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What I Learned from My Mom

  Last Monday, October 27th, would have been my mom's 88th birthday, and I'm thinking about her this week. I can hardly believe that she's been gone since 2010...15 years already. I've written about her a lot, but even with all I've done, I fear there is so much I've forgotten already, memories I will never be able to claw back into my consciousness. I'm glad, then, to have the gift of the questions that I'm working on from the book, Questions You'll Wish You'd Asked , which our son gave to me a few years ago. I'm slowly making my way through the book and some of the questions are about my parents and siblings. I keep my answers in a private blog for our son called Mamoushka's Memories (Mamoushka is our son's pet name for me...which I love !). One q uestion I recently wrote an answer to was, "What Did You Learn from Your Own Mother?" In honor of my beloved mother, Anna Margaret Kozlina Gilbride , here's my answer, addres...

GENEALOGY CHALLENGE 2021 - DEATH RECORD


 

GENEALOGY CHALLENGE JANUARY 2021
 
Death Record - January 2nd entry of a 31-day challenge to post a document, photo or artifact on social media every day in January.
 
By Nancy Gilbride Casey
 

This "Return of a Death to the Board of Health of the City of Scranton," was an important find for my research into my 2x great grandmother Catherine Ryan Gilbride, as it contained many important clues to her mysterious life.1
 
First the location of the doctor who certified her death was located in Danville, Pennsylvania. She married in Scranton, and the undertaker and cemetery listed were in Scranton, so this helped confirm that she was the same Catherine Gilbride I found living at the asylum in Danville, Pennsylvania. Danville is also noted at the bottom, and the word Ward is crossed out; typically that would refer to the ward in Scranton where the deceased lived.
 
The place of birth is also curiously noted as "Ireland, County Me-O," most likely a phonetic spelling of County Mayo, located in the west of Ireland in the Connacht province. This was the first and only clue I have so far of Catherine's birthplace, though who gave this information to the certifying doctor is unknown.
 
There is also an 11-day interval between her death on 17 January 1881 and her burial on 28 January 1881 in Scranton — an unusually long time. However, Danville was located about 75 miles from Scranton. It's likely that her husband Michael Gilbride would have had to hire a livery/undertaker service to travel to Danville and bring her body back for burial. The undertaker noted, D.D. Jones, had such a livery service. On 21 January 1881, Michael paid for a plot at Cathedral cemetery, a date conveniently midway between Catherine's date of death and her burial at Cathedral Cemetery (then Hyde Park Catholic Cemetery).
 
COMING TOMORROW - Favorite Family Photo
 
 
1 Pennsylvania. Lackawanna County, City of Scranton, City of Scranton Department of Public Health, death certificate for "Catharine Gilbride," 27 Jan 1881; "Record of deaths, 1878-1905, in the city of Scranton, Pennsylvania," digital image, FamilySearch, (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3Q9M-C9YG-R95K-X? : accessed 27 Jan 2019); FHL film 007700813, image 1411.

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