Lavery Family Photos

Recently, I was able to get in touch with Lorraine D, a Lavery descendant, from whom we have a letter written to Helen Raysor in 1981. She's 82 years old; she and Arden are second cousins. She is descended from Ida Raysor (Eleanor's sister), the oldest of the Raysor children. She had several family photos that she shared with me, and quite a bit of information on the Laverys and Daleys that I would not likely to have been able to track down on my own.

Anyway, here are a few of the photos she shared (CLICK to BIGGIFY):

The photo above is of the four Daily (Daley/Daly) sisters. The large photo is labeled. The top photo is Ellen, Alice, Catherine and Annie. Ellen (far left at top; far right on bottom) is your great great grandmother.

The Dailys were raised in an orphanage, likely orphaned by a catastrophic cholera epidemic in Chicago. Ellen was living on her own in 1860, at the age of 16. She married William Lavery in 1864... he had been in the hospital recovering from grievous wounds he suffered at the second battle of Bull Run (a mini ball hit him in one leg near the groin and traveled down his leg to a point a couple of inches above the knee; the ankle on the other leg was broken), and they married almost immediately after he left the hospital. (It is not known, but would seem that perhaps she was volunteering at the hospital and met him there).




This is Ellen's daughter Ida, with her grand-daughter Evelyn. Evelyn was Helen Raysor's first cousin (and Lorrain's mother). There's also a note from Aunt Lucy Lavery Kalas.



This photo shows Evelyn, Lucy and Ida. This is the youngest photo I have of Lucy. Arden and Lorraine both remember Aunt Lucy as being a lot of fun. When Arden traveled from Potter Valley down to Oakland to visit the orthodontist, they stayed with Aunt Lucy, and she remembers them stayed up late into the night -- they would make toast and tea and sit around the table playing cards and laughing... a lot.

More Garage Goodies

The excavation of the garage continues, and a box unearthed yesterday (from a pile beneath the dryer vent) yielded unexpected treasures. The first was a letter from Aunt Mae (Lavery) Madden to Helen Raysor on the occasion of Eleanor's death (Click to biggify):

The second letter (from "Lorraine" to your grandmother) below is a puzzler. The topic of the letter is Lavery genealogy, with margin annotations which at first glance, appear to have been made by Helen. There are two distinct handwriting types on the letter. Maybe notes on the family that Helen is leaving behind for Arden? One in particular stands out: "My mother's father Wm D Lavery a brute my mother hated him". (Helen was beginning her descent into dementia at this point, and was not always remembering things clearly -- it could well be an erroneous memory. Lorraine says that her mother had fond memories of "Old Bill," but acknowledges that Ella and Helen did not share those fond memories.) This letter is mined with clues; I just hope we can make sense of them. Click to biggify:

At the bottom, Lorraine is musing on Wm Lavery's whereabouts between Nov 1862 and Mar 1863. Click here for more info on the 44th NY Infantry's involvement in the Civil War. UPDATE: I just received Wm. Lavery's entire Civil War Pension File, which described that he was gravely injured in the second battle of Bull Run at the end of August, 1962. His leg was eventually amputated (when he was about 50 y.o.) due to that injury. Subsequent to finding this letter, I was extremely lucky to be able to make contact with Lorraine through Ancestry.com. She had a ton of information on the Lavery family, including photos!

Also in this stash was a postcard album, with postcards dated from 1905 - 1912. It provided addresses for your grandmother and great grandparents in Chicago and Alameda for that time period. A couple of the postcards were incredibly politically incorrect, but typical of the time. I'll try to scan them this weekend.