...that I have absolutely no info on an ancestor--yet this is the case with Mary Reynolds. Family history did pass down her maiden name. The censuses indicate both she and her mother were born in New York. Her father's place of birth [per censuses] is shown as "Ireland" and "Irish Free State". She is also named on her son Edward's marriage certificate: Mary Reynolds. She died the year before her husband at the age of 79 years; he was the informant, and he named her father but not her mother ["unknown"]. From this I would guess - but it's only a guess! - that Mary's father outlived her mother by enough years that Christian Danielsen could not remember her name--if he ever knew it.
Finding the marriage certificate of Christian Danielsen and Mary Reynolds would probably solve the mystery of her mother's name - but of course I have been unable to locate it thus far. Probably married 1897-1899 in either the Bronx, NY or Westchester, NY [probably the same place in those years]. Their first son was born in the Bronx September, 1899.
The only other info I ever heard about this family was from my father before his death. He recalled getting together and playing with some cousins by the name of Sullivan, probably between the ages of 10-15, or during the 1930s. In trying to determine who those cousins might be:
- My father's maternal aunt, Elizabeth Anderson, married Marty Regan; I know these children [all boys] were playmates, but their surname would have been Regan. One of Elizabeth's sons married a Sullivan, somewhere around the mid to late 1940s. Kay Sullivan was born in NY City around 1920 or later; it's possible she had siblings and that they knew the Danielsens. [Will take a quick look at federal censuses for this family.]
- His mother had 2 other sisters: Lillie died unmarried the year my father was born, while the oldest sister, Mary [or "Minnie"] married an Adams.
- His mother had 2 brothers; neither married a Sullivan.
- His father had one brother and one sister; neither married a Sullivan.
- The other possibility was that the Sullivans were related to Mary Reynolds, my father's grandmother. Mary was born 1873; if she had a sister born even about 1880 who later married a Sullivan [say the early 1900s], the resulting progeny would be too old to be playing with my father in the 1930s. So I guess this is the worst possible guess of all. :-))
