Grandma's final days in the almshouse

It's amazing what genealogical research can do to you. Individuals you never met, whose lives ended long before yours began, yet sometimes there can be an emotional connection or reaction to a nugget of information uncovered.

This was the case as I began looking into one of my great-great-great-grandparents recently. The end of her life was a sad time, residing in an almshouse, possibly suffering from significantly impaired cognitive abilities, and dying in a state hospital.

When it comes to the Ellis line of my maternal family tree, I've struggled to get too much definitive information beyond my 3rd great-grandfather George Ellis, and I've never delved into his wife, my 3rd great-grandmother, Caroline. All I ever knew about her was that George had married a woman named Caroline, and together they had several kids.

Turns out that she's really a Susan — Susan Caroline Marvin. Caroline, as she used her middle name throughout her life, was born on August, 19, 1830, to Seth and Susan Marvin in Alstead, New Hampshire, a very small town near the Vermont border. At this point, I know nothing of her parents, nor any siblings she may have had. Much of her youth remains an enigma for me, with no real records uncovered until 1855, when she was 25-years-old.

Caroline and George had already married, presumably before she turned 20-years-old, when she gave birth to their first child, Julia A. Ellis, in October 1850. The family would grow to eight known children born over a 15-year-period, 1850 to 1865. At least three of those eight would die young — George Henry Ellis of typhoid fever at age 21 in 1875, Willie M. Ellis of tuberculosis at age 19 in 1885, and Charles Albert Ellis at age 33 in 1884.

The Ellis family shows up as residents of Worcester, Massachusetts, in both the State and Federal Census. Caroline typically does not have an occupation listed on the Census forms, though she does appear as a dressmaker in the Massachusetts Census of 1865.

The big question marks begin as middle-age hits in the final quarter of the nineteenth century. In the 1870 Census, the entire Ellis family (other than eldest child Julia, then 20-years-old) is residing in Worcester. However, by June 1880 it appears by Census data that George and Caroline have called it quits. George, who is identified as a married man, is residing on Pink Street in Worcester with the family of his son Frank. Caroline is identified as "widowed/divorced" and residing with the family of daughter Julia on Cambridge Street in Worcester.

It appears that Caroline likely remarried as death records for her son Charles shows his parents as Caroline and "George Smith." It is possible, however, that Smith was erroneously written in place of Ellis.

George Ellis would pass away in Worcester on January 1, 1892, at the age of 66. His cause of death is "Bronchitis La Grippe," indicating he suffered from both bronchitis and the flu.

In the 1910 Census, Caroline Ellis appears as a 79-year-old widow listed as an "inmate" at an almhouse known as the Worcester Home Farm. An almhouse is a poorhouse, typically a home for a city's poor to stay. In the case of the Worcester Home Farm, as noted in a 2014 Worcester Telegram & Gazette feature, "life was difficult." The article notes the almhouse's residents, or inmates, "were not permitted to be idle; or talk without permission; nor leave. It was considered shameful to be considered a pauper, and the location of the Poor Farm enabled the city to provide for their needs while ostricizing them from the community." Similarly, Michael D. Kane wrote about the property for MassLive in 2016, explaining it had been "Worcester's first foray into curing social ills ... It had been the place where Worcester housed its extremely poor, mentally ill and those suffering from communicable diseases."

A portion of the Worcester Home Farm properties.

The Worcester Home Farm is reported to have been a 599-acre farm, that featured a hospital, farming, animals raised for slaughter, and even for a hog-fueled garbage disposal system. From 1872 to 1932, which includes Caroline's time at the Worcester Home Farm, the city of Worcester employed a "piggery" to tackle local trash. Pigs would devour the trash while, the Telegram & Gazette reports, "helping to line the city's coffers." The smell from the piggery is said to have traveled for miles and was most certainly a problem for Shrewsbury residents next door.

Caroline spent the final years of her life at the Worcester Home Farm, passing away at the State Hospital on March 22, 1912, at the age of 81. The cause of death was cellulitis of the leg, a bacterial skin infection that is quite painful. Left untreated it can become lethal when it spreads to lymph nodes and the bloodstream. Caroline's death certificate notes she had been treated medically for the condition for just more than six weeks before her death.

In addition to the cellulitis, Dr. George A. McIver reports on Caroline's death certificate that she had been suffering from a "Senile paranoid condition" for 10 years.

How long Caroline had resided in Worcester's Home Farm is not yet clear, nor whether she was there as a destitute woman estranged from or widowed by her late husband, abandoned by her children, or housed on some sort of mental diagnosis. What is known, or at least pretty safely assumed, is that she had a pretty rough second half of her life — burying at least three of her children by the time she was 61-years-old, 10 years with a "Senile paranoid condition," and presumably a decade or more within the cold, restrictive, and uncaring walls of the Worcester Home Farm.

Newlywed taken by appendicitis

One branch of the family tree rarely tended to in my research is that of the Beaudry family, Canadian immigrants who settled in the Massachusetts communities in and around Sutton and Uxbridge.

The patriarch of this particular group was Gilbert Beaudry, who had been born in Canada in July 1836. Gilbert made his way south to the United States as a 20-year-old single man in 1856, and by 1865 was residing on Lynde Street (today Converse Street) in Worcester, Massachusetts. That year's city directory shows Gilbert employed as a "wire roller," while that year's State Census records him working as a "wire drawer." By the summer of 1868, 32-year-old Gilbert was living in Douglas, Massachusetts, working as a carpenter. That August he married Selina Bibeau, a 25-year-old Canadian who was then residing in Sutton. Gilbert and Selina had at least 10 children together, though by 1900 half of their children had died. Louis Beaudry was one of those who had passed.

Louis Beaudry, my 3rd great-uncle, had been born circa 1875 in Uxbridge's north end, a village known as North Uxbridge. Soon after his birth came that of Louise Sanders in Worcester, the daughter of Clarence and Ella (Davis) Sanders. Louis and Louise would marry in Worcester on Monday, December 23, 1895.

Little did the couple know that Christmas, just two days later, would be their one and only Christmas together as husband and wife. The 1895 city directory shows Louis residing in Worcester at 62 Foster Street, a property since absorbed by the Worcester Regional Transit Authority. The city directory shows he worked as a box maker, while the marriage records assert he was a woodworker.

While the Worcester-based newlyweds surely had talked about plans for their future together, perhaps how many children they might raise, where they might ultimately settle, their time together would be a paltry 231 days, fewer than eight months in total. On Monday, August 10, 1896, the 21-year-old box maker's life was cut short by appendicitis. There is no information as to how long Louis had suffered, but surely it was a painful ending. He was buried in the nearby community of Millbury, as were several other family members over the years.

Widowed at age 19, Louise initially remained in Worcester. A few years later, she would remarry and have three children. It was on Tuesday, June 6, 1899 — nearly 33 months after Louis had passed away — that Louise wed a British-born wireworker named Thomas Birkitt Hudson. They moved around a little bit, living on Upsala Street in Worcester as of 1900, then on Oxford Street in nearby Auburn in 1910, before returning to Worcester, living on Allen Street in 1920. By 1930, the couple had settled in Providence, Rhode Island. Together, they had three known children: Edith (circa 1901), Ella (circa 1903), and later a son, Robert (March 31, 1920).

No exact date of death has been uncovered for Louise, or her second husband, Thomas. She is last seen in Providence's 1931 city directory, while Thomas is found in East Providence in 1944. Regardless of when either passed, it is interesting to not that their son Bob was raised not by the couple, but rather by sister Ella, and her husband, Kenneth Warren, in Fitchburg, Massachusetts.

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.

Great-Great-Grandmother's line in Lancashire

In Lancashire, England, sits the town of Accrington, about 20 miles north of Manchester. According to the 2011 United Kingdom Census, "Accy" is home to 35,456 Brits — and the hometown of musician Andy Kanavan, formerly of the Dire Straits. Accrington is also, as it turns out, the home of my great-great-grandmother.

Elizabeth Ann Hodgson was born in Accrington on 12 July 1862 to Adam Hodgson and his wife. Mrs. Hodgson is still a bit of a enigma for me at this point, having seen her listed as being named Ann and as Elizabeth. I assume, like her daughter, she is probably bearing both names. There are Ancestry.com family trees that assert one name or another, but I have not yet independently verified this information.

The Hodgson line was not something I had previously been aware of in my initial genealogical work on the maternal side of my family. That original work, conducted years ago and much more reliant on the trees created by other amateur genealogists, proved to be plagued with errors and has been part of a targeted overhaul and correction on my part. It was through that overhaul that I came across my great-great-grandmother, Elizabeth.

She came to the United States in 1869, aged 7, according to the 1900 U.S. Census. At some point, she met Frank M. Ellis, my great-great-grandfather. Frank had been born in central Massachusetts, in the town of Oxford, in November 1852. Current research indicates he was one of eight children bore to George and Caroline Ellis between 1849 and 1865.

Elizabeth and Frank were married in Worcester, Massachusetts, 11 December 1883. She was 21-years-old while he was 31. Together, they had six children in the 1880s and 1890s, raising them in Worcester. Their first-born was Frank Lucy Ellis, born 21 November 1884. He was followed by Frederick W. (1888), William H. (1890), Charles Cleveland (1891), Elizabeth (1893), and Esther (date of birth currently unknown).

In the 1900 U.S. Census, the family was residing at 106 Lafayette Street, Worcester, just a few blocks north of Crompton Park. It wasn't long before they moved about a half-mile north to Beacon Street, where my grandfather, Charles Cleveland Ellis, and his lineage lived for several decades.

Elizabeth was just 45-years-old when she passed away at the Worcester City Hospital, due to pulmonary tuberculosis. She died on 24 January 1908, leaving behind teenage children and some who were in their early 20's. Currently, Frank's date of death has not yet been uncovered. He was still alive when Elizabeth passed away, but has not yet been positively identified in the 1910 U.S. Census or beyond.

Finding my 3rd great grandfather in an insane asylum?

Is it true? Is this Thomas Mahoney in the looney bin the same Thomas Mahoney that is my 3rd great grandfather?

While doing some cleaning up of my family tree, I was going through U.S. Census data to confirm city residences and add in the street addresses, when available. The street addresses were not something I had bothered much with in the past, but with my recent genealogical reboot, it has become a tool I've incorporated to both help corroborate other sources and data, but also to give me a better idea of the world these ancestors lived in, and how that world looks today.

This evening, I was cleaning up my 3rd great grandfather, Thomas J. Mahoney. Born in May 1842 in Ireland, Census data indicates he came to the United States in 1855. He married a Bridget Sullivan, born 1844 in Ireland, and together they had five sons. Each of these boys were born in Connecticut, presumably in Norwich or its surrounding area. Just a few years after Patrick, the youngest child of the family, is born in Connecticut, the family is listed in the 1880 U.S. Census as residents of Richmond, Rhode Island, a town just more than 25 miles east of Norwich. By 1900, however, the family is about 70 miles north, living on Cambridge Street in Worcester, Massachusetts. Worcester is the city my grandfather's family, the Mahoney clan, called home for multiple generations.

While I have a decent amount of data on Thomas Mahoney's children living in Worcester, his time in the city is not terribly well documented thus far. In 1900, at age 58, he is widowed and living on Cambridge Street with the family of his son, Thomas. He is working as a day laborer.

I have no date of death for Thomas, so I began to look for him in the U.S. Census after 1900. I found a Thomas Mahoney in the 1920 Census, but I was immediately curious upon seeing the hand-written Census form: "Mahoney, Thomas. Patient."

Patient? Where? What happened?

Before I bothered going down this rabbit hole, I decided to seek confirmation this was the right guy.

Age? 78. That would put him as born circa 1842. That's a match.

Birthplace? Ireland. That's a match.

Birthplace of parents? Ireland. That's a match.

Marital status? Widowed. That's a match.

Everything appeared to be a match, leading me operate on the assumption that there is a very strong likelihood that this is my Thomas Mahoney.

He was listed as being on Belmont Street, so I began flipping back through the earlier pages looking for more information. After a few additional pages, I finally looked at the top of the page. "Name of Institution: Worcester State Hospital."

I had an inkling, but wanted to confirm that it perhaps wasn't just another name for one of the several hospitals in Worcester. A quick Google search confirmed what I already believed to be the case: Worcester State Hospital, sometimes known as the Worcester Insane Asylum, was a mental institution that closed its doors in 1991, more than 150 years after it first opened its doors.

In the end, operating under the belief this is the right man, I'm left wondering what happened.

Was he legitimately insane? Was it an issue of a 78-year-old man battling dementia or Alzheimer's Disease? Perhaps he was just viewed as a burden to his kids, who shuffled him off to the mental institution. Any of the above are viable possibilities.

I'm skeptical I will ever be able to learn what happened and why Thomas was placed into Worcester State Hospital. Any surviving records are surely not public. Barring it stemming from some sort of major incident that would've been found newsworthy, his admission to the asylum is not likely to be recorded in the newspapers. To my knowledge, there are no Mahoney family papers or diaries whatsoever. All the same, I will continue to dig in hopes of uncovering the circumstances.

Further Corroboration

The next step was to begin trying to see if I could find Thomas in either the 1910 or 1930 U.S. Census data.

I was immediately skeptical that he would be found in the 1930 Census after being found in the asylum in 1920. He'd be 88 by 1930, which was another factor making it increasingly unlikely he'd be found. Ultimately, no luck finding him in the 1930 Census.

As for the 1910 Census, there was no reason to believe he wouldn't be uncovered. I did find a Thomas Mahoney that seems to be a fit. Widowed, born in Ireland, and aged 68. Check, check, and check. Immigration year is listed as 1859, four years after what was listed in a prior Census report, but that doesn't seem to be terribly uncommon a discrepancy. This Census entry shows Thomas living with a son, William A. Mahoney, at 80 Temple Street in Worcester. Thomas does indeed have a son named William, and certainly the Worcester residency makes perfect sense. Furthermore, Cambridge Street and Temple Street are just about two miles apart, so this seems to work. The problem, however, comes with the rest of the Census data in comparison to what I previously had on file on William.

William, according to the original genealogical information, was born in Connecticut in May 1867. The 1900 Census data in Worcester clearly shows William as being born in Connecticut in May 1867, and that he's 33-years-old as of the Census recording in June 1900. However, the 1880 U.S. Census in Rhode Island, shows William as Connecticut-born, but aged 15 in June 1880 — that would put him as a newborn around 1865. This sort of discrepancy in Census data is not all that uncommon.

Regardless of whether William is born in 1865 or May 1867, the William A. Mahoney found in the 1910 U.S. Census is aged 37 — which means he would have been born circa 1863. Additionally, he's reported as having been born in Massachusetts, whereas the other Census data is clear that he should be listed as Connecticut-born. This William is married to a woman named Catherine, and is reported as having been married to her for nine years. Together, they have a son, Arthur, born about 1901. Also living with them is William's father, Thomas, as previously mentioned. Additionally, William's brother Daniel is living with the family on Temple Street. This seems to be a match to my previously existing data, though the birth year is slightly different. In this Census data, Daniel Mahoney is also born in Massachusetts, and is listed as 29-years-old, putting him as being born about 1881. In the previously uncovered Census data, Daniel was born in Connecticut in June 1875 (per the 1900 Census). The 1880 Census shows him as aged 6 and born in Connecticut; further corroborating the 1900 data.

Ultimately, this William and Daniel living with their father Thomas could be my 3rd great grandfather Thomas and two of his sons. It may very well not be them either, however. To find out, I will have to take a fresh look at William and Daniel to see what can be further confirmed and what seems to be erroneous information from data collection years ago.

Finding my fourth great-grandparents on the Drake line

It wasn't long ago that the genealogical information for my maternal great-grandmother's family line was identified as erroneous. There had been a number of red flags, and a clean slate was presented to rework this line. At last update on the Drake family line, I had tracked down my second great-grandfather, George R. Drake. I didn't know much other than he came from Nova Scotia, Canada.

Since then, there has been some modest progress.

George was born in Halifax, the capital of Nova Scotia, in September 1861. He was a child when the family immigrated to the United States at some point between 1867-1871, according to conflicting information in U.S. Census data. The family had settled in Boston, Massachusetts, and 22-year-old George married a local woman, Elizabeth Lawson, the daughter of a Thomas & Elizabeth (Dowler) Lawson. Like George, Elizabeth appears to have been born in September 1861. She would pass way at some point before 1930, while George dies at some point after the 1930 Census was taken.

According to primary sources, George held a number of jobs over his life: a mason in 1885, a sawyer in 1890, a freight handler in 1899, a day laborer in 1900, an armorer at a gun factory in 1903 and 1910, and finally an operator in a woolen mill in 1920.

George was born in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, and later resided in and married in Boston, before moving to Worcester, Massachusetts, at some point in the 1890s, and for the remaining 40 or so years of his life.

George and Elizabeth had at least six children together: Arthur Drake (1885-1976), John Head Drake (born 1890), Frank Drake (born 1897), Fred S. Drake (1899-1993), Charles O. Drake (born 1903), and my great-grandmother Sarah E. Drake (1894-1965).

Through U.S. Census reports, marriage records, and various other vital records and primary sources, it became clear that George was one of at least six children bore to John Head Drake and Elisabeth Ann Gould. John was born 10 January 1822 in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, Canada; months before the births of historical figures like Harriet Tubman, Ulysses S. Grant, and Rutherford B. Hayes. At the age of 5, John was baptized in Prince Edward Island on 22 January 1827.

Elisabeth, 14 years John's junior, was born 13 May 1836 in Lisbon, a town in southeastern Maine. Her father was a man named Charles H. Gould of Maine, and a woman whose first name appears to be Bertha, or some close derivative thereof. According to Massachusetts marriage records, John and Elisabeth were married on 20 September 1853 in Beverly, a city on the Commonwealth's "North Shore."

Massachusetts marriage records showing John Head Drake and Elisabeth Ann Gould's wedding in 1853.

Though the couple is married in Massachusetts, records indicate that the first four of their six known children are born Canada, with the two youngest later born in Massachusetts. The 1880 U.S. Census shows the Drake family residing in Boston, apparently at 27 Newman. There is no clarification of the street extension, which leaves us currently speculating as to where specifically the family resided. There is no Newman Street, Newman Road, or Newman Avenue in Boston itself, though there is a Newman Place; which is essentially a parking lot for the Newman School, a private high school in the Back Bay.

John passed away on 12 December 1883 at home as a result of pneumonia. By 1900, Elisabeth appeared to have moved in with her daughter Mary, now married to a John D. Walker in Worcester, Massachusetts. By 1910, Elisabeth is no longer living with the Walkers, instead residing at 61 Prospect Street in Worcester with her sons Arthur and Francis, as a well as an apparent grandson named Roland Lund. On 13 May 1916, apparently now residing at 65 Pilgrim Avenue in Worcester, Elisabeth passed away as the result of acute bronchitis with arterio sclerosis as a contributing factor.

Continuing the drive back through time and the Drake line, we reach a point where further research is needed. According to Massachusetts marriage and death records, it appears that John's parents were a Francis and Sarah (Head) Drake. Francis and Sarah are my fourth great-grandparents.

Further primary source documentation is necessary to substantiate the family trees assembled by other individuals. Currently, the extent of information beyond Francis and Sarah's names is that Francis was born in England, according to John's death records. This does not necessarily mean Francis was born in England itself, as this designation also may refer to English-controlled Canada.