Hello everyone. I'm new and feeling my way slowly. Here's my first question, about my great grandmother, a brick wall if ever there was one. The facts that I have documented:
Mary Loretta Maroney was born March 5, 1871 in Ireland (exactly where is a matter of debate and great uncertainty). She came to the U.S. with her sister Delia (and according to family history, not documented an uncle called Maurice). The ship docked on 12 July 1886 in New York. She married Oscar Alexander Ennis on December 24, 1891 in Camden, Camden, New Jersey. According to the census they were living in Elmira, NY early in their marriage. She had three children, Mary Louise Ennis, Oscar Alexander Ennis and Benjamin Westfall Ennis (my grandfather). Her husband was an engineer and they moved with his job to Ohio and then Chicago, where they settled permanently. She died on June 13, 1931 in Chicago. I have her death certificate, but there is no information on it about her parents or where she came from in Ireland.
Extensive searching for the elusive Uncle Maurice has led nowhere. Delia married and had a family, but I followed all of those lines and found no additional information.
Unfortunately, Maroney is not an unusual name in Ireland, and while I've tried my luck with the online archives, I still haven't found any trace of her.
And that's the story. Except I'll point out that all of my brick walls are grandmothers, because their lives were not well documented. Which makes me even more determined to track them down and give them the respect they deserve.
