his wife and kids, and, my newfound cousin asserts, was later known only through cards as "Grandpa Far Away." Through the U.S. Public Records Index, I was able to confirm Philip living in three different cities in Arizona. In 1978, he's in Phoenix, and then he's in Glendale and Peoria in the 1990s. I was also able to confirm what was assumed, that he died while in Arizona.

In the early 1980s, Pauline would marry a man who had seven children through a previous marriage. Between them, that would be 11 children, and eventually many grandchildren. Pauline passed away in 2012, at the age of 82.

Buoyed by this wave of new information, I spent a little more time with public records searches and city directories, and so forth. I found that in the 1950s, Philip was working at Wyman-Gordon in Worcester, residing with Pauline on Tower Street. I uncovered his social security number.

Most exciting of all, I found his school yearbook photo from 1944. Beneath Philip's name is open white space, which seems quite vacuous when compared to the classmate next to him, who was a multi-sport athlete, a member of the Student Council, Chairman of the Ring & Pin Committee, and a member of the group U.S.N.R.