#5 - Flora G Bancroft Knows How To Live Large

Flora Bancroft Manages to Get Through it All

“Most people are good-natured as long as nothing is bothering them at the moment.” said some sage.

We, living in our ancestors’ future, merely read about our ancestors’ lives, but are unshaken by their setbacks or tragedies. Of course, they had to take every day as it came, unaware of the tragedies or the small triumphs ahead. As I read it, Flora Bancroft was thrust into situations beyond her control repeatedly. But she sailed through the storms of life, enjoying the end of her life at her daughter-in-law and son’s (and her three grandchildren) home. 

Flora was my mother’s paternal grandmother (her father’s mother), and the only daughter of Peter Sanford (PS) Bancroft and Bella Brinker. Lucky for me, her son taped his memories in the 1980s, and he included pieces of his childhood memories and her life. Upon hearing his memories, I understood Flora had gone through a long stretch of rough patches.

Early Years, the Farm and Loss
Her father had joined the Union Army and at the first battle, one of his arms was shattered and rendered useless. He remained with the army as a member of the “Invalid Corps” until well after the end of the war. Upon returning to Butler, he married Bella Brinker.
 

Flora was born in 1867 to Isabell S. Brinker (Bella) of an old Butler, PA family. A brother Earl followed in 1868, and Grove in 1869. 
 

Flora was only 7 years old when her mother died. Her father (who had married late in life), was now left with a farm and 3 children too young to work it (her brothers were 6 and 5). With a farm, no wife and one arm, he eventually turned from farming to education. This prompted the family to move to Butler, PA. (At this time, post-war, the US economy was in a severe recession.)

Although Butler was a city, it was a city in the country. But it had grown, thanks largely its location near Pittsburgh. Several industries started up in Butler (such as the Plate Glass Company).

Butler - Finding Friends and A Husband
Story has it that Flora married her husband William H Tilton (also a relative newcomer to Butler) “on the rebound” from a would-be boyfriend. 

Flora Bancroft Tilton abt 1905

Whether that is true or not, they weren’t very compatible. Possibly Flora knew and liked his parents, the respectable Henry A Tilton and Louisa (Copes). His parents had moved from New York City. His father had worked in Pittsburgh, then moved to Butler to run the Plate Glass Company.

Their son (Flora's husband) William Tilton “clerked” at Plate Glass, but was enamored with hunting and fishing. He was the antithesis of Flora’s own father (who had been a professor, writer, educator). William showed little interest in business as his father had. William seemed content to fish, hunt, smoke his pipe. 

Wiliam H Tilton abt 1908

WH Tilton with rabbits abt 1910

Flora as a young woman, before marriage:   

Once she lost her mother, her father never remarried. She had no sisters. Off the farm and living in Butler, as a young woman, she associated with female relations to her mother's family. She saved a precious photo of the MacNair sisters (who she was related to by marriage).

Flora-far left-with McNairs early 1900s

The Tilton's children were: William (her husband), Clarence and Isabella. Through the years she and sister-in-law Isabella Tilton (Roe) grew to be very close.


WH Tilton's sister, Belle Tilton Roe,1895

Married Life and Losses

Flora had lost her mother, then in 1899, her brother Grove died of Brights disease—leaving a widow and a little girl. He was 29 years old. 

The following year she and William welcomed a new baby (Henry Addison, 1900), but he died in 1901 at less than a year old—a devastating loss.  

 

They went on to have their only child in 1902. Flora named this boy after her friend and sister-in-law. Only since it was a boy, she named him after Belle Tilton Roe's husband: Charles. Charles Bancroft  Tilton was born in 1902.

Although the Tiltons and Bancrofts were educated for that era, they were not wealthy. My grandfather categorically stated the Tiltons were "the genteel poor.” 

 

Since her father was a widower with little to no income, he lived with his son-in-law and family. 

 

At this point, Victorian manners still held sway, an era when adults wished for children to be "seen and not heard." In like pattern, after dinner Flora and William would spend the evening together in one room, while the grandson was banished to a separate room, where apparently is grandfather (PS Bancroft) kept him company.
 
William Tilton liked to smoke pipes and cigars...and did so often.  At some point, he got quite ill (I think cancer)—an industry magazine ran this announcement: 
from the: National Glass Budget Weekly Review of the American Glass Industry, July 24, 1915, p. 5

“Tilton Leaves Standard Plate 

After 23 years continuous service William H Tilton has resigned his position with the Standard Plate Glass Co at Butler, Pa.  Mr. Tilton was at the head of the invoicing department and is regarded as a very efficient office man.  He is the son of Henry A Tilton, deceased, who was at one time general manager of the Standard company.”

 

Loss Upon Loss
Less than a year after her husband quit working (due to poor health), Flora's father PS Bancroft, got sick and died within 10 days in early May 1916.  Her husband’s health was rapidly deteriorating, and a month later, on June 16, 1916, William Tilton died.
 

The summer of 1916, the US had not yet World War I, and Flora lost her mother, a brother, a father, a son, and now her husband. 
 

Her son was 13 ½ and in school. She had no real skills nor job training, no means of support. She had no real property to sell. The farm in Meadville, PA, which had belonged to her fathers’ family, had been a casualty of the post-war recession.

Flora went to her local dress shop – the same dress shop she used to buy her dresses in— and worked there for a time. 
 

Remarriage and a Setback
When she was a widow, a man named Alexander Patrick Moore (Paddy) courted Flora, persisting till she finally agreed to marry him in 1922 (my grandfather was 19 or 20). 
 

But the newlyweds didn’t fare well financially (to put it mildly). My understanding is that Flora hoped for some financial security entering into the marriage—and found the opposite.  Family lore says Mr. Moore had business setbacks in the early to mid-1920s from which he never recovered, financially. He was also quite traumatized from it, and never fully recovered.  
 

Flora insisted her son not remain in Butler, or even Pittsburgh, but to attend college and learn independence. He attended Penn State (State College) where he had a full scholarship.

After Charles graduated in the mid-1920s, he managed a large dairy farm in PA. When he learned his mother and stepfather where in dire straits financially, he convinced the farm owner to allow the Moores to stay for free in the very rudimentary house (little more than a shack) on the farm property.
 

Paddy Moore & Flora, NY late 1920s

 

Spring 1927 - A Loss and A Gain

In April 1927 Flora's sole remaining sibling, Earl DeHome Bancroft died. 

In May 1927, her son Charles married the sister of a college friend. He married Elizabeth C Tyson of Adams County, PA.

 

The Daughter-in-Law
After this point, for the most part wherever Charles and Elizabeth lived, Flora (and Paddy Moore) lived with them. They lived together in Westchester, NY and in Philadelphia. During World War 2, when Charles was in the service, Flora moved with the family to Biglerville, PA and other places in Adams County, PA.

You might be wondering how the arrangement was? Did the mother-in-law get along with the daughter-in-law? By my mother's reports, yes, there was tranquility in the arrangement.

Flora’s final days with the Tiltons were sunny and bright, despite the financial and social upheavals of the mid-20th century with the Depression of the 1930s, and World War II.

My grandmother, the daughter-in-law has nothing but positive memories of her. Flora was absorbed into Elizabeth Tyson's extended family.  

Flora died in Gettysburg,  Adams County, PA in 1949 in her 82nd year. 

Billy Tilton, Chas Tilton, Mardy Tilton, Flora

Ann (with cat) & Mardy and Flora, 1940s, Adams Co, PA

#4- Recent Immigrant Catherine Higgins (Kate) What’s the Truth?

Kate Higgins of Ireland, My Brick wall. 

Research does not always yield what you think you might find--and that is one of its pleasures. Family lore: love it, hate it, or somewhere in the middle? I usually like it, it helps me to connect the “whys” and find a trail gone cold. However, when it comes to my father’s grandmother, I lean towards hating it. I’m not saying she lied—but you know what the Irish say about a good story…
She was from County Sligo, Ireland, her name was Catherine Higgins AKA “Kate” (her daughter-in-law was also Catherine).

The doctor who delivered my grandfather put down her name as “Bridget” (as Irish women were often called this generic name). Family lore told me her husband was killed in an accident when my grandfather was very young. Documentation contradicts this (see her naturalization petition).
She was born in County Sligo, it was rural. She spoke Gaelic. When she had a chance to return to the family farm when it was willed to her, she did not. 
She was dark-haired and had brown hair. In March 1934 when she was a middle-aged widow, she was 5’6” and 200 pounds. According to my father who ate at her house after school now and then, not a particularly good cook (but which never deterred his brother Joe).

She was born on December 28, 1882- or 1881. She immigrated around 1900-01 (abt 18 years old) to NYC. She worked as a cleaner and as a house servant way downtown in NYC.
 

I was skeptical of her marriage to the father of my grandfather. I had my father take a DNA test as my grandfather’s birth certificate shows no father, and he carries her maiden name Higgins. 

At the time, as now, ethnic groups mingled with each other mostly. Kate was dark-haired, while her son Jack (Victor) was red-haired and freckled all over. 

Kate had my grandfather in the Maternity Hospital of New York Mothers' Home of the Sisters of Misericorde which was at 531 East 86th Street, New York, NY—a charitable hospital for unwed mothers. On his birth certificate where the father’s name would be, it says “Unknown”.  

Here is Victor (Jack)'s birth certificate:

1905 Birth Certificate of Victor Higgins to Bridget Higgins

Why she named him Victor is no matter for he called himself Jack and so did everyone else. So, he was born in 1905. 

 

Now back to Kate:
The census of 1910 puts her in Ward 9, Manhattan, NY at 28 years old, with a child not quite 5 years old and no husband. She had to work and to care for her son, she had no close relatives.
 

I will supplement here information from Jack’s life: the 1915 census puts age 9 ½  year old Jack living as a boarder quite possibly because Kate worked and she could bunk where she worked—but couldn’t keep him with her. Being a boarder doesn’t mean he had his own room, possibly a bed (or shared bed). It may sound irresponsible, but she likely had an arrangement with friends she could trust—and the arrangement worked out for both parties.
 

How long he was boarding I do not know. I understand that he was independent from a young age. The nuns at his Catholic school ("grammar" school) who would administer any chastising he needed. 

Less than 3 years later, when she was 35 ½, Kate married Patrick Devaney in Feb 1918 and all three of them had a proper place to live.
Two years later the 1920 census has them living at 305 West 147 St, NY, NY. In the home is Patrick (& Catherine, now 38 years old), Devaney’s stepson (my grandfather) Jack is listed as living there with them, as well as sons Joseph and Tom Devaney. (Jack also has a parallel life at 84 West 147th St, NY —but that’s the census!). 

 

My father told me Jack did not like Patrick Devaney and never lived with the family for that reason. 

A 13-year-old who has been independent most of his life would probably bristle at another man giving him orders. .

Devaneys as adults-my father John Higgins-between them. Taken in Sullivan County many years later.

Her husband Patrick was naturalized two years after this in 1922 (he was Irish). Four years later in 1926, Patrick died at 42. 

Catherine was married for 8 years, now she's back to being alone with (now 2) children to care for (Joe and Tom Devaney). The year is 1926. (Strange to think that Jack married my grandmother the following year, 1927!)
 

Kate had worked but she was diabetic and was finding it more difficult to do jobs she was qualified to do.  As a widow, she needed money but as an immigrant she was not entitled to state support. What means she lived on, I’m not sure. She was determined to remain in America and made an Application for Naturalization in 1927, the year after Patrick's death (she was 44).

However, she did not follow up. It was 1933 (6 years later) when her petition is finally submitted in full. Her petition to naturalize does identify her son Victor (Jack, my grandfather) as illegitimate.

Kate's Petition for Naturalization in 1933, granted in 1934.

In 1933 she lived at 1887 Amsterdam Ave, New York, NY when she applied. Her son, my grandfather, married his 16-year-old bride (my grandmother). Their first child Alice is born in 1928, but dies before she is a week old. In the 1930s Victor and family live on Amsterdam Avenue in Harlem, as well. But in 1930 they lived on 499 West 158th Street.
 

The final time Kate appears in a census in New York City is 1930 when she was 48. 

By the April 1940 census (at 57), she is now a US citizen living in Neversink, Sullivan County, New York. She is living with the two sons she had with Pat Devaney and in the same small village as her Victor, his wife and their seven children.

 

How did this come to pass? About 1933 my grandfather began to work for the NYS Dept. of Corrections as a guard. First in Dannemora (now "Clinton") then in Woodbourne, in Sullivan County. His transfer to Woodbourne precipitated a migration from NYC of his wife and children and his mother and half-brothers to Sullivan County.  Dannemora also called "New York's Little Siberia" had not appealed to my grandmother. But Woodbourne is about 100 miles by car from her native New York City, so it was satisfactory.

For a short time they all—the Higgins family and Devaneys lived in one house till the Devaneys found a place to live. Kate eventually was able to draw a small sum of state support.

She attended St Peters Roman Catholic Church 1950-1960 in Liberty, NY. She died in December 10, 1960 in Liberty, NY at 77 years old. Kate was buried in Hillside Cemetery in Liberty, NY. 

 

My memories of her are few—I was young, we had to go see her. When I did see her it was in Woodbourne, NY  (though I may have a vague recollection of a stop-in in Liberty on the hill). I can recall her Irish brogue—and that she seemed to be a big woman.
 

In pursuit of the father of my father, I asked Kate's grandson to get his DNA tested. I posted it and connected it to what I knew to be true about Victor's mother. 

We were both happy and surprised to be contacted by a first cousin! The cousin was the son of an uncle of our "mystery” father. 

We now knew my grandfather's father’s last name was Cassidy and he was from County Cavan, also an Irish immigrant in NYC.

** I have a follow up post on the Cassidy's" 
Lesson: If you did DNA but didn't post a tree, do it! If you haven't done a DNA test, do it! You'll be glad.    

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SOURCES:

1 Petition to naturalize, her photo, etc from Ancestry.com
2 DNA test -  Ancestry DNA
3 Data - Ancestry 
4 Verbal history: John Higgins Sr