West Side Family History Finds (pt 1)

On Chicago's West Side, North Lawndale is a neighborhood between Garfield Park and Little Village. It's a largely Black community today, known for being the spot where Martin Luther King Jr. stayed in the 60s to bring attention to housing inequality. After the riots of the 1960s, the closure of local factories, and years of historic disinvestment, the neighborhood lost a lot of population and is still working to recover. I've known some of this chapter of Chicago history, and I knew my mom’s side of the family had West Side Mexican roots too. But I didn't realize how much of my dad’s family had connections to the area, with generations living in North Lawndale for nearly 50 years. I decided to learn more about their story. Multi-part series, here we go!

1910

Pat & Anna were 26 years old when they moved to 1449 S. 41st Ave (today Karlov) street with 5 year old Mildred (Mim). Pat was born in Illinois from Irish parents, but I don't know a whole lot about his backstory. 

Anna's family moved to Chicago in 1889 when she was just 5, as the second of four kids. She grew up on 18th street in Pilsen in a building shared by six households, and she was already working full time as a "Tailoress" by age 17. Her census records list "Aust Bohemian" because Bohemia, today called the Czech Republic, was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire at the time. 

Left photo shows the rear house where Anna's family lived when she was growing up on 18th, middle shows their census record, right shows the building in front that faced the street.

I don't know how my great-grandparents Pat & Anna met, but they were married at age 20 in 1904. By the time they ended up in North Lawndale, he was working as a "factory buffer" and they'd carved a path for the family to follow west. See a photo of Pat to the right, helping build a Chicago garage. There were a number of factories and other jobs in the area, such as the Western Electric plant on Cermak & Cicero (see image below) to the Sears & Roebuck facility by Homan square. I wonder what "factory" Pat worked at?

It's interesting to see that their street wasn't named Karlov yet when they moved in (Elburn at the time). After streets were renumbered in 1909-1911, there was a big Chicago street name revamp in 1913. Theirs would soon become one of a series of streets named alphabetically on the West Side (K, L, M streets, etc.). This series is the namesake for the K-town historic district just south of them in North Lawndale.

 Metropolitan west side elevated trains, today's CTA Blue, Green, & Pink Lines (map on left). Pat & Anna lived just a mile and a half from the Western Electric plant (photo to right)

This is a time period when the neighborhood was very Czech, so it may have felt like a natural move from Pilsen (also very Czech) to follow their neighbors west and look for more space in their own rented home. Chicago itself was the hub of Czech-American life at the time, and "by 1910 more peoples of Czech extraction from Bohemia and Moravia lived in Chicago than in any city in the world except Prague or Vienna." But Bohemians aren't the only characters in this story, let's check in with the other side of the family.

1912

Tim & Bridie grew up in Kerry, Ireland. The family story is that they met on the ship coming over to the US - perhaps the Caronia (if I'm looking at the right Tim Murphy naturalization record). I've always been thankful that they weren't on the Titanic, given that they traveled that very same year, but I just learned the Caronia is the ship that tried to warn the Titanic about "bergs, growlers and field ice!" Imagine if Titanic's captain taken it more seriously...

(left) The Caronia ship that Bridie & Tim may have taken to the US. (middle) 1920 census record shows Bridie as one of five maids for the Dickenson family of five. (right) The house on 1518 Astor Street where Bridie worked in the Gold Coast.

Going to town to catch the ship was the first time Bridie had ever left her small rural town of Ballinskelligs (see image to right), it had to be such a whirlwind! 

Bridie & Tim may have met on the ship, but they wouldn't have the chance to really be together for some time. Bridie soon found a job working as a maid for a rich family on Chicago's Gold Coast (see census record & photo above). In the meantime, Tim may have lived off Taylor Street and worked as a freight handler (again, assuming I'm looking at the right Tim Murphy).

 1917

The US declared war against Germany in April of 1917, and when Tim stepped up to serve he was sent to Siberia. He continued to send letters to Bridie on Astor street, but avoided mentioning specifics to prevent the troop's location from falling into enemy hands.

Pat listed a new address on his draft card at 1510 S. Komensky (see image to right), a tall brick building with more room for Pat & Anna's growing family. In December of 1917, the US also declared war against the Austro-Hungarian empire. I wonder how Anna and her family felt about that, or if they were treated any differently as former subjects of the empire. Local German culture was severely curtailed in the states during the war, language classes and newspapers shuttered and organizations disbanded. But Bohemia was hardly a major power on for the Axis side, as they were subjects of a bigger empire. Were Chicagoans discerning enough to know the cultural distinctions, or were they lumped in as enemies as well? I read that the first American to lose his life in the war was a Texan-Czech named Dominik Paplava, who wrote about being proud to serve to free the Czech people from the Habsburg Dynasty. Did Anna's family feel similarly about potential freedom for their former homeland?

1920

With the war over, the 20s were an optimistic time for Chicago, prompting a building boom across the city. Pat and Anna had three kids by now: Mim (14), George (7), and my grandfather Edward (1). Pat began working as a bailiff at the municipal court, and Mim worked as a mail opener at a mail order house. They now shared the rented house on Komensky with the Kafka family of three, who also had Czech roots. Anna's birthplace on the census is now listed as Czechoslovakia, reflecting the post-war shift in world politics and national names.

Bridie was still working on Astor Street in 1919, when she was recorded for the 1920 census. But Bridie & Tim's time finally came once he came back from the war. They got married at Holy Family Church (see image to right) in 1921 and were able to start a family together on the West Side. Their oldest, my dad's uncle Daniel, was born in 1922. 

Funny enough, my mom's Mexican family was also connected with Holy Family church, and my mom attended elementary school there after the family's main parish (St. Francis down the block) stopped running its own elementary school. There would be a few points of overlap between my family over the years, Chicago's West Side can be a small world sometimes!