Chris Kelly called me about this a few years ago. She was researching Veterans in the Madigan family. I remember mailing her some information. (I hope they were copies.)
There are a few mistakes or conflicts in the writing, at least according to my knowledge and memory, which are always subject to inaccuracy.
The 1900 Pittstown Census lists the family, including parents Patrick and Mary Ann, Katherine, (Kate Barrett) and Lizzie (Fitzpatrick), and the 5 boys. I remember both Kate and Lizzie, but was never sure whether Lizzie was the daughter of Patrick's first wife, Ellen, or his second wife, Mary Ann. However, as per the 1900 Census, Kate would have been born in 1882, and Lizzie* in 1887. So if first wife Ellen died in 1884, Lizzie was the daughter of second wife Mary Ann, and the older sister to the 5 Madigan brothers, the youngest of whom was Frank (Francis Peter.) I have no knowledge who Jennie was, but at 9, the same age as brother Edmond, a twin? Maybe she died young, but there were so many Jenny's in our ancestry, her name may have blended in.
In 1915, Main Street, Pittstown would have been the Madigan family farm. Incidentally, at this years's Schaghticoke Strawberry Festival, we spoke to a man who bought that farm, which,previous to his purchase, was made up of hundreds more acres.
Charles was stationed in France. He'd been deployed there because he had studied French in high school. At one time in our house, there was a leatherette case with letters from a French woman. We kids called them his love letters. I don't know what happened to them.
In 1935, he married Mary Donovan, the daughter of ELLEN O'Brien Donovan Hogan. Second husband John Hogan was the father of Agnes Hogan Murray.
It is true that Charles and Mary lived in a house opposite the one-time Valley Inn, and Joseph may have been born while they lived there, but not me or Dorothy. I was a baby when we lived in the Bates tenant house. I think Daddy MAY have initially worked on that farm, but then got a job at Behr Manning, as a machine operator and later in maintenance, where he worked until he retired at age 65. After retirement, he worked part time as a night watchman at the Valley Falls Mill. (If he was employed there before that, The record fails to show, and I can't recall.)
He died January 20, 1966 (Not Jan.29)
* When we moved into our House on River Road, ***there was a large tall pine tree in the front yard, the side toward the bridge. I remember my father saying that one Christmas, when the tree was smaller, his father had cut a branch off that tree to make a Christmas Tree for Lizzie. The family must had lived in that house after leaving the farm, before Kate and family took over the house. I also seem to recall my father recounting how his father had died in that house. He rolled off a bed in the Middle Room, and died.
**I can't understand how "sister Mary Sweeney" who is listed as having survived him, figures int the mix either. (Could she have been born after the 1900 census?
***We moved in about 1944. My parents bought the house from Kate, who had married Pete Barrett. They raised their 3 daughters in that house, which had the addition housing a barroom, and above it a 3-room "suite" for the girls. There were 2 bedrooms. Dorothy claimed the one overlooking the river, and I the one with the view of the backyard. The rooms were used by our family for storage only, but Dorothy and I had aspirations of an eventual room of our own.
That never happened as Helen moved in with us after her mother died in 1950. When my father was working on preparing the rooms for her, he peeled off the old wallpaper. On the plaster walls were messages and drawings from the Barrett twins, before their wallpaper was applied. Rumor had it that Pete Barrett was a hard man, and that the marriage was not a comfortable one. I know that in later years, Kate lived with one or the other of the twins. Each had made a successful marriage, each had one son: one by birth and one adopted. My mother was impressed with how close her daughters were to their mother. At least one of the sons-in-law evidently traveled frequently on business and/or maybe for vacationing. Kate would accompany them and would send postcards. One of the first I remember was a card from St. Louis. I had thought that the most exotic and desirable location ever.
By all accounts, and from memory, the Barrett twins were exceptional girls, very pretty and attractive in every way. They had many friends, and they would frequently travel to the city of Troy, for jobs and entertainment. I recall one of them telling me a story of how a friend was staying with them overnight, and awoke in a state of panic to the sound and reflection on the bedroom wall of a passing train. Too close for comfort. My eighth grade English teacher, Mr. Doug MacCartee, had also taught the twins some years before. He knew our relationship, probably better than I did, and would comment on the twins, saying they were identical, that the teachers couldn't tell them apart, but that they were way too nice to have ever taken advantage of that. He greatly admired them, as apparently did all who knew them.
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