11. The Mystery Lady in the Attic

After my grandfather died in 1971, the house on Delaware Avenue in Youngstown went up for sale.  To prepare for the sale my mother and my sister Anne helped with clearing out the house - deciding what to keep, what to give away, and what to toss.  They found this portrait stored in the attic, but it was a mystery since my mother did not recognize the lady in the portrait and she didn’t remember it hanging on the walls when she was growing up.   It is beautifully framed in an ornate wooden frame and the photograph itself has been enhanced with blue coloring on her eyes, slight pink on her cheeks, and charcoal on her hair.   It is so beautiful that my sister Anne decided to keep it. 

After my sister died, the portrait came to me.  Curiosity took over and I really wanted to know who she was.  She seems young – possibly early 20’s.  I don’t think it is a random portrait that was purchased as art, but more likely a portrait of a family member.  It’s a large wall hanging – 17 inches wide by 19 inches high.  My first thought was maybe this was my great-grandfather’s first wife – Annie McGavin, and that’s why my mother didn’t remember seeing it.  I took the portrait to Maureen Taylor, an expert in dating old photographs to see if she could help date it.   She thought it was taken in the mid-1880s.  Annie McGavin was born about 1873 and would have been around age 12 in 1885, so it didn’t seem very likely that this was Annie.  

I think this may be my great-grandmother, Catherine Donahue.    She was born about 1859 and would have been about 26 in 1885.  If this is my great-grandmother, why wouldn’t my mother have recognized her?  Well…my mother remembered her grandmother as old, thin, with whitish-gray hair.  Catherine was about 40 when my grandfather was born and in her 60s and early 70s while my mother was growing up.  It’s quite possible that she looked very different and unrecognizable from the lady in the portrait.   This is all a theory - I still don’t know if this is my great-grandmother, even though I really want it to be.  I don’t have any pictures of her to compare with this one, so I may never know the answer to this mystery.   

Do you think there is a resemblance to Grandpa Mullen?

                                                                   

10. Catherine Donahue Mullen

My great grandfather, John Arthur Mullen, Sr. lost his first wife tragically only two months after their son Raymond was born in 1896.  He and Annie McGavin had been married for less than a year, so it must have been a very sad and scary time for him.  His young wife had died of peritonitis, his infant son needed care, and he needed to work to provide for both his child and himself.  I don’t know who took care of Raymond as an infant, but if my great-grandfather was truly estranged from his family, then Annie’s family probably took on most of the childcare.  

Within a couple of years after Annie’s death, he met and married Catherine Donahue.  This is their wedding announcement from the Youngstown Vindicator published in November 1898:  At that time my great-grandfather and great-grandmother were both living in Niles, Ohio.

 

This is their marriage record dated November 8, 1898:

Who was Catherine (Kate) Donahue?   Catherine was born about 1859 in Mercer County, Pennsylvania into a large Irish Catholic family – she had two sisters and five brothers.  Although the census records show that Catherine was born about 1859, which would have made her 13 years older than my great-grandfather, she never admitted to that large of an age difference on any records that I have been able to find.  She usually used 1864 as her birth year, which would have made her five years younger than she really was.  The truth is she was at least 39 when she married my great-grandfather, and he was 26.  She would have been 40 or 41 when my grandfather was born in January 1900, so it's not surprising that he was her only child. 

Catherine’s sister, Susannah Burns, also fibbed about her age by five years and I think it was because they both married younger men.  I like to think the sisters may have compared notes about the need to present themselves as younger than they really were, and together they decided on five years younger.  I have no idea if this is what happened,  but it’s possible!

All I know about my great-grandmother’s personality is what my mother told me about her.  Growing up in the same household as her grandparents was not easy.  They didn’t like a lot of noise, so Grandma and Grandpa had to make sure Mom and Uncle Jack were kept quiet.  Mom remembers spending a lot of weekends with Grandma’s sister, Mayme, and her husband Roy.   It was a wonderful escape for my mother to spend time with her aunt and uncle, and it probably made things easier for my grandparents too.  Mom was not close to her grandmother, Catherine, and never mentioned that she really missed her.  I think it was more of a distant relationship, where kids were to be “seen and not heard”.  Mom was named after her grandmother because it was an expected tradition, but although her first name was Kathryn, she was always known by her middle name, Louise.    

Catherine’s parents, Michael and Catherine Donahue, were both born in Ireland and Michael was a farmer in Mercer County.  Michael didn’t immigrate to the U.S. on his own though.  According to census records his parents (Catherine’s grandparents), John and Mary Donahue, were the original immigrants. They arrived in the U.S. and Pennsylvania around 1830 with their family.  Similarly, Catherine’s other grandparents, John and Mary Gallagher,  brought their family to Pennsylvania from Ireland about 1840.  I don't know where the Donahues or the Gallaghers lived in Ireland before they immigrated to America.

 Here's another update to the Mullen family tree: