52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks

I would like you to meet my Grandmother Flannery. She was born Ellen “Nellie” Mary Crain in the Town of Lebanon, Waupaca County, Wisconsin, April 13, 1894. She was the oldest of eight children of John Michael Crain and Mary Ann Brahan, also born in the Town of Lebanon. John and Mary’s parents emigrated to the United States from Ireland and settled in the Town of Lebanon, where a small community of Irish was established there in the 1860s to early 1900s.

Nellie grew up on a farm and was a teacher as a young adult. She was 34 when her mother died and 42 when her father died.

Nellie met her future husband Francis Flannery, son of Irish emigrants James Flannery and Catharine Behan in the Town of Lebanon. James was a homesteader in South Dakota where Francis was born in 1888. At some point he moved his wife and young child to Wisconsin. He may have been drawn to Waupaca County because of the Irish farming community that was established there. Another son and daughter were added to the family in Wisconsin.

Nellie and Francis may have met at a dance or church service because that seems to be where people in that area met in those days. Early settlers tended to marry persons of the same ethnic and religious backgrounds. The young couple married on June 29, 1915, in St. Patrick Catholic Church, Town of Lebanon. Francis was an implement dealer, livestock trucker and farmer.

Nellie and Francis bought a farm in rural Bear Creek, Wisconsin, not far from where they lived as children. Francis worked his businesses and farm and he and Nellie, were the parents of six children, two boys and four girls. Their second child, Mary, is my mother.

Nellie experienced several family tragedies from 1950 – 1952. Francis and Nellie’s oldest child, son Edward, died in February 1952 from cancer after being ill for five months. Ed left a widow and two young sons. He was 32 years old.

Seventeen months later, in July 1952, Francis died after an illness of four months. He was 63 years old. Nellie’s family was rocked by another death in less than seven weeks when her daughter Jean, was killed in a car accident just a few miles from the family home. Jean and her sister were coming home from work. She was engaged to be married and was 27 years old.

Nellie remained on the family farm with her son Dan and daughter Rita who had not left home yet. In 1955 both of them married and she moved to a house in New London, Wisconsin. Three of her daughters and her remaining son lived in close proximity.

I was a young child when when the deaths of Nellie’s husband, son and daughter occurred so I do not recall those occasions. However, I have many lasting memories of her even after all these years. She wore a dress every day and held her hose up by putting an elastic band around her thigh and rolling her stockings down over the elastic to keep them up on her thigh. She always had a handkerchief under the strap of her slip and would pull it out if someone had a runny nose. My sister and I would occasionally stay over night at Grandma’s and we would have to sleep together in one bed. The bed was always comfy and warm with lots of blankets in which to curl up. Grandma always had boiled ham lunch meat in the house and many lunches at her home were boiled ham sandwiches. Nothing fancy, just a little butter on white bread and a single slice of ham. For dessert she would have Rippin’ Good Windmill Cookies. I still buy a package once in a while and think of Grandma as I eat them.

Grandma never drove a car. She never asked for rides though, she would take her cart on wheels downtown to get her groceries every week. She walked to church every Sunday. She visited with her neighbors and her youngest daughter and family who lived a block from her for many years.

I always thought Grandma must be a “lace curtain Irishwoman” because she sat in her front window behind her curtains for hours looking out the window. We knew when we turned the corner to go to her house we would find her in that window. I would hear the term “lace curtain Irish” as a child and I made up my own definition to fit what she was doing at that window. She was lace curtain Irish to me even if the curtains weren’t lace. Grandma lived on a major highway and loved to see the traffic go by. She knew everything that went on in the neighborhood. It was after I became an adult I learned that lace curtain Irish and shanty Irish are terms that were commonly used in the 19th and 20th centuries to categorize Irish people, particularly Irish Americans, by social class. Wikipedia The lace curtain Irish were considered upper class.

My mother took my siblings and me to visit Grandma almost every day until we started school, or so it seems. I remember the day my youngest brother Tim was born. Dad had put up a new swing that day and my sister, brother and I were playing on it. Dad came outside and told us that we had to go to Grandma’s. I don’t recall if it was that evening, or the next morning that Grandma told us we had a new brother. We told her his name was Tim because Mom and the three of us talked about having a new brother or sister and choosing a girl and boy’s names. In 1968 our family moved to Sun Prairie, Wisconsin, about a two hour drive from where Nellie lived in New London so we didn’t see her much. I would drive my mother to see her in her later years. It was always said in the family that the Flannerys couldn’t hear. I think we had that wrong. Nellie was a Crain and she was the one who couldn’t hear. As we’d drive up her to house we could hear the TV blaring. When we got in the house the first we did was turn it off so she could hear us. We always laughed when we left her home that we were hoarse from shouting at her so she could her us. I don’t think she ever admitted to having a hearing problem.

Nellie was in a nursing home for the last couple years of her life. She got her hand caught in her wringer washer and was no longer able to care for herself. There was another characteristic of Grandma Flannery that I remember. She would never allow her picture to be taken. If she saw a camera pointed at her, she would put something in front of her face to hide behind. I remember being able to get her picture when she was in the nursing home because she was not longer quick enough to hide her face. I have a picture of her in a wheel chair that I will look for and post here when I find it.

I can still remember her funeral in 1992. She was 88 years old when she passed away. She had fallen in the nursing home and broken her hip. She had surgery to mend the hip but died on the operating table.

I don’t remember many details of her funeral except that we were all very sad. My cousin Patti and I started crying during the service and it felt like we would never stop. I was 33 years old when she died.

Ellen “Nellie” Crain Flannery lies at rest with her husband Francis and daughter Jean in St. Mary’s Catholic Cemetery in Bear Creek, Wisconsin.

Strong Women
May we know them.
May we be them.
May we raise them.