What to Expect When Great-Grandma Was Expecting

In advance of Mother's Day this weekend, some thoughts on childbirth and my great-grandmothers.

During the course of my recent first pregnancy, I spent a lot of time thinking about birth in prior generations. This was at least in part because doing any research about childbirth inevitably leads to discussions of both how much birth has improved over the past century (maternal mortality declined from 6-9 deaths per 1000 live births in 1900 to less than 0.1 deaths per 1000 live births in 1999) and how much current standard practices can impeded the course of normal labor, increasing complications and leading to still more interventions, preventing our bodies from working the way our foremothers' were allowed to.

Don't worry, gentlemen, I'm not planning to go into much more detail than that! You can stick around.

However, my thinking about the history of childbirth was also substantially influenced by my natural historical and genealogical perspective, and so I've been calling to mind the stories I've heard of my great-grandmothers' birthing experiences.

Of course, these are not the detailed birth stories you can sometimes find on mommy blogs or when talking to your girlfriends. These are soundbites, the most interesting bits of an experience, the parts that could be sterilized for public consumption and that are interesting enough to have been repeated 3 generations later.

Molly Quinn O'Hara
Molly O'Hara, one of my paternal great-grandmothers, had 4 sons, including my paternal grandfather. She was the one who said that when it came to babies, you need to "Get them before they are two, or they will get you." She lived directly across the street from the hospital, and by the time she was pregnant with her fourth child, she said, she didn't bother seeing a medical professional during her pregnancy, but just showed up at the hospital when it was time. "I had done it three times before, I knew what I was doing."

Anna Cianciotta Lanzillotto
Anna Lanzillotto had 7 children, of whom my maternal grandmother was the fourth. According to my grandmother, when she was being born, her older sister, at 18 months or so, wouldn't leave the room or stop jumping on the bed. The midwife tried to shoo her out but she wouldn't go, or at least wouldn't go quietly, so her mother allowed her to stay. "But," Grandma said, "I'm sure that when I was coming, they got her out of there!"

As the story of my grandmother's birth illustrates, her mother was accustomed to giving birth at home. However, one year at Christmas time, my grandmother recalled that she and her siblings couldn't find their mother anywhere. They looked all over, under beds, in closets, but there was no sign of her. Finally, someone came home to tell them that they had a new baby brother, and that mother and baby were in the hospital. I'm not aware of any particular circumstances that would have caused Anna to deliver Baby #7 in the hospital after 6 home births, other than changing conventions and the fact that hospital births were becoming more common as time went on (1930s as opposed to 1920s). There could have been risk factors I'm unaware of, or it could have been due to the simple fact that a mother is, by definition, older when giving birth to her seventh baby than to her first, and "advanced maternal age" can be a risk factor for many complications, though how strongly that was considered at the time I don't know.

Maria D'Ingeo Gatto
Maria Gatto also had seven children, of whom my maternal grandfather was the 6th, I believe. All 7 were born at home, my grandfather told me recently. "We never had a doctor. My mother was my doctor." Beyond that, I know that those seven children were not her only births. I had heard that she was a midwife, but my grandfather told me recently that that's not exactly accurate. She delivered 9 babies in addition to her own. According to Grandpa, she just happened to be there for some of them, and then was called by other women, too poor to hire the real midwife, because "she knew how to do it."

Veronica Mulvaney Mulcahy
Veronica Mulcahy gave birth to three children in the 1930s and 1940s. In this case, I know little of their actual births, although I have a hospital "birth certificate" (not the official municipal certificate) from Bensonhurst Maternity Hospital in Brooklyn for her eldest, my paternal grandmother Marilyn Mulcahy, so I know that at least one of her children was born there. This doesn't surprise me, as I remember a conversation among my aunts once about whether their parents had been born in hospitals or at home - they didn't know the answer, although clearly on that side of the family, hospitals were the norm - in which one volunteered that "I can't imagine Nana giving birth without whatever forerunner of the epidural existed at the time." (I tried to do some research into what pain relief options would have actually been available at Bensonhurst Maternity Hospital at the time, but found no specific information, and conflicting reports as to the general use of the most well-known early drug for labor pains, twilight sleep.)


What's interesting to me is the clear divide here between the birth  practices of the two sides of my family. The Italians had all or mostly home births. The Irish apparently had all hospital births. Was this a mainly cultural difference? Socioeconomic? Was it related to the fact that my Italian great-grandmothers were both immigrants, and my Irish great-grandmothers native-born New Yorkers? How did these factors interact during what was clearly a time of transition from birth at home, attended by a midwife, to birth at a hospital, attended by a doctor? Where do these "soundbite" birth stories fit into the historical context of the time (1920s-1940s) and place (New York City)? My brief online research didn't supply answers.

What do you know about childbirth in the early-mid 20th century, in general or in NYC in particular?

Happy Birthday, Nan!

Today would have been my grandmother, Marilyn Mulcahy O'Hara's 79th birthday. She was born on 21 February, 1931, to Joseph Eugene Mulcahy and Veronica Mulvaney, the oldest of their three children. Nan was born at the Bensonhurst Maternity Hospital in Brooklyn.

She was baptized at St. Anselm's Church on 11 March 1931. Her god-parents were Gerard Mulcahy, her father's brother, and Mary Mulvaney Daniels, aka Auntie Mae, her mother's sister.

1905 NYS Census - Mulvaneys at 270 Van Brunt St.

Here I've found the 1905 NYS Census record of the Mulvaney family at 270 Van Brunt St. The family is listed as Patrick, 45; Julia, 37; James, 11; Grace, 9; Mary, 8; William, 5; Thomas, 3; Raymond, 1; and Harold, 6 months old. There are also 2 "boarders," who are their nephews, 17-year-old John Murphy and 11-year-old Thomas Murphy.

What's new here is Raymond. Betty and John had mentioned that they thought there might have been a brother named Raymond who died as a toddler. Never having seen any evidence thereof, I was skeptical. However, it appears that little Raymond did exist, and that he lived at least 15 months. (Harold is 6 months old. Do the math.) As per usual, Patrick is a Machinist and Julia does the housework. Nephew John, at 17, is an office boy, while Thomas, at 11, is in the 4th grade. Patrick and Julia's older children, too, were in school. James, also 11, was also in the 4th grade. They might have been best friends, classmates, or both! Though the number next to Grace looks like a 5, I assume it was just a sloppy 3, and that she was in the 3rd grade, where she should have been. Mary - Auntie Mae - is in first grade.

I was honestly not expecting a lot of new information from these census records. The Mulcahys were nice but not particularly important. The Mulvaneys, on the other hand, are chock full of new things and clarifications. Raymond existed. Good to know. The Murphy brothers lived with the Mulvaneys for at least 5 years. Their parents probably died between the 1900 Federal Census and the 1905 NYS Census. That's important information.

Vacation Stories!

This week, I'm away in Rhode Island, on our annual 4th of July vacation. In my absence, I'll regale you with a family vacation story.

When I sent Uncle Joe the pictures that Maureen sent me from the James Mulvaney family, he called me up, and, among other things, the story of the time they met James on their way out to Breezy Point. A bus from the city would drop people off, and those people would catch rides out to Breezy Point with people heading that way.

There are two versions of this story:

According to Uncle Joe, he was in the car with Nana and Papa, and they saw James and pulled over to give him a ride. Because they were generally catching rides with strangers, he didn't give any thought to whose car he was getting in. He didn't notice who else was in the car until Nana said, "Hello, Jimmy." He was surprised. "Oh! Hello Sister."*

According to Aunt Betty, this event happened when she was in the car with Nana and Papa and a friend of hers. They saw Jimmy and pulled over to give him a ride. He was aware of whose car he was getting into, but when he did, he motioned towards Betty and her friend in the back seat and asked, "So which one's my niece?"


*All of her siblings always called Nana "Sister." She was the baby of the family, and it was the vestiges of having called her "Little Sister" when she was a child.

Nana and Papa at Nan and Pop's wedding

This is one of the pictures that John sent me recently. It's a picture of Nana and Papa, Veronica and Joseph Mulcahy, at my grandparents wedding in July of 1956. Betty said she thinks the people in the background are O'Haras, but I'm pretty sure they're friends of Nan and Pop's. Betty said, too, that Papa sang at the wedding.

John Griffin Jr. sent me this picture last night - he's the baby, being held by Nana, and Auntie Mae is in the background. He sent a few more pictures, too, and I hope to be posting those soon.

The picture was taken at John's first birthday, in April of 1973.

John added this comment: "Auntie Mae is where we get our wunderlust from, or at least where I get it from, she always used to bring us back something from her vacations across the world!"

1910 Census - Mulvaneys at 270 Van Brunt St.

This is the 1910 census, showing the Mulvaneys living at 270 Van Brunt St. Julia and Patrick give their ages as 48 and 40, which means they have approximate birthdates of 1862 and 1870. Interestingly, in the column "number of years in present marriage" they give two different answers. How could Patrick have been married to Julia for 17 years, if Julia's only been married to Patrick for 16? That's one of my favorite things I've come across in my genealogical searching, because it seems to defy explanation. Whether they married 16 or 17 years before the 1910 census, though, it gives an approximate wedding date of 1893-4. Their kids are listed as James, Grace, Mary, Thos., Harold, and Vera. (Vera is presumably Veronica, don't you think?) William is, for some reason, not on this census, though he should be about 8 or 10 years old in 1910. Patrick's occupation is "Foreman" for a "machinist." James is a "clerk" in a "Railroad Office."

John Murphy, 21, and Thos. Murphy, 16, are listed as nephews. John Griffin told me that they were Julia's sister's sons who moved in with the Mulvaneys when their parents died. "There were also two older Murphy sisters. Annie married Jack Dowd, who was a NYC Policemen - we think he was possibly Chief of Detectives; they never had children. Annie's other sister was married to a man named KEENE, and they had a daughter, Margaret Keene, who moved in with Annie & her husband, when her parent's died while she was a young girl. Later she became an Ursuline Nun, teaching for years at Marymount. Later she was moved up to the Bronx. She died after 1990 from cancer and was in a convent in the Bronx." John Murphy is listed as a machinist at a "dry dock" or "day dock"? I'm having trouble reading the field. His brother Thomas is an office boy at a "[unintelligible] office."

Julia has given birth to 8 children, of whom 7 are still living. The 1900 census (soon to be posted) shows a boy named John, b. 1894. (However, that census also lists James as having been b. 1897, whereas later ages given put him closer to an 1894 birthdate.) John appears to have been a son who died young; he lived to at least 6, but appears not to have made it to 16. Betty and John also told me, though, of a son named Raymond who died as a toddler, but I have no information on him. One of those must be the 8th child who was born but no longer living in 1910.

Mulvaney family pictures

My mom sent me these, which I believe were scanned by either Joseph or John Griffin a few years ago. The one above has Julia in the middle, in a polka-dot dress, surrounded by her grandkids. Nan is the littlest one in front, with the doll, with her cousin Florence to her left. The other girl is Joan, and behind Joan is her brother Donald. The boy with glasses is George Kessell. In the back row on Julia's left is Grace Mulvaney Jones, and in front of Grace is Steve Kessell. On the far right, with the tie, is Tom Mulvaney.
This is Julia Mulvaney, again in the polka-dot dress, surrounded by her kids. I can identify Nana in the back row, and James is the man in the front row, which means I'd assume that Thomas is standing next Nana in the back. Auntie Mae is second from the left, to the right of Julia, and Grace is on the far right. As far as dates go for these pictures, and I assume they were taken the same day, I'm going to guess somewhere in the area of 1935 or just before? Can anyone tell for sure how old Nan is in the first one? I can't think of any other way to date them. Also, does anyone recognize the house in the background? Where were they?

This is Patrick Mulvaney. He looks like a young man, so the best I can say is late 1800s, early 1900s.

(In the top two pictures, Florence, Joan, Donald, and their father James were identified by Donald's daughter Maureen, whom I stumbled upon on ancestry.com when I noticed that her family tree had our (shared) Julia Toner Mulvaney on it! The wonders of technology and genealogy! Betty and John helped with everyone else.)

1920 Census - Mulvaneys at 270 Van Brunt St.

This is the 1920 census, showing the Mulvaney family at 270 Van Brunt St. Julia gives her age as 50 (yielding an approximate birth year of 1870), and says she's widowed. Only Veronica and Harold have attended school in the past year. James is a fireman for the city, Grace a salesgirl at a stationery store, Mary (this is Auntie Mae, right?) does clerical work at a drug store, William has no job, and Thomas is a helper at a shipyard. (This is interesting to me because Betty and John have said that Harold died because he was hit in the head on the pier while working at Todd Shipyards - it seems he eventually followed his older brother into a shipyard job.) Another thing I noticed is that William, at 18, has "no" listed for both whether able to read and whether able to write. Why would that be? Nana has no answer listed for either, but at 10, perhaps her reading and writing abilities were not quite so fluent as to warrant a "yes," but not quite so bad as to warrant a "no"? If you scroll through the page, most of the people who have no response in the reading and writing columns are school-aged children.

Wills for Probate

Joseph Griffin sent me a copy of Julia Mulvaney's probate notice from the NYTimes. I meant to post it with the post on her death, but couldn't figure out how. I guess you can't post PDFs, so I've had to transcribe it:

"Wills for Probate
Kings
Mulvaney, Julia (Oct. 10). Estate, $4,493 personal. To sons, James J. Mulvaney, 41-45 57th St., Woodside, and Thomas P. Mulvaney, 1,074 71st St., and daughters, Grace Kessell, Freeport, L.I., and Veronica Mulvaney, 324 82d St., one-fifth interest each in a specific building and loan association; Mary Daniels, 43-23 41st St., Long Island City, executrix, one-fifth interest in a specific building and loan association, insurance and residue."

Why is Nana listed as Veronica Mulvaney? Hadn't she and Papa been married almost 10 years by the time Julia died in 1938? Was Julia living with Nana before she died? The address given as her residence on the death certificate matches the one given for Nana here.

(for the record, I'm going to try in the future not to let my imagination run wild like I did in the second half of the post about Julia, below.)

Nana and Papa's Honeymoon

This is the passenger manifest of the ship Nana and Papa were on when they returned from their honeymoon to Bermuda in 1929. It's dated October 22, 1929, and as far as I know, Nana and Papa were married October 12, 1929. This is the list of U.S. citizens - immigrants were presumably on a different page of the manifest. The ages given are 23 and 33, and birth years are 1906 and 1895, for Nana and Papa, respectively. Their address is still 648 83rd St., Brooklyn.

Nana and Papa in 1930

This is a picture of the 1930 census. Nana and Papa, Veronica and Joseph Mulcahy, are listed on lines 85 and 84. They give their ages as 24 and 33, respectively, and are living at 648 83rd St. You can see that Papa's occupation is listed as "Police Officer." Nana says that both of her parents were born in NY, while Papa's mother was, but his father was from Ireland. (I believe the field reads "Ireland Free State.")

*click to enlarge image