Brick Wall

Carpenter:  A few of my Great
Grandfather's tools...

You could tell my Grandma was a daughter of an Irish carpenter; she knew how to design, build and repair just about anything.

I still have her father's carpenter saw box, and use it to hold books I'm reading. It's dark with age, but still strong. His old saw is with me now, too,  inherited from my parents after they broke up housekeeping. The wood handle has a soft patina from years of use.

William Fitzgerald married a Prince Edward Island wealthy farmer's daughter, took her half-way across a continent to Minnesota, where they did whatever they had to, to make a living. I know very little about him, but what I do know is not good.  He was known as "...a man of intemperate means", and died that way -  run over by a train, 5 years after his wife died shortly after giving birth to their 14th child.

Mom had told me that one time he came home and Mom was only 7 years old, and was ironing clothes with the old flat irons, and he got abusive with Mom's mother.  Mom took after him with the hot iron, threatening him to leave her mother alone.   He responded, "And who is going to stop me?" And she said, "I am, and I have two brothers out there looking in the window that will help me." After that, she said he was pretty docile when he'd come home drunk.  Mom didn't like her Dad very much.  In all the conversations we had during the time Mom lived with me never once did I ask what his father's and mother's names were...  - From a letter written to me on May 15, 1990 by my Aunt Pat (Alberta Fitzpatrick)

Article describing my Great
Grandfather's horrific demise,
Hallock Weekly News
Saturday, July 26, 1913
[Click to Enlarge & Read...]

No known photographs exist of either Great Grandpa Fitzgerald or his wife, Elizabeth Clow - it was through following her family line that I came to know what little I do.   If it wasn't for his notorious death, a handful of newspaper references of his life, and the tools he left behind, I would have nothing to go on at all.

My great grandfather's end came in a most gruesome, but not entirely surprising, manner.  The article to the right describes in graphic detail what became of him.  The events leading up to the "accident" are speculative but likely, based on his activity just prior to the event.  The Kittson County Enterprise, July 1913, had the following article about the aftermath:

William Fitzgerald, a pioneer citizen of St. Vincent, was run down and killed by a Canadian Northern train near Emerson last Saturday night.  Coroner R.B. Johnson was summoned but upon reaching the scene found that although the victim was a Kittson County man, the accident had happened over in Canada, and therefore could not exercise any authority in the case.  The body had been so ground up by the cars that the remains had to be gathered in a sack.

This item was used to carry
 items from the larger tool
chest to the work-site.
Approximately 140 yrs old.

When I discovered the newspaper articles about his death several years ago in the microfilms of the Kittson County Museum, I tried to obtain a death certificate for William.  According to both North Dakota and Minnesota, as well as Manitoba, none of them had a death record of any sort on file for him.  After reading the above about the confusion at the time of exactly where he died, it appears he fell through the cracks for that particular record!

I have no proof of the following, it's purely conjecture:  William's oldest record is a census record in 1881 PEI where he is listed as a farm hand in the Samuel Clow household, with a place of origin listed as "N.S.", or Nova Scotia.  Down the list of sons and daughters of Samuel is Elizabeth, who he would marry later that year.  I have wondered if he may have been Catholic while the Clow family he married into were most definitely Protestant.

I have attempted on my own to mine the records of PEI and Nova Scotia to no clear end, and I have attempted to hire professional genealogists, who have looked at the case and told me they can't crack him.  He is my 'holy grail', my brick wall...

Box insert to tool chest, with drawing knife, square/mitre/ruler/level,
and hand awl. All items are approximately 140 years old.

UPDATE: At the end of August 2013, I was contacted by someone who thought they may have information to help me break down my brick wall.  The initial news was very exciting, because it sounded like it was 'my' Great Grandparents.  It turned out not to be the case.  But there is a connection.  I have found that one of her relatives married one of my relatives, and there was an uncanny coincidence of the names - a James William Fitzgerald marrying an Elizabeth Jane Clow. However, it was not my great grandfather, William Fitzgerald or my great grandmother Elizabeth Jane Clow.   But Great Grandma was the Aunt to the other Elizabeth Jane Clow. How? The other Elizabeth's father was Marcus Clow...Great Grandma's brother!  So far, I haven't found anything further, but it's worth looking closer at this other family line, just in case.  Fingers are crossed!

Carpenter's Tool Chest.

A Studley Tool Chest* - a work of art!

My great grandfather was a carpenter.  I don't think he ever had a tool chest as grand as this one.  But he did have one.  I saw the remnants of it in my grandparents' main street home's upstairs.  By the time I went exploring up there, it was becoming like an abandoned building, except that the rest of the house was still quite alive.  But upstairs, there were just cast iron head and foot boards, frames, and open springs (as they did such things from the early 1900s or before), the odd small stand, wall pegs that clothes once hung on, and lots and lots of dusty hardwood floors.

In the top, open landing, right at the head of the stairs, there was a small rocking chair, and a closet of sorts - the only one there was in the whole upstairs - and in that closet were boxes of...books.  It was like finding a treasure chest to a little girl like me who had discovered the joy of reading.  I found out later that those books had belonged to my grandfather, who had been an avid reader all his life, although he didn't always have the time to read.  Those books he had bought and especially cherished had been saved in those boxes. He was a man of letters, although in his actual life he led a much more humble existence.

In the middle bedroom, there was an old chest.  There wasn't anything in it when I looked, except that I discovered a tray of sorts that could be removed so that you could access a good portion of the bottom of the chest.  I learned later that that was where my great grandfather's tool boxes, including the one with the carrying handle, were kept.  I'm not sure why there was a chest like this entirely for packing up tools, but now after all of these years, my theory is that this is what William Fitzgerald - father of my grandmother, father-in-law of my intellectual grandfather - had used to ship his livelihood in when he moved from P.E.I., Canada to St. Vincent, Minnesota, ahead of his bride Elizabeth Clow, in 1881.

I have used this little tool all my life, many times. It once was in my Grandma’s care,
then in my Dad’s shed. Now it is with me. Many times it was the only tool for the job.
The handle has a patina from the many hands that have held it down through the decades.

I only have three tools of my great grandfather's that once were in the toolbox and the chest - a drawing knife, a small hand awl, and a combination square/mitre/ruler/level.  All of them show signs of much use over many years, long ago.  The wood handles on each one are polished with the sheen of hand oil, of being gripped and used, over and over.  The drawing knife's blade has been hand-sharpened to a perfect edge many times over, so that it is partially worn down, yet quite usable.  The hand awl's gnarled tip is still sharp, and is the best tool I've ever used to start a hole in wood, drywall, or plaster. I remember seeing an old lovely hand plane amongst my Dad's tools, that was part of my great grandfather's originally, that Dad used when he needed one.  I have an awful feeling it was part of my parents' 1998 auction when they broke up housekeeping.  Oh, how I wish I could go back and buy several things that day! Ah, well, I am thankful for what I do have.
__________

* - O. Studley (1838-1925) was an organ and piano maker, carpenter, and mason who worked for the Smith Organ Co., and later for the Poole Piano Company of Quincy, Massachusetts. Born in 1838 in Lowell, Massachusetts, Studley is best known for creating the so-called Studley Tool Chest, a wall hanging tool chest which cunningly holds some 300 tools in a space that takes up about 40 inches by 20 inches of wall space when closed.