October Reflections: Honoring the Women Who Shaped Me
There are many reasons why October is so special to me. The crisp air, the golden light, the colorful foliage is the season that feels alive with change.
But more than that, October holds deep personal meaning. It’s the birth month of two remarkable women who shaped who I am: my maternal grandmother and my mother.
Today, my mother would have been 106 years old. I often say that it’s their Irish working women lineage that most defined me. I carry many of their better habits with me every day, grateful for the foundation they built and the values they passed down.
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Birth Order
One of the major factors of my childhood was my birth order. I was the middle child, the second daughter in a family of five. With a brother a year older and another a year younger, I found my place squarely in the middle of a busy household. There was an advantage to being the […]
Boot & Show Workers Union Dues Book
When I first picked up this small dues book, I thought of it as simply another family keepsake. The more I learned about it, however, the more I realized it represented one of the first chapters of my grandfather’s life in America. This was the 1915 membership book of the Boot and Shoe Workers’ Union, […]
A Two-Dollar Tax Bill
At first glance, this is hardly the kind of family keepsake anyone would expect to survive for more than a century. It is simply a tax bill from the City of Malden, dated 1916, notifying my grandfather, James Hannigan, that he owed two dollars in state and county taxes. Yet this small piece of paper […]
