Hand Me Down

Everett Ward Gardiner's life began in scandal, wandered through shame and reinvention, and ended in dignity. http://oconnor.home.blog

A finish to the story of my great‑grandfather, Thomas O’Connor — a man whose life began hopefully in Ireland, endured immigration, hard work, three marriages, and ended during the Great Depression in a place few families ever talk about openly: Stockton State Hospital, one of California’s largest mental institutions. His story is not an easy one. But it is deeply human. And like so many family stories, it sits at the intersection of love, hardship, silence, and survival. http://oconnor.home.blog

This episode centers on the baseball life of my grandfather Gerald Desmond and the baseball scrapbook he kept as a child from 1906 to about 1914. http://oconnor.home.blog

A statue and windows in our parish church in Sacramento make a connection to ancestors on both sides of my family.

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My great-grandfather migrates from Nebraska to Colorado and on to California during the 1920s, leaving a great deal behind in his wake.

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I thought it would be worth remembering my great-grandfather on this 100th anniversary of his passing.

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In 1898, my 2X great-grandfather Baldwin Gardiner was shot and killed after a botched robbery and a daring chase over San Francisco rooftops.

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In this episode, I take a look at my family’s relationship to one of the major industries that employed several of my ancestors – the railroads.

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With COVID raging and the current occupant of the White House suggesting wild cures, I look back into my family tree where a not-so-reliable treatment scam figured into the life of one of my third great-grandfathers in 1830s Jacksonian America.

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In this episode, as I shelter-in-place under the coronavirus epidemic, I look into how some of my ancestors endured the Influenza Epidemic of 1918.

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