Mom and Dad (Dorothy Margaret Figueroa and William Martin Conlon) were married on 31 May 1952 at St. Mary Gate of Heaven Church in Richmond Hill. Fifty years later they celebrated with a grand party at the Carltun in Eisenhower Park, a short distance from where they held their wedding reception.
Judith and I asked Gene Thomas, who interviewed Mom and Dad that weekend, to capture the party on video. Here is the cast and crew.
I prepared and printed a book with selected photos. Here is a pdf version.
Genealogical research inevitably ends up in a brick wall, where there is no information on an ancestor’s parentage. Such is the case with my great grandfather James William Figueroa (1848 – May 2, 1919), whose parents are unknown.
What’s in a name?
First of all, we need to clarify that his full name is known from the birth records of his children, which show him as James William or J. William, even though his tombstone says William J. Figueroa. Perhaps he was known as William, and when the monument was placed 46 years after his death, perhaps the engraver was being cautious, as his death record listed him as John William Figueroa.
What we know about his life
The only information I have on his birth comes from his death registration, which stated that he was 71 years old and listed his occupation as a house painter. But the informant was presumably not at his birth, so his age at death might be in error.
On 21 Sept 1871, (James) William Figueroa witnessed the wedding of Charles Brandon to Emily Aitchison both of Kingston. Charles Brandon was at the baptism of James William’s son William Ignatius Figueroa, who subsequently married his daughter Emily Louise Brandon.
On 9 April 1877, James William Figueroa married Theresa Eugenie Perneau in Kingston. Witnesses included the aforementioned Charles Brandon, Charles Remy, Mary Jane Dorrington, Sarah Kelly, Ada Barnett, and Louis Bell. Their children were:
William Ignatius Figueroa, born on 30 Jul 1879, at 46 Mark Lane, Kingston.
My grandfather, James Vincent Victor Figueroa was born on 24 Feb 1882 at 58 Wildman Street, Kingston
On 23 May 1884, Justin Polycarp Figueroa was born, also at 58 Wildman Street.
On 29 Apr 1888, George Stanislaus Figueroa was born at 5 Fishers Row, Raetown, Kingston.
On 1 June 1891, Theresa Marie Figueroa was born at 5 Fishers Row. She is listed on her father’s grave marker.
On 22 April 1908, James William Figueroa witnessed the death of his infant grandson Joseph Francis Xavier Figueroa, son of my grandfather with his first wife Annie Wilhelmina Muschett.
Who’s your Daddy? (and Mommy)
Could my great grandfather be the William Figueroa who was born to Joseph Figueroa and his wife Jane on 18 June 1850 in Kingston?
James William Figueroa is not listed in the index to Roman Catholic baptisms in Kingston between 1837 and 1846 so perhaps he wasn’t baptized or perhaps he was born after 1846. We don’t have a record of his parents, so we can only speculate about how he got his family name.
Perhaps he was a foundling adopted by a Figueroa?
Perhaps his mother was a Figueroa and the father was unidentified and the family adopted him at birth.
Perhaps he wasn’t born in Kingston.
Genealogist Richard Dear speculates that James William’s father was Jose Angel Figueroa, who married Emily Wright on 11/9/1844 . She was the daughter of of Andrew Wright and Eveline White, natives of Kingston. The wedding was witnessed by his father Jose Maria Figueroa, John White, John Wright, Jose Ysidoro de Cordova, Jose Maria Moreu. In Dear’s family tree, his mother is listed only as ‘Jane’.
What about DNA?
So far there aren’t DNA matches that lead back to Jose Angel Figueroa. But there are very interesting DNA results that point in another direction. Ancestry DNA shows that Dorothy M. Figueroa, granddaughter of James William Figueroa, shares 101 cM with Steven Stanhope.
Ancestry estimates that they are second cousins, twice removed, but there are a number of alternative relationships.
He is the son of the 11th Earl of Stanhope, whose royal ancestry is documented in Burke’s Peerage, although I used Wikipedia to derive this chart of his relatives.
Assuming the Ancestry prediction is correct, then as second cousins, the connection would be via Dorothy’s great grandparents, the unknown parents of James William.
If Steven Stanhope is two generations removed, counting his father (11th Earl) and grandfather (10th Earl) as the two generations, we go up through the 9th Earl, the 7th Earl (grandfather) to Rev. Hon. Fitzroy Henry Richard Stanhope (1787-1864) and Ann Wyndham. The Rev. Stanhope was son of the 3rd Earl, represents right generation to have sered or given birth to James William Figueroa (b. 1848).
To be a true second cousin, James William would have to have been born to the Rev. Stanhope and his wife, but the probability table shows that a half-third cousin is equally plausible. This means the brothers and sisters of Rev. Stanhope are good candidates. It’s fair to assume that his sisters were not involved as they were all in their late 50s or 60s in 1848.
So what about the brothers? The brothers who were alive at time were:
Charles Stanhope (1780-1841), 4th Earl of Harrington
Leicester Fitzgerald Charles Stanhope (1784-1862), 5th Earl of Harrington
Rev. Hon. Fitzroy Henry Richard Stanhope (1787-1864)
Intriguingly, the 5th Earl married Ann Green, whose parents William Green and Ann Rose Hall resided in Jamaica. It seems to me that one of James Williams’ parents was fathered by the 5th Earl, but we can’t conclude whether the child was male of female.
So my money is on the 5th Earl as the father and an unknown woman as the mother, possibly a sister or friend of the Earl’s wife. Once she was with child, my conjecture is that she was dispatched to Jamaica to give birth away from society’s judgemental eyes, where baby James William could be adopted by the Figueroa family.
Back in the days before we had mobile phones with thousands of photos, people carried important pictures with them in their wallets. Here are the pictures that Mom carried, showing her family over the years.
Wedding day, May 31, 1952. Mom and Dad next to the 1949 Chevy.
Bill Jr, Mom, Babs, Dad, Tom. Easter Sunday 1969 in the back yard in El Lago.
Barbara held her senior art exhibit at UC Santa Cruz in January 1984, and the whole family came out in support. Back row: Dad, Ashraf (friend/colleague of Bill’s from Diablo Canyon project), Barbara, Judith, Mom, Tom, Bill Jr. Front row: Dave, Jean Retzlaff (Dave’s Mom), Jacob, Paula, Megan.
I just updated the family tree , which had last been updated on 26 March 2022. Here are some of the key changes:
The tree now only contains individuals that I have verified to be relatives. That eliminates some speculative connections that I have in my own software, including the Reinhard tree that had been provided by Jim Matthias and Albert Wagner, the town historian of Niedernberg Germany. Despite two decades of searching, I have yet to find any documentary or DNA evidence that supports the connection of my great grandfather Alexander Reinhard to the Niedernberg Reinhard tree. Although, the connection to Niedernberg seems solid, there needs to be more evidence.
A few individuals have been added, primarily to the Fogarty line, based on DNA evidence.
About 40 more sources were added, including some 1950s census records and other records confirming information already know. The most significant were the death dates and cause of death for my Fogarty grand uncles (Patrick T. and William H.) and grand aunt (Mary F.).
Please let me know if you see any errors or have suggestions for lines of inquiry.
This party celebrated the 50th wedding anniversary of Bill Conlon and Dorothy Figueroa. The event took place at the Carltun in Eisenhower Park on May 31, 2002.
You had to be there to appreciate the elegance of this festive occasion, with great food and drink, and the fabulous staff who arranged for about 60% more seats, with many small tables, to facilitate mingling by all the guests. You also had to be there to want to watch familial small-talk, laughter, and reminiscences by our younger selves. It is really wonderful to see and hear those who have left us since, then including the three Conlon brothers and Joe’s good friend Phyllis.
But if you weren’t there, or want to remember the warm feelings, watch this video.
Gene Thomas had an intuitive feeling for the flow of conversation and did a great job of capturing the party. In fact none of the clips have been edited, although a couple were dropped to reduce the length.
The title photo of Bill and Dot running down the steps at the church was taken by Dot’s brother Jim.
And here is a short clip of the cast of characters.
Photos were an ever present part of family life. I suspect Dad’s interest in photography was piqued by his brothers-in-law, James and Richard, who were quite accomplished.
His first camera was a compact 35mm Bolsey Model B, which came in a brown leather case and supported a flash bulb attachment. He used an exposure meter, which became a theme for us.
Around 1965, he purchased a 35mm Yashica Pentamatic with an exposure timer, which with a tripod, allowed him to get into the photos, instead of being just behind the camera. Dad shot 35mm slides, mostly Kodak, but he switched to Agfachrome for a while.
Dad would get out the camera for all the important occasions – birthdays, Easter, Thanksgiving, and Christmas and took it along when we traveled. The mandatory family photo was sometimes stressful, with some cursing over the tripod, the exposure timer, or just because we were being bratty kids.
With a new roll, there was always the worry about the film being taken up. I recall many times when the film didn’t advance and shots were lost, and some times when Dad wasn’t sure and would go into a closet to check without ruining the whole roll. Sometimes he would gather us for a photo just to finish off a roll, so it could be mailed off in a small metal can to Kodak and eventually other labs. Until we moved to Houston, there was a new roll of film every 4 to six weeks.
One of my fondest memories is when the developed slides returned in the mail: a family would gathering for a slide show in the living room, typically on Sunday night. First the screen would come out of its box in the front hall closet, to be set up in front of the window. Then he would haul the slide projector from his bedroom closet and set it up on the dining room table. He fed the slides manually, and sometimes had the wrong orientation, which would exasperate him.
Eventually he bought an automatic unit from Sears that used slide trays and had both timed and manual advance. Of course the slides still needed to loaded in the right orientation, and sometimes the slides wouldn’t advance properly, so there was still some frustration and an opportunity to curse at the machine. Dad ended up buying more slide trays, so each new roll of film only needed to be loaded once, and we could see many more pictures in an evening.
By the 1980s, with all the kids gone, there were only a few occasions for a show, like when we came back for Christmas (see Dad’s list of trips to Bethpage). Also, Dad had switched to a Pentax ME Super and from slide to print film, so the slide projector was seldom used otherwise. The last slideshow I recall was when Judith and I and Barbara and Dave were visiting, probably over Christmas of 1997.
We were shocked that so many of the slides had faded completely or in one of the pigments, and I wanted them to be scanned for preservation. I looked at slide scanners, but realized it would not be a good idea to sentence Dad to a lifetime of slide scanning in the basement. Fortunately, the Kodak PhotoCD became an option, and Dad went through the slide to select those to be scanned, making a list with a caption and date or estimate date based on the month and year printed on the slide carrier.
There were originally 5 CDs, each with 80 to 100 images. I extended Dad’s list with additional columns for people, places, events, and trips. To allow quick and easy access, I created a javascript and associated data structure with pointers to images in directories. I provided this on CD to the family, but storage limits forced me to scale the images to just 640×480, much less resolution that the original 3072×2048 scans, which is the resolution at https://www.conlon.org/photos/large/index.html.
It has long been my desire to display the full resolution images and to have a more robust approach to image management. I think the images themselves should carry the information in meta data, such as IPTC, so they can be indexed automatically, but especially so the association of caption, date, and people is permanent, and dependent on file structure or a separate database or program. I don’t know if I will ever get around to it, but it’s on my to-do list.
BTW, I ended up getting Dad’s Bolsey when he bought the Yashica and used it for about 25 years until he gave me a Pentax of my own. I used that camera to take pictures as a child and teen, trying to follow in his footsteps.
The weather in the Boston area on Sunday, July 17, 1932 was warm, with a high of 86°F and moderate easterly winds, and it was time for a family outing. Martin J. Conlon’s two sons with his late wife Elena (Fogarty), Bill (9) and Joe (6) could have some fun at the beach, and his new wife Ella (Fox) and their six-week-old newborn Martin could get some fresh air. After church, Martin and Ella, along with Bill, Joe, Martin, aunt Mary (Lyons) Fitzgerald and family friend Annie Mahoney bundled into the car to drive out to Nantasket Beach. It was to be a quiet day summer day together, away from the world’s troubles and triumphs.
Governor Roosevelt’s yacht had arrived in Brighton the day before and he was traveling to Portsmouth, New Hampshire to address a large crowd as the recently nominated Democratic candidate for President. The bonus marchers were still in Washington, D.C. but with Congress adjourning were losing momentum. The Olympic trials were underway and Clarence Crabbe was earning his moniker ‘Buster’ by demolishing swimming records.
Martin was a merchant who sold Atwater Kent radios and operated the Jenny Oil gasoline station in Whitman, home of Bostonian and Regal shoes. After Elena died of breast cancer in 1927, her widowed aunt Mary had moved in to 9 Elm Place in Whitman to look after the boys. Across the street were their grandmother Alice Lyons Fogarty, and aunts and uncles –Lena’s brother’s Bill and Patrick and sisters Mary and Alice. Elena’s cousin Ella must have been a presence as well, so when Martin and Ella married in April 1931, it must have brought the Conlon and Fogarty families still closer together.
“I was about nine years old then. He also had another son, my brother Eddie was born about 1932. And then that summer, we had an unfortunate auto accident. My father was driving and my stepmother was in the front seat. And I was in the backseat with my brother Joe and my half brother. Eddie was in the arms of a Great aunt. My father was making the turns when a truck hit us in the side where my stepmother was sitting and she was killed. The rest of us were hospitalized for varying amounts of time. I was in for about four or five days and I had a concussion and a couple of cuts in the face. My father had a broken shoulder. So he was in for several weeks. And my brother Joe had I think he had about five dents in the skull right about here. So he was in hospital all summer long for about two months, maybe 10 weeks. But he, he finally recovered okay.”
According to the newspaper report, the injuries were severe, with 4 of the seven expected to die from the collision which occurred at about 6:30 p.m. on Main Street, near Green Street, with a vehicle operated by Patrolman Henry Wigmore of the Hingham Police. “The car was in head-on collision with [police officer] Wigmore’s machine, but Conlon, in his efforts to avoid the crash, stepped on the gas and swerved his machine so that it ran up on a small green near Green st, crashed against a pole and caromed against a large tree, throwing the seven occupants of the car on to the ground.”
Four of Eight Injured at Hingham May Die
The main route from Nantasket currently goes through a rotary in Hingham, but according to the Patriot Ledger, “construction of the rotary started in 1933,” the year after the accident, so the actual route taken that day is unknown.
Martin was charged with “operating a motor vehicle so as to endanger” and appeared in Hingham District Court that September. There are conflicts between the accounts from the newspaper, Bill’s recollection, and the scene
how was it a head-on collision if Martin swerved and went of the road onto the green where he hit a pole and a tree?
how was it a head-on collision if Wigmore’s car hit the side where Ella was sitting?
Perhaps court records still exist that could shed further light, but it seems possible that the Conlon vehicle turned left from Summer Street onto what is now Route 3A and into the path of the oncoming car. Bill remembered going to court but thought that he hadn’t had to testify.
Ella died of her injuries on 20 July 1932, five months to the day after giving birth to her only child. The others survived, and Martin’s sister Winifred Conlon McCarthy came down from Holliston with her two teenaged daughters, Mary and Rita, to look after the three boys for the rest of the summer.
After burying his second wife, Martin moved the family to 903 Washington Street, where they lived for another decade, before he bought the house next to the gas station and moved it to 31 Legion Parkway.
