This photo was given to me by Mary Bahan who was a first cousin to my maternal grandmother, Margaret Mary Coleman O'Donnell. Her father, Patrick, was a brother to Hannah, making Margaret & Mary Bahan first cousins. This photo was taken in approximately 1898 and I can only assume that it was taken in the farmhouse in Friendsville, PA. The house is no longer there but it was on the right side of the dirt road when you take the road in Friendsville that leads to Carmalt Lake where the O'Donnell children and other family members went swimming in the summertime. In 1994 my mother, Rita O'Donnell Fries, used some of the money she inherited from her sister, Anne O'Donnell to reprint the poetry books, "Idyls of Lakeside" (copyright, 1909)by the O'Byrnes (the O'Brynes dropped the "O" and became known as the Byrnes. She also reprinted a small book by the same authors entitled, "Susquehanna and Other Poems" (copyright 1914).
My mother told me that there was a little "ditty" or small poem about her great-grandmother, Mary Ann Welch. It was a play on words that went like this - "She got her M.A. at Oxford", and then the reader would assume that Mary Ann went to Oxford University in England and got her Masters Degree there. But the last part of the ditty told the truth of the matter when the verse read, "when they baptized her there "Mary Ann". You see, the truth of the matter was that she was baptized Mary Ann (M.A.) in a little town in upstate New York known as Oxford.
My mother was very proud of her ancestry and was thrilled by poetry. My sister, Meg, read some of these poems to our dear Mother as she lay on her deathbed and hearing them once again, this familiar poetry brought a smile to my mother's face.
In case you are wondering, I don't have any photos of Christopher and Mary Ann's parents!!
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