New York - Currach

New York

Jan12

No Comments

Dad’s brush with fame, sort of.

Posted in: New York

This photo of a basement party, circa 1942 or so, was probably somewhere around Jamaica, Queens. My Dad, Mike Tierney is the topmost guy in the rear left.

The girl standing in the center of the photo is Barbara Nickerauer who later became the actress / starlet Barbara Nichols.

A few others can be found tagged in my Flickr Photostream.

Update
After finding an envelope with old photos that weren’t used in our albums, I found this one Barbara gave to my Dad, back in high school days apparently. Hubba Hubba!
Jan3

2 Comments

Ready, Willing and Probatable

Posted in: Ireland, New York, Projects

Probate court? We don’t need no stinking probate court!
Well, actually we do. But these images found in our family albums are a good reminder that you need to go through everything well: My grandmother’s uncle wrote his last will and testament (a few times) on a pair of her photos.

Being a wallet-carrying guy and spying the folds on the left photo, I’m going to guess he carried that one in his wallet. (Or maybe she did?) While they are simple in content, and my family already knew that Uncle James had left his houses to my Grandmother May, they would be even more helpful if we were unaware of that fact.

Front of Images

Transcription of right image: To May Egan I will everything I owen (sic) at Death. James Farrell (Signed)

Read on for the images and an additional use for them…
Read More | Comments
Dec17

No Comments

It Ain’t the Church You’re Looking For

Posted in: New York

It turns out I am a sucker for a good records search. or a bad one. Or one of those searches where you’re not sure what your are looking for, but are pretty sure its out there so you deepen by an extra few millimeters the indentation on your desk chair and the circles under your eyes. You know, one of those.

Anyway, I thought one recent experience of a records search was a good example of how you might not find what you are looking for – but find out you were looking for the wrong thing. (Note to self: reread that sentence later and make sure it makes sense.)

Of the eleventy-six message boards that I monitor, I find the New York County board on Ancestry.com a little too broad to check very often. But I like to scan through the topics once in awhile and often learn something new.

One day this summer I noticed a simple request for help:

“Can SKS tell me the name of the church at 960 Madison Ave. I don’t believe it is there any longer since I have tried looking it up in a variety of ways.”

Well, I thought, that couldn’t be too hard to find, could it? Read More | Comments
Dec9

1 Comment

Repairing Coney Island

Posted in: Ireland, New York, Technology

One of the treasures of our family albums is a fairly damaged family photo at Coney Island around 1920. We still have not identified everyone in the photo yet, but we’ve got some good educated guesses going, as well as a slight mystery I plan to blog about soon.

I’ve been working on repairing a few photos so that I can give them as gifts to family members. Below is my handywork on the Coney Island image. Admittedly, a couple of the faces are not perfect, but given the extent of the folds and tears I’m very happy with how they turned out.

Move your mouse over the image to see the repaired* version. Click Here to see the full family notes on it at The Flickr.

*Note: the mouse hover technique on my blog lightens images up in Firefox – the final version doesn’t get lighter as it appears to in the post. Need to figure out what in the code is doing that and give it a stern talking to.

Update: I wasn’t absolutely sure about the location of the photo – after some online research I guessed that the roller coaster behind them was the Giant Racer, given the likely 1920 – 1922 time frame. But, I wasn’t able to find any photos or postcards that had the right angle for me to compare and make a definitive guess and it was annoying me.

Then, I found the “Ask Mr. Coney” column and fired off a question about it. He graciously responded very quickly and with terrific detail, which will help us provide some background color to the image. So, Thanks to Mr. Coney!

His reply about the location:
“The photograph was taken between West 8th Street and West 5th on the public beach, former site of Dreamland.
The turreted building on the right is the Sagamore Hotel, on the corner of West 8th and Surf Avenue. The coaster is the Giant Racer, and the twin towers behind it belongs to Luna’s Aquadrome entrance at West 10th Street. The tent-like structure behind the tent in foreground houses the Dreamland Circus Sideshow and the billboard just behind the tent was located above the L.A. Thompson Scenic Railway.”
Oct27

4 Comments

Michael Tierney – Policeman, Part 2

Posted in: Ireland, New York

In Part 1 of this post I gave a running description of my search for information on my great-grandfather Michael Tierney. I also left my son in the jail at Old Slip. I better get on that.

And I promised something surprising.

Several weeks after writing a letter to the NY Police Department inquiring about possible records for Michael they replied with some terrific items: a letter from the First Deputy Commissioner outlining what they found, some useful pages on genealogy research at municipal archives and copies of my great-grandfather’s Force Index card and his Transfer and Assignment card.

Click on image to view full version of the card.
This was a terrific find for our family! The cards included his shield number, birth and naturalization dates, country of birth, former occupation, addresses, dates of service, retirement and death and even how much his annual pension was. ($700 per year in 1913.)

Celebration ensued.

With all of that information, I couldn’t be too disappointed that his country of origin was not more detailed than “Ireland” – especially since the given date of naturalization matched one of the “possible” index records I had already collected. An additional clue that it was the right index record: the former occupation field on the Assignment card was “Hostler.”

A hostler is someone who works with horses, and the index record I was eyeing had an occupation of “Stabelman” (sic). The next day I went right to the National Archives at New York City site to order me up some documentation.
Read More | Comments