THE ROGUES GALLERY

 THE ROGUE'S GALLERY

In the basement of our La Mesa home, we had a wall of family pictures called 

"The Rogue's Gallery" 

On this famous wall...there were framed pictures of all us Murphy kids, Dad & Mom, our Grandparents on both sides of the family,  our Great-grandparents: the Chathams, "Black-Jack Kelly, Grandma Aggie with her brothers and sisters, "The 7 sisters" (The Kelly Girls... aunts to Joan, Melda and Dad) Uncle Dan and his wife, Jewel, Dahl, the framed collection of the Bryants family Christmas cards (which they did even before that was " a thing") and a few caricature pictures drawn by our Great Uncle Walt: his own self portrait and one of Mom and Dad. 

When Dan was in 6th grade (turned in on April 2, 1966.... isn't that weird? To the date... 54 years ago!!),  he made a family tree for a school project. He got as far as he could at the time, using the information he received from Mom and Dad, Joan, Melda and Aunt Teresa and Uncle Dan (Grandpa Jim's brother and sister).

An interest in our genealogy has continued through the years...and the Murphy/Kelly information began to grow, and continues to grow as some of us have been blessed enough to visit Ireland! 

The Bryants went to Bantry Bay in Ireland where Grandpa Jim was born. I was in high school at the time, and I will never forget Dad's tears when he opened up Melda's gift that came in the mail from Iowa: an Irish tea towel with the map of Ireland... and she had circled Bantry Bay. That was the closest Dad ever got to Ireland, and he was so touched and grateful to his sister for her special gift! 

A bit of the old sod! 

In 1975, Nancy and I took Dan's genealogy tree (our "treasure map of info") and visited Vale of Avoca where Christopher Chatham was born. But we were on an extremely tight budget at the time! When we met with the parish priest who showed us the book of records...we saw the entry of Christopher Chatham's birth and baptism, but we did not have any money to offer him to do any further research; we actually tried to sneak a peek when he stepped out of the room, but did not have enough info to know where to go in that old book of records!  And of course, there were no cell phones to take a picture back then.

Mark (Marty's son) really took up the charge when he traveled to Ireland and discovered more about the birthplace of the Murphys, and Dan kept adding to the family tree. Now there were pictures and articles to go with the information. One of the funny things was... there was an old newspaper article in the Irish archives that said that Jim Murphy's son, Jim, had become a priest! Uh no... that was our Dad... a lot of bad information going around back then... but who could verify it?

Sean created an ancestry.com account, and added things along the way on the Murphy and the Rendens. Steve Hauser had a book that belonged to Rene of old photos of relatives and friends... Dan and I have had some fun trying to figure out from names on the backs, and then posting those pictures onto ancestry.com.

Ancestry.com led us to be "discovered" by Joe Murphy. He was doing family research in Montana and contacted Sean on the ancestry.com message board, saying his research matched Sean's and we must be related! Which we are... we never knew of his existence and he never knew he had so many relatives... he only had 2 brothers... so he got to meet the female Murphys!

Dan continues to be the "family historian". In his home, there is a long piece of paper hanging in the hallway, where he continues to add family members to the family tree.

This time of isolation is bringing us together as we are cleaning out closets and come across old photos and share them. 

Dan sent 2 of the pictures above: 

• The first is of Monga (Mary Chatham Kelly). She was Grandma Aggie's and Aunt Rene's Mom 
• The next one Dan entitled: 4 generations: Grandma Aggie, Rene, Mom (holding baby Michelle, Marty's oldest daughter) and Monita. It brought back so many wonderful memories of Sunday family barbeques at Mr. and Mrs. Kerley's home (Monita's parents). 
• The 3rd picture is one that Shawn texted to us on St. Patrick's Day bringing back such a sweet memory of Aunt Melda and Aunt Joan doing an Irish jig at a St. Patrick's Day Party at Nancy's home. 

The Gaelic word for storyteller is seanchai (pronounced shaun-as-say). Joan was our family's seanchai... she always wanted to write a story of the family stories... but she never did. Nancy and I  remember many stories from Joan and Melda...and I am sure that many more of you do too... maybe now is the time for all of us to share some of the family stories.

That will maybe the topic for tomorrow... please email me or add to the comments and we can start sharing these stories through this blog to save and pass down to the next generation! We'll see where this goes!

Stay safe, and if you or anyone needs prayers, don't hesitate to ask! 

LYM,

Reenie

PS: Welcome Melda Joyce! 

Dan has a prayer request for his friend: 

My friend Steve needs prayers for his three children-in-law who got furloughed. Pray that they'll get rehired after this "hurricane" goes away.
Thanks, fam!

Dan  

Thanks Monita for your nice email... I love that you are doing your yoga class through Zoom!

Thanks, too, to Lynn and Shawn for your emails!

Melda was able to put up a comment. YAY!

And Nancy has thrown out the challenge... if she can add a comment.. you can do it!