This photo fragment appears to be a class photo of with grandfather John Tierney (born 1892 in New York.) He is the boy on the right side of the back row and if you look closely you can see a “J” written in pencil over his head.

I’m left wondering if someone intentionally tossed the rest of this photo or if this was all that was salvageable.
Early photos from the Tierney side of my family are few and far between.

In fact this and another of my great-grandfather are one of only two that are pre-1910. We have perhaps a half-dozen more of my grandfather John in various work-related photos in the mid to late 1910s.

The number of photos increases slightly after he married my grandmother but still not a great amount. So, I’ll take whatever I can get.

Anyone out there have any good resources for analyzing old school photos or figuring out from whence they came? (Especially in New York City.) Let me know!

Shhh! Today we are in Holy Cross Church on 42nd Street in Manhattan. It has been newly restored and I must say is a jewel of a place. The church was founded in 1852 to accommodate the influx of Irish Catholics in the neighborhood and expanded as the area population grew, eventually to include a school and convent on nearby streets.

The building in place now is the second incarnation which replaced the lightning damaged and unstable original structure in 1868. According the the church’s web site, it is the oldest building on 42nd Street from river to river.

Holy Cross is perhaps most commonly known as the pulpit of Reverend Francis P. Duffy, the highly decorated Chaplain of the 69th Regiment’s “Fighting Irish” in World War I.

However, the reason I visited Holy Cross was a more personal one: almost 92 years ago, on June 1, 1919 my grandparents John Tierney and Mary Egan were married here.

As a native New Yorker, I can’t imagine how many times I walked near this church or any number of other locations in the city without the slightest idea that something of familial significance occurred there.

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