Brick Wall

I have a question.  Why do you put somebody's name on a tombstone, with the date of birth, but leave out the date of death?  Uncle Nick has been the only dependable Riley--he participated in censuses--from 1880-1930.  I found a record of his marriage on familysearch.org.  Ancestry.com is where I found obits for his wife and a date of death for his daughter and son in law.  But I cannot discover when the man died, and it's frustrating.

Reading this, people might wonder why I placed so much emphasis on Mr. Riley's reliability?  Firstly, his brother, Andrew, my great grandfather, went out on an errand one day and never returned, abandoning a wife, and at least three sons.  My grandmother had already been adopted by her uncle, Tom Riley, before her father left home.  I've searched all available records, and cannot find birth certificates for Grandma or her brothers.  The first time they appear in a census is 1900 for Grandma, and 1920 for my great grandmother, and her sons.

Add to this the mysterious Uncle Charlie.  I never knew Grandma had a third brother until I searched ancestry.com and found a Charles Walter Riley, living with my great grandmother, listed as her son.  His WWI draft card named my great grandmother as his mother, and a search of findagrave.com showed he died in 1957.  Grandma never told Mom about him, and when I told her, Mom's reaction was ' he's not my uncle because we were never formally introduced". 

A Learning Curve

I have more fun following irrelevant stories than doing family research.  The style of 19th century journalism is beyond amusing, with the quaint language and old moral attitudes.  It does get a bit offensive at times.  While searching for 'Andrew Riley"  I found a story about a 19th century crap game on the Upper West Side of NYC.  Since all the defendants were Black, the writer treated it as a minstrel show skit, with such phrases as 'roll 'dem bones, brudder". 

Interesting to read what James and John Rileys were up to over 100 years ago.  The saddest story took place in Manhattan, in the middle of July.  James Riley, segar maker, had died, so his brother John came to NYC to attend the funeral.  The weather was hot, and poor John died of heat stroke. 

There was John Riley, who had shot a police officer in 1863--spent 20 years as a fugitive, only to be caught and extradited to NYC.  The surviving witnesses had a hard time identifying him because John had lost all his curly brown hair.  I wonder if the prosecutor got a conviction?

I did find a story in the Brooklyn Eagle about my Grandmother's Uncle Tom Riley, a police officer.  He was sent to arrest a trolley conductor who had left the scene of a fatal accident.  Mom said she recalled that Uncle Tom was a solid, strong looking man, even in his late sixties. 

Dinner is ready: must dine with the Aged Parent.

Who is Charles Walter Riley?

I began searching my Mom's family ( and mine, too) a few years ago, but found it very hard to find my maternal Grandma's family.  She never talked much about the Rileys because her father walked out on the family when she was a little girl, and she was adopted by her Uncle Thomas Riley, a police officer who lived in Sunset Park, Brooklyn.  According to Grandma, the Rileys were not really Irish because they were born in England.  Her Grandfather, James Riley, emigrated to New York when he was a child, and fought in the Civil War.  Grandma was named after her Grandmother. 

Grandma's mother, Mary Elizabeth Riley, was born in England, and came to NY as a little girl.  Besides Grandma, Mary Elizabeth had three sons:  Andrew, Thomas, and Harry.  When I would ask Grandma about her brothers, all she would say was 'they were traveling men".  That was true for Uncle Harry:  he was a conductor on the LI Railroad.  Andrew was a printer for Doubleday publishers, and Thomas was a neer do well.

So, when I joined Ancestry.com in 2005, I was very suprised to find my great grandmother's entry in the 1920 Federal Census.  She was living with her three sons:  Harry, Andrew and Charles Walter.  I never heard a word about Charles Walter Riley.  I then did a search on internment.net, and found he was buried in Long Island National Cemetery--same dob as the Charles Walter Riley in the census.

The next step was to write the National Archives in St. Louis, and get Uncle Charlie's service record for WWI--I had found his WWI draft card on ancestry.com.  Well, the record came in a few weeks, and it painted quite a picture of my great Uncle.  He was court martialed in the Fall of 1918 for overstaying his shore leave by 72 hours.  Being a stoker on a troop carrier in the Atlantic must have been pretty stressful, so when the ship docked at Norfolk, VA, I guess Charlie went on one hell of a spree. 

He was released by the end of 1918, after being hospitalized.  I guess he contracted the flu, and got a pardon. 

I just thought it was odd that he lived until 1957 but Grandma never told my Mom or any of us about him.  It made me wonder what other scandals were hidden in the past. Would they explain my family code of repression?