Square Penny: Romance and Mystery Afoot by Shelley White

Author:Shelley White [White, Shelley]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: mystery; fifties; Penny; greaser; dance ;basketball; retro ;reluctant;
Publisher: The Wild Rose Press
Published: 2022-02-22T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 13

Won’t You Be My Neighbor

Tuesday, I woke with a new determination to track down Joseph Cleary’s descendants. I hoped it would keep my mind occupied even though I knew I just invited frustration. I decided to pretend I was Bobbie and approached the research with excitement. It worked for about twenty-seven minutes.

The book shop was surprisingly busy for a Tuesday morning. I set up my workspace at the checkout counter and had to frequently stop to ring up sales or answer questions. I didn’t really mind the interruptions. For one, it meant sales, and for two, it helped me avoid my laptop with its fuzzy birth records and faded newspaper articles.

By lunch, I hadn’t gotten much further than uncovering married names for Jacob Cleary’s three daughters, Anne, Joanna, and Mary. When I raced upstairs to grab leftovers from my fridge, I also dragged my own family history research box back down to the shop with me. Too many names and places were sounding familiar. In fact, some of the documents I looked at this morning, I would swear I’d examined before.

Business slowed down in the afternoon, which helped, because I felt like I was on to something. I needed to focus.

Anne Cleary, the oldest daughter, married Sean O’Shea. They had two daughters, but neither survived to adulthood. I could find no other birth records. They may have simply moved to a different town, but I didn’t want to follow that rabbit trail just yet.

Joanna Cleary, daughter number two, married John Grant of Smithton. That name bothered me. I consulted my ancestor folders. Margaret and Edward Franklin also lived in Smithton. A shiver ran up my spine. Margaret was my fourth great-grandmother.

Even though Smithton was a tiny town, they were proud. They had their own little historical society set up in the original town hall. Through the items they posted online, I discovered Joanna and Margaret were part of the same ladies’ auxiliary as well as Jane Franklin, who I determined to be Margaret’s daughter-in-law. Jane was Hazel’s mother. Hazel was my own grandmother’s grandmother. This was too much of a coincidence to not be the right path. I didn’t even need to look at the third Cleary daughter. I was sure this was it and it would lead me right to present day. I silently thanked the gods of the internet for making this so easy for me.

I sent an email to the Smithton Historical Society requesting more information on the Franklin and Grant families. I also requested information on how to make a donation to their organization to sweeten the pot. If they could provide me at least another one or two generations worth of names and dates, I would totally send them a check.

I decided to quit for the day, pumped up on the hope that the historical society would save me a couple days’ worth of work. As I packed up my materials, Gregorio came into the shop, followed by an older woman, who had to be Cora.

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