On Meeting Caroline May

Aug 16 2003 NameScott Connolly May Family
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Have this evening had a call and chat with a Phil Brennan -- who is a cousin via Daniel F. McCormack & Caroline May .. via their son James McCormack > Mary McCormack - his grandmother. He also had heard the story of GGF Daniel`s death by heart attcak - Easter Sunday in 1936 - after Communon from his grandmother -- and had also been told by her - that Daniel F. McCormack used to come into Boston `on business` before he immigrated .. and met his future wife on one of those visits when she helped out at her father Francis May`s bakery.

That was Caroline May ..Brookline born .. raised in Boston`s Dorchester, West Roxbury & Brooklne ..the oldest daughter of Baden Germany born Francis May - a baker who married Ireland born Adeline `Bridget` Fitzmorris in 1848 [West Roxbury public records].
Caroline May was born in Brookline in 1851 .. in 1867 she would have been 16 -- that`s when Daniel F. McCormack entered Boston, to inhabit, via the SS Alhambra - which serviced Nfdland PEI, NS, NB & Boston. Daniel F. McCormack & Caroline May married in 1873 -- at old St. Patrick`s church in Dorchester. He lived then at his blacksmith shop on Columbia Road - Grove Hill/ Upham Corner in Dorchester-Boston.
Francis May who lived on Centre Ave when he died in West Roxbury - had homes and shops on Pleasant Street; Harrison Ave; Centre Ave & Pierpoint St. in Boston & West Roxbury - in 1880 he was renting his Pierpont Street home. Caroline May in 1880 lived with her husband Daniel McCormack on Columbia Road - her mother is described as Ireland born .. her father German born - her husband Canadian born -- and she and her childen are all American born - Massachusetts. One shop at Pleasant Street (1850-53?)- across from Cambridge near Allston (Centre Ave runs into Kenmore Square area) was bulldozed and joined the Back Bay landfill area.. where Storrow Drive, the esplanade & the Hatch Shell now are (in the quadrant near Arlington & Beacon Streets). Caroline May McCormack died fairly young (60`s) after 13 children and is buried in HolyHood after or before the 1920 census. Her husband lived to 1936 and was described as in the real estate business by his daughter on the death attestation. He was 97. Dorothy McCormack Connolly - -my mother (still living) was born in 1924 and knew her grandfather Daniel. He is also described as a `horseshoer` at his shops addresses - especially the Dorchester one - in Boston Directories. Charles McCormack -his son born at the Rill Street house in 1890-91 (just a block off Columbia Road in Dorchseter) used to collect customers horses for shoeing etc for is father`s blacksmith & livery shop. GGF Daniel McCormack owned about 5 blacksmith shops and bought land in the Hyde PArk, Mattapan, Dorchester & Jamaica Plain areas whenever he could. Listing one`s trade like `horseshoer` is a tradition of FreeMasonry -Scottish Rite which Roman Catholics were Papally forbidden to join - but a strong trait of Scottish-Irish mason