March 11, 2022
Happy St. Patrick's Day!
|
This Musing from Main draws on our collection of oral history interviews to explore the experiences of two South Windsor residents of Irish descent, Francis Peter “Butch” Carney, and Richard Nicholson.
|
|
|
Want to learn an "Irish ditty" to sing on St. Patrick's Day?
Francis Peter "Butch" Carney's
Oral History Interview is for you!
|
Francis Peter “Butch” Carney was born February 7,1924, the second-oldest in a family of five brothers who grew up at 707 Nevers Road in South Windsor, CT, where they grew tobacco and raised livestock. Before Carney’s family, his step-grandmother’s family, the Mulligans, lived in the same house back to the mid-19th century. Carney served in World War II and moved to Ellington, CT after the war. He was still working as a crane operator in 2013 at 86 years old
In his oral history interview, done January 7, 2012, Carney discusses his family members and the neighbors that lived near the house on Nevers Road. He also shares memories of his childhood in South Windsor, including farming, the way certain parts of South Windsor looked during his childhood, how the house on Nevers was laid out when he lived there, the Hurricane of 1938, and learning of the attack on Pearl Harbor. At the end of the interview he sings old Irish songs he learned during his childhood.
|
|
|
"Three Carney brothers and a woman, apparently their mother, in the winter. The three boys are wearing skis. All are standing in the snow." ca. 1920, image from the Francis Peter "Butch" Carney Collection; Object ID number 2013.01.11 |
| “If you ever go to Ireland I'm sure you will agree; To take the road from Dublin town way down to Doonaree;
Tis there you'll find a wishing well beyond a chestnut tree; In a shady nook, by a winding brook will you make this wish for me;
Oh to be in Doonaree with a sweetheart I once knew; To stroll in the shade of the leafy glade where the rhododendrons grew;
To walk with my love to the bridge above see the rippling waterfall; But to go back home never more to roam is my dearest wish of all.”
- sung by Francis Peter “Butch” Carney during his Oral History interview, January 7, 2012 , page 23
|
|
|
Want to learn about how St. Francis of Assisi Church was built?
Richard Nicholson's
Oral History Interview is for you!
|
Richard Nicholson was born on October 2, 1948, and grew up on King Street (now North King Street) in South Windsor, CT. His parents were both children of Irish immigrants, grew up in farming families, and ran a tobacco farm. He attended Union School in South Windsor and East Catholic High School in Manchester, CT. Nicholson received a bachelor’s degree from the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, MA, and a law degree from the University of Connecticut. He spent his career as a tax lawyer in the private and public sector, becoming Commissioner of Taxes for the State of CT from 2010 to 2011.
In his interview, recorded December 8, 2011, Nicholson discusses his family history, his youth in South Windsor, and the Irish Catholic experience in South Windsor. He talks about his father’s tobacco farm, including hiring migrant workers, using work horses, and processing tobacco. He also discusses his family’s involvement and his own personal involvement in Connecticut state and local Democratic Party politics.
|
|
|
"It was, I think, viewed as a very big monumental achievement for Catholics to build their own church in South Windsor [St. Francis of Assisi, on Ellington Road], and truly they raised the money to build it.
Today, when I think that you get mortgages and grants and whatever, but it was built in 1941, and the interesting thing about that is it was during the war.
They essentially ran out of the original materials that they were going to use, so the church was—up until probably the last 20 years—was never really finished properly inside the way it was designed to be finished.
While it is a sandstone structure from the front, the sides and the back are brick, and brick was, of course, plentiful in South Windsor because we had at least two—in my memory—two brickyards.
Yes, the Irish—and I should add the Lithuanians, they were the other major Catholic ethnic group that settled in South Windsor—they were the founding ethnic groups of St. Francis of Assisi Church on Ellington Road, which is still there." -Richard Nicholson Oral History interview, December 8, 2011, page 2. |
|
"A brick worker at the Kelsey-Ferguson Brick Company, inside a building." ca. 1950, image from the South Windsor Historical Society Photograph Collection;Object ID number SWHSInt_08
|
|
|
Please forward this email to anyone who might be interested. |
|
|
Our Contact Information
*{{Organization Name}}*
*{{Organization Address}}*
*{{Organization Phone}}*
*{{Organization Website}}*
*{{Unsubscribe}}* |
| |
| |
