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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...

Teamster vs. Shoemaker: Correcting Henry Sheridan's Occupation

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Ok. It's a "make a choice" moment. 

Earlier this year I spent many hours researching the lives of Mary Jane Sheridan and her family. I gathered many sources, analyzed the evidence, and crafted her life narrative. I was really proud of the four-part series I wrote.

Except for one little fact: I got her father Henry Sheridan's occupation in Buffalo partly wrong. In Mary Jane's story, I based Henry's occupation on one city directory I'd found from 1851, where he was listed as a teamster in Buffalo's Hydraulics neighborhood. But the directories I found over the summer showed that from 1837 to 1844 Henry worked as a shoemaker/cordwainer. He was a teamster from 1848 to 1851, but that wasn't his whole story.

Even when I noted Henry's sudden occupation change to shoemaker when the family moved to North Evans, Erie Co., New York, about 1851, I didn't really question it. People can make a career change, right? Well, that was a little bit of presentism at work that I didn't see at the time. When I really think about it, I doubt that many men randomly changed careers—especially careers like a shoemaker—back when Henry was alive. That occupation took very specialized skills learned over time. My thinking now is that perhaps there was less of a need for shoemakers in the Hydraulics for those few years and Henry worked as a teamster until another opportunity came along to use his shoemaking skills. And that prompted his move to North Evans. It wasn't a career change necessarily. He was again applying the skills he honed earlier in Buffalo.

This point has been nagging at me since I got back from my research trip. My choice here is whether to leave Henry's Buffalo occupation as it is in my story, or own up to the mistake by reworking that section on Henry's occupation to reflect the reality I've since discovered. 

As a writer, I become attached to the words I've written and once I get them to where I want them it's hard to consider changing them. But as a family historian, I need to get the story right (to the best of my ability), or else what am I doing? I can't simply ignore what I've learned. 

This has been a really good reminder that as a researcher I need to not base my understanding on one document. I took that one directory entry and assumed that was all there was to Henry's Hydraulics career story, glossing over the leap in logic to him becoming a shoemaker all of a sudden. As a writer, I need to record the truth I know. 

I'll be revising the story. 

Until next time..

© Nancy Gilbride Casey, 2025. All rights reserved. 

 


 

 

 

Comments

  1. I feel for you. I feel the same about the words I write, which makes it hard for me to edit myself. Do it in another document, so you have the original intact.

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    1. You make an interesting point. I didn't think to have two versions. I thought I would make the changes and then add a note that says, "edited on such-and-such" date. I'll have to think more about how I want to handle that. Thanks for reading and commenting!

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  2. I see this more as clarification than correction. After all, your original stated correctly that Henry was a teamster. Editing it to say he was a shoemaker as well, for more of his working life, should do the trick IMHO!

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    1. That is also true. So glad I have gals like you to give me ideas! Thanks.

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  3. I agree with Marian (above). It is just adding more information to your story. Often times we wonder why someone is working at a different job than the one we knew about. Lucky for you to have figured it out. It just adds more to his story.

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    1. Oops, this is me (Linda Radecki) above....not sure why I was anonymous.

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    2. Thank you, Linda. The truth is we never know what new evidence might overturn our current findings or assumptions. Just part of the work, isn't it? Thanks for reading.

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  4. La rigoureuse historienne de famille que tu es se devait de tenir compte de cette clarification. Merci d’avoir montré l’exemple. A propos des professions, ici, en Belgique, nous avons de la chance. Les professions figurent presque toujours dans les actes d’état civil de mariage et de naissance. Bonne continuation. Cousin Daniel

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    1. Merci, Daniel. Tu as la chance d'avoir toujours les professions répertoriées dans tes dossiers. J'apprécie que tu lises et commentes toujours mes publications. Tu es un bon cousin !

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