As I said, Nana was the sixth child. There were seven children in all, five girls and two boys. The oldest was Isabella. Well, actually her birth certificate gives her name as Lissabel G. Brady, but she was always called Isabella. She was born on April 1, 1888 in Massachusetts – presumably in Fall River. She married Benjamin Barnes, and they had two children, a son on June 13, 1922 and then a daughter born on November 8, 1923. Their son, Benjamin, Jr., died on July 28, 1943 having never married. Isabelle, their daughter, went on to marry and have a daughter of her own, who also married and had children.
Thomas Stewart Brady was the second child, and the first son. He was born on September 6, 1891 in Fall River, Massachusetts. I know he died in Van Nuys, California on June 4, 1976, but know very little else. I know he married at least once, but not what his wife’s name was – it may have been Nellie or Abigail. I know he had a daughter that he named after three of his sisters – Sarah, Ruth, and Ann. Maybe her name was Sarah Ruthann or Ruth Sallyann. I know that on some records, his year of birth is given as 1889 instead of 1891. I know that he lived in Illinois, where he registered for the WWI draft in June 1917, and then lived in Texas, before moving to California where he shows up in the 1930 census. I know his middle name was sometimes spelled Stuart. I know my Nana went to visit him once in California, but I’m sure it was long before I was born. And I know that she missed him.
Next came the twins, Viola and James. They were born on April 30, 1897 in Fall River, Mass. There is no death certificate for James, and he was not present in the 1900 census. Viola died just 3-1/2 weeks after her birth, on May 23rd. I was told she had the most beautiful violet eyes, and that’s why she was named Viola. Her death certificate says she died of inanition. I had to look that one up. We might call it failure to thrive. I was told that she trembled and cried constantly, and would not feed. Her mother carried her delicate little body around on a feather pillow because she was so fragile. In these times, she would have been placed in a neonatal ICU and been given the best possible modern care, but in those days it simply wasn’t available, so mothers did the best they could until the child died. And then they cried.
I just want to take a moment here to talk about James and Viola’s birth and death records. I found the birth records for Viola and her twin James at different times, and years apart. Nowhere on either record does it mention being a twin. So I had no way of knowing until I stumbled over the record for James’ birth while looking up all the Brady births in Fall River. That’s when I realized they were the same parents AND the same day of birth. And James has no death certificate. This is not uncommon for a stillbirth, but usually a stillborn child isn’t given a name, as he/she never drew breath. And James had a name, but not an oral history in the family. No one knew Viola had a twin. And he had no death certificate. Which all leads me to conclude that he died before the birth was registered. That might explain why neither was listed as being a twin on either birth certificate. But I’ll never know for certain. It’s also possible that the father’s name (James) was put in place of the child’s (Viola) and that hers was only a single birth. Viola’s birth was only registered on Feb 7, 1898, where James’ was registered on June 23, 1897, exactly a month after Viola’s death. Viola’s death was registered on May 29, 1897, prior to her birth being registered, where infant James had no death record. I know that Annie was very ill during the pregnancy because she was malnourished, so it’s possible that when the information for the birth record was taken, she wasn’t all that with it. The birth record must have been added when the omission was discovered, without realizing the error of a birth record for a son names James… So, we’ll never know if there really was a son named James who was a twin to Viola. Interesting, yes?
The next of Nana’s siblings was Annie G. Brady, named for her mother. Annie was born on March 1, 1899 in Fall River, Massachusetts and was given the name Elsie M. Brady on her birth certificate. Like Isabella, however, she was known by a different name than the one given on the record. Their father James had the reputation of a prankster, and messing up their legal names was his way of making a joke, or so I’ve been told. Although I did wonder if perhaps Annie was another twin and Elsie died at birth. Annie married Sydney Hall in the late summer of 1921 in Fall River, and she died in August 1994 in Syracuse, New York. She and Sydney had a daughter Ruth who married and had two children of her own. I remember visiting Aunt Anne’s daughter Ruth as a child in Utica – or thereabouts. She had a small garden in the corner off the back door to her kitchen, and it was a real treat to dig up small baby potatoes for her to fix for dinner. I’ve never been close to her son or daughter, but know of them and wonder at times how they are.
The youngest child was Ruthie – my great aunt Ruth Agnes Brady. She was born on September 17, 1905 and died on September 26, 1991, both in Fall River, Mass. She married late in life to Lawrence Austin Wright in 1949, and they had no children. Austin was originally from Canada, and they moved to Nova Scotia after they were married. Ruthie was an artist in the artist’s colony of Mahone Bay, where they lived. I have two of her oil paintings, a card she painted in oil on canvas, and somewhere a very large clamshell that she painted in oils. I remember visiting her the one time in Canada when I was a young girl. When she was older and returned to Fall River I saw her again – I think it must have been at my grandfather’s funeral in 1988. She was very short and petite, and looked eerily similar to the picture I have of her mother. When I introduced her to my then-husband, she reached up and patted his cheek and told him he was ‘cute’. I loved it! Here she was, this tiny woman more than 80 years old, telling this tall, towering man 50 years her junior that he was cute!
So, this was my Nana’s immediate family. An adventurous brother and four dutiful girls who worked and lived at home until one by one, they married. Nana’s father died in 1932, and after Ruthie married, her mother Annie went to live with them in Canada. She died around the same year I was born – 1954 – and is said to be buried in Charlottetown, PEI, in a shared grave with her son-in-law Austin.
© Deborah Ray and archivecookie.com, 2010.
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