Condon Christmas 1936

 

In 2005 I took all of the 16MM and 8 MM film reels of my grandparents John & Verna (Modjeski) Condon, and had them cleaned and converted to digital and then I burned them onto a DVD. But who has a DVD player anymore? :-D 

I have begun to export the individual files to a YouTube playlist, and am sharing here the Condon Christmas 1936 video. 

In this video we see my Aunt Terry (Mary Therese), and the baby is my mom, Patsy. We also see my grandparents John (Boppie) Condon playing with them both.

(Note: I still have the white wicker doll clothes organizer they received as a Christmas present in this video, having played with that as child myself.)

John Smith (1800-1869) and Isabella Fenton (1816-1891)

 

I visited the graves of John & Isabella Smith in Ontario a few years back. They are my 4th greatgrandparents.  Their son George Smith (1846-1905) had a daughter Julia Isabelle Smith (1867-1936) who has a son Jay Barker (1894-1958) who had a son James Benjamin Barker (1914-1964) who had my father James Walter Barker (1936-1995.)

They are buried in the Selby Burying Ground in East Gwillimbury, Ontario about an hour north of Toronto. The Selby Burying Ground is on the west side of Leslie Street in East Gwillimbury, and is separate from the adjacent Weddel Family Plot. 

I overlayed the text of the stones onto these images because they are quite hard to read. In addition to being old and weathered, these stones have been moved from their original location and they are now lying down in a circle alongside the other headstones in Selby. This has unfortunately resulted in more erosion on the face of all of the stones, and some are almost unreadable. I wanted to make sure to preserve as much as I could of my gggggrandparents' stones. 

The land this sits on was given to John Weddel in 1809, who had immigrated to Canada via Pennsylvania in the early 1800s. This section of the burying ground is named after Thomas Selby, and Irish settler and veteran of the War of 1812 and both Thomas and his wife Sarah are buried here. 

It was in 1975 that the headstones of the Selby Burying Ground were gathered into this circular configuration in the center of the property, into these earth mound cairns, and a plaque was placed at the front of the property dedicating the cemetery to the pioneers of the area. This is said to be the oldest cemetery in the York Region of Ontario.  

I don't know why this was done, as it was not done in other cemeteries in the area.  The local historian was not certain either. So the remains of none of these people are necessarily under their specific tombstones. But they were all buried in that area, and their remains have likely long since returned to the earth.

James Benjamin Barker (1914-1964)

My father was James W. Barker (1936-1995) and his father was James Benjamin Barker (1914-1964). You can see part of his ancestry chart below.

Here is a photo of James Benjamin Barker in the Army, and a photo of him with my grandmother Olga Kristel (1916-1998) in 1935.

 

James Benjamin Barker was born on June 3, 1914, in Chicago, Illinois. His father, Jay C. Barker (1894-1958) was 19, and his mother, Gertrude Mordecai (1893-1962) was 20 when he was born. He was named James after his father, and his middle name Benjamin came from his grandfather Benjamin H. Mordecai (1865-1938.) (You can read much more about the Mordecai /Whitecloud family in my blog here, as well!)

James Benjamin married Olga Kristel and had one son with her, James W. Barker (1936-1995.) In fact, his son James Walter was also born on June 3rd. Olga was my grandmother, who went by the nickname "Mickey." They divorced when my father was young.

My father said that when his Dad came home from the war, he was heralded as a hero for something he did in the war. I have tried to uncover what this is, but have been unsuccessful. My Dad said it was written in the papers. I do have this photo of James Benjamin in what appears to be a parade.

James Benjamin Barker also married Marian Elizabeth Hubbs (1924-1998) on January 27, 1943 in Clark County, Washington. I stumbled upon this during my research a few years ago.

They had no children and were divorced July 17, 1946. They were living in Oregon at the time. Marian remarries Eldon Morse in 1947.

James Benjamin returns to the Chicago area, perhaps right after his divorce from Marian. I also know that James Benjamin had a son named William around the year 1947. My father told me he had a half-brother named William, but I never found out what his mother's name was, nor what happened to him. My father told me that William's middle name was the name of James Benjamin's best friend in the Army. (For some reason I believe it was Lambert or Campbell, but I may be quite wrong on that. )

My father did not speak much about his father or his Barker family. He did tell me about his grandfather Jay when I started doing genealogy in the 1990s, and he said how much he adored him. And he told me we had Barker relatives living in the area and in nearby Tinley Park, Illinois. But I never met any of them.

My mother told me that when they were dating and first married, my Dad would often go looking for his father, who became an alcoholic, and he might find him drunk on the street or in an alley, and would take him to get him something to eat. My father had his own issues with alcoholism, but finally became sober when I was young.

James Benjamin Barker died on October 24, 1964, at the age of 50. This was right before the birth of my brother, James, who was James Benjamin's grandson and my father's first child. My Dad was informed of his father's death by telegram.

(I do not know if William was informed of his father's death, nor do I know where he went or what happened to him. I would like to find him, if I could.)

My mother told me when my Dad went to the place where his father was living when he died to retrieve his belongings, and the other people living there were with him said they did not know James Benjamin and that there was nothing there of his.  That story has always broken my heart a bit. 

James Benjamin Barker was buried in Beverly Cemetery in Blue Island, Illinois. Shortly after my father died in 1995, I applied for a grave marker from the Army and had it installed in the cemetery so that my grandfather's grave had a stone. Even if I never knew him, and even if he had a sad and tragic end in alcoholism, I think it's worth remembering the people who came before us. 

Jay C. Barker (1894-1958)

Jay C. Barker was born on August 16, 1894, in Chicago, Illinois, the son of Julia Isabell Smith (1867-1936) and James Barker (1857-1918). He married Gertrude N. Mordecai on September 9, 1913, in Lake County, Indiana. They had one child during their marriage - James Benjamin Barker (1914-1964.)

Here is a portion of Jay C. Barker's ancestry tree. His family on the Smith side goes back to the Dunhams, and the early days of our country.  (You can read much more about the Dunhams elsewhere in this blog.)

He died on January 9, 1958, in his hometown at the age of 63, and was buried in Lemont, Illinois. It took me decades to actually find Jay and track down his grave and death certificate.

He is buried in Mount Vernon Cemetery in Lemont, Illinois, next to the first wife of his nephew, William R. Maschner.

The graves belong to his sister Amy Gertrude Barker (1896-1989), who had moved to Arizona by the time he died. Amy married William Maschner, thus the ownership of the grave, as I noted on my post in 2013. There is no headstone on his grave, but I am planning to put one there some day when I can save up the money.

Jay is my greatgrandfather, and my Dad was quite fond of his grandfather. When I began doing genealogy and asked my Dad about his family, he told me that -- had I been born a boy, he wanted to name me Jay, after his grandfather.

Here is Jay & Gertrude's 1913 marriage application:

Jay's father was James Barker (1857-1918) who was born in Manea, Cambridgeshire, England, and emigrated first to Ontario, Canada, and eventually to Chicago, His mother was Julia Isabell Smith (1867-1936) who was from East Gwillimbury, Ontario, Canada. You can reach much more about the Canadian side of the family, and my trip to East Gwillimbury to see their homes elsewhere in this blog.