Saturday, January 5, 2019

Sepia Saturday: The Boy


Sepia Saturday challenges bloggers to share family history through old photographs.


This week’s Sepia Saturday prompt featuring a model and two little boys made me recall a little boy whose story has been left unfinished too long. In 2012 and again in 2015, I posted pictures of this “mystery child” and put forth theories about who he might have been.

William A. Glynn 1919 https://jollettetc.blogspot.com




At first I thought maybe he was my great-grandmother Mary Theresa Sheehan Killeen Walsh’s child who might have died young. But I abandoned that thought since he was not in any census with our family.
William A. Glynn 1919 https://jollettetc.blogspot.com

Then I thought maybe he was a little boy named John Walsh who died in 1919, the same year these photos were taken. But when I saw the photo dated 1932, I had to reject this theory as well.

Lillie Killeen, William Glynn, Margaret Glynn 1932 https://jollettetc.blogspot.com
Dated 1932
Lillie Killeen, and very likely
William Glynn and Margaret Glynn
My third theory that he was one of the New York cousins was almost right. It seems he was indeed a cousin but not from New York. He lived just streets away from the Killeen-Walsh household in Portsmouth, Virginia.

In 2016 an email alerting me to a child I had missed in the Killeen family tree made me take another look at our Glynn “cousins.” Actually, the Glynns are not really my cousins; they are cousins of my great-grandmother’s children by her first marriage to John Joseph Killeen. His sister Bridget was married to John Joseph Glynn. (Those Irish Catholics did not exhibit much creativity in naming children.)

William A. Glynn's draft card WWII https://jollettetc.blogspot.com
Courtesy Fold3
A close inspection of census records soon offered a likely candidate for the mystery child. John and Bridget’s youngest son William at age 10 had not attended school and he could neither read nor write. At age 20, he still could not read or write. In the 1940 census, the column for highest grade completed contained only a dash. If it was not already obvious, his World War II draft card made it clear: “Blind in both eyes. Mentally deficient.”


William lived with his sister Margaret Glynn the rest of his life. He died at the age of 52 from cerebral thrombosis. Margaret never married but devoted herself to caring for her brother. 

Most likely the woman pictured with William and my grandaunt Lillie Killeen in 1932 was Margaret Glynn. I must say, Margaret and Lillie look every bit as stylish as the woman in the prompt! William was rather dapper too in those argyle socks.

Don’t stand there gawking, please visit Sepia Saturday for more stories.

Wendy
© 2019, Wendy Mathias. All rights reserved.

23 comments:

  1. So glad you were able to connect the dots on this. I get really obsessed with orphan mystery photos from my mother's stash. This gives me hope.

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    1. I have quite a few mystery photos that drive me crazy.

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  2. This is wonderful sleuthing on your part...so glad it's almost certain (if anything can be) that you found who the young man was, as well as was able to tell his life story. Yes, families used to do this for each other.

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  3. Some people don't have much creativity when name there childern.
    Coffee is on

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  4. That was so sweet that the sister devoted herself to caring for him. Glad you solved that mystery.

    betty

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    1. Wasn't it? It could not have been easy for her.

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  5. Family trees have many, many branches and yet even little twigs have names worth remembering. It must have been very challenging for Margaret to care for a Down’s Syndrome child like William. For many families in that era it was expected that handicapped children would be institutionalized.

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  6. It's nice now that he is remembered through text and a photo. Most of us will drift off into nothingness as years pass. Even a glimmer of a memory reminds us he lived. How different his life would have been had he been born later. How different both of their lives.

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    1. It is a sad thing that people without children are often totally forgotten unless they were lucky enough to have a devoted genealogist in the family.

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  7. What a lucky young fellow and later, grown man, to have such a caring and devoted sister - not an easy thing back then. Today there is much more in the way of help for caregiver families in such cases.

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    1. Yes, so much more support and education today. I wonder how he spent his days.

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  8. I remember seeing this photo of the boy in your earlier research. Excellent sleuthing to be able to connect the dots to his identity. Your patience paid off in finding out why he didn't attend school and why. Amazing that that information did not appear until he was draft age. Not only was a special boy, he had a very special and loving sister. Well done. I really enjoyed participating in SS and appreciated the comments and visits from the others. Thanks again for your inspiration to get back to my Family Tree stories.

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    1. Oh know - what did you say that for? Now I'm on the hot seat to stick with it. Maybe we can inspire each other.

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  9. Interesting quest for a "mystery child." An enjoyable read. Thanks!

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    1. Thanks and thanks for the visit and comment.

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  10. In the last photo on the left, above, I think Margaret looks positively devoted to her brother. It would have been hard to grow up blind in that time period. Good research to figure out who the boy in the photo was.

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    1. Yes, I noticed how she was looking at him rather than at the camera. Sweet.

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  11. Oh, I love Margaret. What a beautiful soul to be so devoted to her brother.

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    1. Me too! I hope she was glad to be the one to take care of him, and that he wasn't a burden although the reality is he was a burden of sorts.

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  12. Ditto to Virginia's comment, your success gives me hope as well. Margaret's devotion to her brother is wonderful.

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