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The Thumb's Christmas

  Our daughter, Anne, was a prolific artist when she was young. Our refrigerator door was full of her drawings, paintings, and school artwork. She liked to create little books, too, as she was also a natural storyteller. One Christmas when she was about eight years old, Anne wrote and illustrated a Christmas story for her little brother, James. If memory serves, she drew her inspiration from a book she had recently gotten from the library by illustrator Ed Emberley. He wrote and illustrated The Great Thumbprint Drawing Book . In it, Emberley showed how to make a variety of animals and people using a thumbprint as a starting point. The creations are simple and charming. It's amazing what you can do with a blog of ink and a few black lines. It's art that's accessible to anyone. Anne's story is called "The Thumb's Christmas," and is based on our family. There is a thumb with glasses (Anne), a thumb with little hair (toddler James), a thumb with a mustache (Ji...
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CLOSE TO HOME ON E. 147TH STREET

I am occasionally participating in 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks, a writing challenge encouraging genealogy researchers to write about their ancestors. The challenge is hosted by genealogist, blogger and podcaster Amy Johnson Crow.

This week's prompt: Close to Home

 By Nancy Gilbride Casey


NOTE: After contributions by family, this post was updated on 29 Jan 2020. Thanks to all.

The cultural phenomenon of living close to home, may be lost on generations younger than mine. But it was a way of life for many generations of my family, up to the 1960s and 1970s, when the lure of larger homes for growing families and jobs outside the city centers led my family—and many more of their generation—to forsake the neighborhoods where they grew up for the suburbs.

But in my childhood, I was lucky to still be part of the practice of living close to home, although in my early years, I did not quite understand just how connected the neighborhood was with related families.

902/904 E. 147th Street, my childhood home in Collinwood. We lived upstairs, Grandma lived downstairs.

In Cleveland's Collinwood neighborhood, I lived upstairs in a duplex at 902/904 E. 147th Street, with my maternal grandmother Margaret Kozlina and my uncle living downstairs. I remember very well playing in the circular-shaped area on the second floor under the turret - it is also where we placed our Christmas tree each year. I also remember the dark and dusty attic space, and the porches the best. I also remember being able to walk out my door and within a few steps be at my other grandparents' house.

At that time, my paternal grandparents Joseph and Josephine Gilbride lived four houses down the street at 916 E. 147th Street.

One of my father's childhood homes, 916 E. 147th, in Cleveland.

The house at 916 E. 147th was one house in the Gilbride family from early 1920 through about 1970. It was originally purchased on 5 March 1920 by my great grandfather John Joseph Gilbride shortly after arriving in Cleveland from his birthplace of Scranton, Pennsylvania.1  Upon John's death in 1937, the house passed to his wife Margaret McAndrew Gilbride.

The transfer of 916 E. 147 Street from Anne Estes to John J. Gilbride and Margaret Gilbride, my great-grandparents, in March 1920..

 

After my original post, family confirmed that 961 E. 147th down the street was also a family residence, lived in by my grandparents, my Dad and his siblings from the mid-1940s until about the mid-1950s. In 1956, after my great grandmother Margaret's death, the 916 residence was willed to my grandfather Joseph John Gilbride, and then he and his family moved from 961 down the street to that location.

961 E. 147th Street, Cleveland, my Dad's family home during part of the 1940s-1950s.

In 1959, my parents Joseph John Gilbride, Jr. and Anna Margaret Kozlina, lived at 916 briefly after their marriage, before moving to Parma, Ohio, where I was born.

But they too, were soon back in the neighborhood and close to home shortly after my birth, moving just down the street from Grandma and Grandpa Gilbride, to 902 E. 147th Street. By then my maternal grandmother Margaret Kozlina lived in the property's downstairs unit at 904. We lived there until 1970 when our family moved to the suburbs for good, landing up in Eastlake, Ohio for three years and finally in Willowick, Ohio, where I spent most of my growing up years.


DID YOU LIVE ON E. 147TH? 
Family: I know that other family members on both my maternal and paternal lines lived on this same street, and I would love to hear other's recollections of their families' time on E. 147th Street. If you have a recollection, document, or other family tale from E. 147th, please leave a comment. I'll post updates in the future.

Until next time...

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NOTES
1 Interestingly, I also found this phenomenon well-entrenched in Scranton, where Gilbride ancestors succeeded in residence at 2146 Kelly Avenue, from the early 1900s through to the 1960s.
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