Fort Greene/Clinton Hill Addresses

The Valentines and McNallys lived in the

Fort Greene/Clinton Hill section of Brooklyn,

to the south and east of Fort Green Park.

The neighborhood seems to have extended from Myrtle Avenue on the North down to Greene Avenue on the South, probably defined by the church (the green star on the map), Queen of All Saints at 300 Vanderbilt, on the corner of Lafayette.

Queen of All Saints in 1928

Adelphi Street

 Bambi's records of who lived where and when include many addresses on Adelphi Street, 2 blocks west of Vanderbilt.

Composite of Adelphi Street near Myrtle

photographed in the 1940s

from the NY Public Library Collection

A few addresses:
93 Adelphi, Patrick McNally and wife here in 1910 census (the numbers start on the north end of the street)
157 Adelphi, William Valentine and Cecelia here in 1910 census

163 Adelphi

163 Adelphi, Wm McNally and family here in 1910 with Anna's parents Elizabeth and John Valentine

206 Adelphi

206 Adelphi, William and CeceliaValentine lived here on 1912 birth certificate. The house, a fixer-upper built in 1899, is now for sale at about $900,000.

Apparently all the odd numbers in the 200 block

 of Adelphi (south of Willoughby Avenue) are gone now, replaced by

the Clinton Hill School (PS #20) at 225 Adelphi

223 Adelphi, Curleys here at Bess's death in 1940 w/ Eliz & John Valentine
225 Adelphi, Curleys here in 1920
227 Adelphi, Wm McNally and family here in 1920

Corner of Adelphi and Willoughby today

Clermont Avenue
Clermont Avenue is one block west of Adelphi

77 Clermont, William and CeceliaValentine here in 1908 on birth certificate

An apartment in 271 Clermont is currently for rent for $4,000 a month

271 Clermont, John Valentine dies living here in 1922

Cumberland Street
Cumberland Street runs right along the park.
39 Cumberland, John Valentine Jr. living here 1917 draft
134 Cumberland, Patrick McNally (Grandpa's brother) living here in 1900

DeKalb Avenue
DeKalb is/was a major business street.
203 DeKalb, Scully Funeral Home – Eliz. Valentine buried from here in 1951

Myrtle Avenue
270 Myrtle, William and Cecelia Valentine living here 1909 birth certificate
370 Myrtle, William and Cecelia Valentine living here 1910 and 1918 draft

Vanderbilt Avenue
300 Vanderbilt, Queen of All Saints Church and Elementary School – at Lafayette

Links to neighborhood pictures:
http://www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com/bigmap/brooklyn/fortgreene/walk/index.htm

A Family Tree

I've been working on my Photoshopping skills. Here's an old family tree lithograph I found at the Library of Congress web site with family portraits dropped in.

That landscape doesn't look much like Brooklyn.

Starting at the bottom and going up chronologically

Buddy, Patty, Tommy

Peggy, Ann, Dorothy, Kay, Jack

Marie, Billie, Cele, Vera, Lora

Grandpa and Grandma

100 Years Ago in Brooklyn

The Brooklyn Bridge. All the photos are from the Library of Congress collection.

Although we have no family photographs from 1910, we can get a snapshot of our Valentine and McNally family in 1910 by looking at the 1910 census and family records.

On New Year's Day 1910 William and Anna McNally had been married for about 5 years and were living at 163 Adelphi Street in Brooklyn. Anna was 25 and her husband was 30.  (Note that the census lists incorrect ages of 24 and 28. Eldest daughter Marie is listed as 8, five years off.)

I found this tiny picture of the house with the address 163 Adelphi Street today.

Their family of young girls was then relatively small and very young. Marie was 3 in January, Elizabeth (Billie) would be two in August and Veronica was 4 days old on New Year's Day. By the end of the year Anna was pregnant again with Cecelia. My sister and I always try to imagine how Anna managed so many children so close together.

She undoubtedly received help from her extended family. Her mother Elizabeth Daly Valentine was living with the McNallys when the census taker arrived on April 18th. Elizabeth, 48 years old, and two of Anna's siblings Bess Valentine (22 years old) and John Valentine, Jr. (17) made a family of eight living at that address. The whereabouts of Anna's father John Valentine Sr. are not apparent in the census, althought the 1920 census found him again counted with his wife.

Will's younger brother Patrick, a house painter, and his wife Mary Elizabeth lived nearby at 93 Adelphi.  Anna's brother William Valentine, a plumber, and his wife Cecelia Donohue Valentine are also listed on the previous page of the census, indicating they lived closeby at 370 Myrtle Avenue.

Knowing the McNallys later we can imagine the young couples enjoyed each other's company and many good times together.

Grandpa, known as Mack at the Fire Department, had been working there for about nine months in Hook and Ladder Co 53. This photo is of an engine wagon about 1910.

Grandma's brother Lew Valentine at 27 years old was a patrolman with the New York Police Department. (The photo shows a NYC traffic policeman in 1911.) Lewis Valentine lived nearby at 211 Clermont avenue with his wife Elizabeth Josephine Donohue Valentine and their 4 young children. Across the street at 210 Clermont lived her mother Mary A. O'Donnell,  a brother Edward, also a policeman, two sisters Theresa and Jennie Donohue and her half-brother Francis O'Donnell. Theresa at 31 and Jennie at 26, single women, were employed in a book bindery, Theresa as a "paster," and Jennie as a "gold layer."

Lew's wife Elizabeth would die in August, 1910 at about 27. Lew would marry his sister-in-law Theresa Donohue about four years later.

I wonder if Cecelia Donohue, who married William Valentine, was related to Elizabeth and Theresa Donohue who married his older brother Lewis Valentine.

Although the working people of Brooklyn lived in a functional neighborhood of extended families, society viewed the multi-family apartments and row houses of Brooklyn as undesirable crowding. Reformers believed that ethnic communities included too many family members per housing unit, an attitude reflected in the photograph of row house yards in Manhattan, taken about 1910. The plumbing and the sanitation undoubtedly left something to be desired but it couldn't have been all bad.

Brooklyn children on a fresh air outing about 1910.

The neighborhood of Adelphi Street included many Irish families---the Kellys, Quinlans and Walshes. Some of the older people had been born in Ireland but most of the young adults were American-born. Irish was the predominant ethnic background in a community of mixed origins. Nearby lived the German-born Willenbocks,  the Feinbergs who were Russian-born Jews, the Norwegian Edlers and the Hungarian Bonyoys. Many of the neighbors took in boarders or lodgers and I only noticed one with a live-in servant, an indication of the economic status on Adelphi Street in 1910.

McNally Mysteries

William H.C.D. McNally (1880-1960).

He is 65 years old in this photo from 1945.

We know a lot about Grandma's ancestors, the Dalys and the Valentines, but much less about Grandpa's, the McNallys.

We've been told that William Henry Conrad DeKalb McNally was born in Brooklyn on June 18, 1880 to John Louis McNally and Mary Ann DeKalb. Georgi's genealogical research finds him in the 1900 census, when he was 20, living with a grandmother Annie Berry, his younger brother Patrick and his step-uncles (or maybe no relation at all) William Berry and James Berry, who Georgi guesses are Annie Berry's stepsons.

Where are his parents? Aunt Ann recalls that her grandfather was named John McAnally, a railroad worker born in Ireland. Many of us heard that he worked for the New York Central Railroad, as an engineer or conductor and was killed when he was hit by a train.

Mary Ann DeKalb, our great-grandmother, is a mystery too. She is supposed to be from either New York, Illinois or Ohio, daughter of an engineer named Conrad DeKalb.

My memory is that I was told that Mary Ann DeKalb's father worked for the railroad and helped build the subway system in New York City. The DeKalbs were so well known, I remember hearing, that a city was named after them in Illinois.

There are numerous cities and places named DeKalb in the U.S., all named for the Baron deKalb, Johann von Robaii, (1721-1780),  a German soldier who came over to America to assist the colonists in the revolution. DeKalb Avenue in Brooklyn was named for the Revolutionary War hero.

Georgi cannot find any reference to anybody named Conrad DeKalb in American records.

I was also told that William McNally was one of fourteen children and that a pair of twin brothers were killed in a railroad accident (on their birthday!) Aunt Ann was told there were 18 McAnally or McNally children by two wives. Aunt Patty recalled that John and his second wife Mary Ann had ten children but only three lived to adulthood with four dying the same day from influenza.

The three who survived are Grandpa Will, his younger brother Patrick Edward (1885-1964), and an older brother Frank (whose dates might be late 1870s to 1964).

The Lehigh Valley Railroad

We find no references to John McNally or McAnally. An engineer on the Lehigh Valley Railroad named John McNally was killed in a terrible wreck on November 11, 1898. Stories appeared in newspapers around the country telling about the head-on collision between two trains in the mountains near Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. But that John McNally lived in Pennsylvania and is probably not William's father.

So here are the questions:

Who is Great-Grandma Mary Ann? Was she a DeKalb?

Where did the name DeKalb come from? Who are our DeKalbs?

What happened to Great-Grandpa John McAnally or McNally?

What happened to the rest of those 14 or 18 McNally children?

Polka Dots

Kay in Montauk 1945

Cele & Jane 1949

Kay & Cele 1954

Back: Kathy B.

Front: Mary Ann N., Leanne & Jill McN., Cece G.

About 1962