A few weeks ago, I wrote about my O’Hara ancestors from Salford, Lancashire in England and their careers as shoemakers.

Well, it just so happens that I was inspired to research my ancestors on my mother’s side of the family, the Quirks of Chicago, when I stumbled across an 1850 census record for one Francis Quirk, born Ireland, living in Byron Township in McHenry County, Illinois. (Old Byron seen below)

Francis, it turned out, was my great-great-great-grandfather — and guess what he did for a living? Saints be praised, he was a shoemaker!

The Quirks came to the United States sometime around 1838, according to an old passport application I found filled out by my great-grandmother Helena Jane Quirk Reed in 1917. It is astonishing the types of things one can find on Ancestry.com. Not only did I find salient facts such as birth dates and immigration years, but it includes a photograph of her. This allows me to go back through some of my family photographs and verify which picture I have might be her. Since none of them are marked or identified, it is difficult sometimes to know who is who. I have to admit that it is hard not to notice Helena Reed, however. She was a bit on the zaftig side. A trait I seem, in middle age, to be inheriting.

How am I related to the Quirks and who are they? My mother, nee Muriel Blanche Reno, was the daughter of Muriel Agnes Reed, a devilishly handsome young Irish girl from Chicago — one of a trio of girls known about town as “the beautiful Reed Sisters” — whose father was an executive with a large street paving firm named R. F. Conway & Co. It had always been family lore that my mother’s clan had repaved Chicago after the Great Fire of 1871. I never doubted it, but it seemed pretty far-fetched and hard to prove.

(Chicago post-conflagration above).

But after doing some research, I’ve discovered that R. F. Conway & Co. was in fact instrumental in building and repaving many of Chicago’s streets at that time. One can still find old paving medallions bearing the mark R F CONWAY embedded in the concrete and asphalt blocks of old streets in downtown. (Below: one of Chicago’s streets c. 1909, courtesy of the web. They were in much need of improvement, prone to mud.)

My grandmother’s father, Lawrence Joseph Reed, held a key position there, due in no small part, I am sure, to the fact that his mother Annie Conway Reed, was the sister of Richard Francis Conway, the head and founder of the firm. Lawrence in turn had married a plucky Irish lass named Helena Jane Quirk, the lady of the passport which proved so helpful.

The Quirks, as she noted, had come to the States from Castle Gregory, Ireland, about 1838. They first settled in Albany New York, but must have yearned for the wide open frontier for they show up in the 1850 census in rural Illinois. Old man Francis, born about 1790, had bought a small farm, and was married to Ellen Lynch. They had numerous children, as all good Irish families did back then, but it was their eldest son Bartholomew who made a name for himself in Chicago and who was my direct ancestor. By 1860, the Quirks are living in Chicago. Bartholomew and his siblings attended the old Planter’s House, and later the Old Dearborn School (below).

Young Francis Quirk joined his father in the shoe business. Daniel opened a saloon which was frequented mostly by firemen, and was apparently a popular watering hole during the Great Fire. (The photo below, courtesy of the web, shows an old fireman rescuing a little girl, a scene typical of that found in Chicago at the time.)

Six of the Quirk boys joined the legendary Mulligan’s Irish Brigade in the Civil War, the 23rd Infantry from Chicago and served with distinction. According to the book, The Great Revolution, a history of Chicago’s Irish immigrants, Bartholomew Quirk “accompanied Mulligan, Sheridan and Cook through all of the engagements, mostly in Western Virginia; witnessed ‘Sheridan’s Ride,’ and was within fifty feet of Colonel Mulligan when he was killed.” (artist’s representation of Mulligan’s Brigade in battle, below)

Upon his return, Bartholomew tried his hand at printing, carpentry and finally contracting. He became a successful builder of residences, and later Alderman for the 14th Ward in 1872. He lived until 1908, eulogized affectionately in the local papers as old “Captain Quirk.”

Curious to know more about the Quirks, I dug up a death certificate and found out that Bartholomew’s wife was born Jane McCarthy in New Brunswick. Her parents, Michael and Helena McCarthy, had come over from Ireland in the 1820s and settled in that province (this was before it was part of Canada), later relocating in Illinois. They appear in Chicago in the 1850 census. Old man Michael McCarthy, aged 65, is listed as — you guessed it — “shoemaker.”

Next week: more on the Conways and Reeds of old Chicago.

The other night I experienced a strange confluence of coincidental forces. While in the midst of research into my family’s roots in Salford, Lancashire, England, I just happened to have the TV on. I always check to see what’s playing on TCM when I’m home of an evening. As I was reading about my ancestors, the O’Haras, who were shoemakers in Salford, Robert Osborne introduced a film by David Lean entitled Hobson’s Choice. Well, I like David Lean movies as much as the next guy, but I’d never seen this one. So I peeked at it while scouring Ancestry.com for my genealogical links. Suddenly the TV screen was alive with images of Salford in the late 19th century. Hobson’s Choice, based on a play by Harold Brighouse, takes place in a shoemaker’s shop in Salford and stars one of my all-time favorite actors, Charles Laughton.

It was as if someone had opened a family scrapbook and showed me photographs of my ancestors! For David Lean’s keen eye for detail makes Hobson’s Choice come alive with vivid authenticity. The wet pavements, the dreary gray buildings set against ominously dark skies, the working class pubs and cosy storefronts of Salford. The film opens with a spooky shot of a mysterious leg swinging in the wind. One’s mind wonders if someone has hanged himself. It turns out just to be a boot sign, but it sets the slightly black-humor tone for this brilliant, under-appreciated film.

So what about my ancestors? Most people when I tell them I have been compiling a family genealogy roll their eyes and quickly slip away. I know exactly how they feel. The subject of one’s roots is fascinating to the person doing his family research but of little interest to those outside the immediate family circle. Even my own family rarely discussed its ancestors. I could have asked my grandmother all these things while she was still alive but I waited until both my parents were dead and she was in the grave for over 30 years before I even knew her name! It turns out her name was Florence Brooks. She married my grandfather, Carl Bruno Peters, on September 11, 1909 in Manhattan. She was 22 years old and lived with her parents, Henry and Margaret Brooks.

My fascination with my grandmother’s family (on my father’s side) has to do, unsurprisingly, with the name Brooks. I’ve always loved that name and was curious to know its origins, at least within the family context. Most people think of Brooks as a WASPy British name, but it’s also a popular old Irish name. My Brooks ancestors came from Ireland to New York in the mid-1840s, during the early years of the Potato Famine. My grandmother’s father, Henry worked in retail, supervising a crockery shop that belonged to his wife Margaret. She turns out to have been born Margaret O’Hara. By checking New York City’s archives (which include bride and groom indexes, police census from 1890, and various vital records statistics) I was able to assemble a somewhat hazy picture of her family. Maggie’s mom was also named Margaret O’Hara and had moved to New York from England in the 1860s. Throughout the 1890s, this elder Margaret O’Hara (”widow of Peter”) ran a store at 119 8th Avenue variously described as selling “crockery,” “furnishings,” “hardware,” and “china.”

But genealogy is a very difficult and treacherous pursuit. First of all, a lot of the information recorded is simply inaccurate. Sometimes this is the fault of the person gathering the data. A census taker might write down the name O’Hara as O’Hare, or O’Harrah, or O’Hear. Thus finding the person you are looking for can be time-consuming and sometimes futile. Other times it is the person being asked the questions to fill out who is in error. Very often a person did not know the correct answer and merely fudged a reply. Or they deliberately lied about their age. Or they were protecting themselves against some perceived injustice. (A good case of this happened on the Peters side. When filling out a WWI registration card in 1917, my great uncle Bruno Peters gave “Mabel” as his mother’s name, even though she was called Bertha. But in 1917 the name Bertha was hardly a pro-American type name and rather than risk his mother being investigated as a spy, he called her by an English name. But more on the Peters clan later.)

I was having a great deal of trouble finding dependable information on the O’Haras. Old Margaret’s crockery shop had originally been located at 1959 Third Avenue, and before that at 215 First Avenue, and was run at that latter address as early as the 1870s by Hugh O’Hara. Hugh died in 1879 at the young age of 24 from “a blood clot to the brain” as well as “catarrhal pneumonia.” Hugh, I knew, was the son of this older Margaret O’Hara. I learned all this by studying the archives, and by visiting Calvary Cemetery on Long Island where the family is buried. Graveyards are usually the best place to find accurate genealogical information.

Once I found the elder Margaret O’Hara’s death year, I was able to find a death record. She died at home (119 8th Avenue) in 1897 from “apoplexy” at the age of 78. She was listed as “widowed.” The death record states that her father was Robert Wright and her mother Jane Wright, meaning her maiden name would have also been Wright.

When I looked at the younger Margaret O’Hara’s wedding record, however, I faced a major hurdle. My great-grandmother Maggie married Henry Brooks in 1880 in Manhattan. In the section where she was to name her parents someone had put in that her father was named August O’Hara and her mother was Mary Kelly. Well, this information didn’t match the names on her death certificate (which I also was able to read on microfilm in the Municipal Archives). Margaret, approximately 54 years old, had died in 1903, at 841 8th Avenue, from “acute Bright’s disease,” a kidney disorder. On this document, someone had written that her parents were named “Peatie” and “Margaret Brooks.” First thing wrong there, of course, is that her maiden name was O’Hara, not Brooks. And whoever wrote in this information didn’t know how to spell “Peter”! But that aside, the obvious inference is that her parents were Peter and Margaret O’Hara.

Well, if young Maggie didn’t know who her parents were, who would? I instinctively trusted her earlier marriage license more than her death certificate. But that was a mistake on my part. By continuing my research I have discovered that there has never been a single “August O’Hara” in any census record in the USA. I knew that her father probably didn’t make it over from Ireland, but the fact that there were no other August O’Haras anywhere at all indicated the fact that this was a suspiciously uncommon name. In fact after years of research I have never encountered anyone by this name in any connection to Irish records, or in any documents at all. I began to believe that this information was just plain wrong.

Voila, thanks to Ancestry.com which I was scouring while watching Hobson’s Choice the other night, I have finally come to a satisfactory solution to this bizarre dilemma. And it all came down to a tiny slip of paper. I was able to find a Request for Naturalization record for Hugh O’Hara from 1875 that has put everything into perspective. In it, I learned that Hugh O’Hara had come over from England in 1864. (See actual record below; note the address).

Armed with this vital statistic, I then combed the online Passenger Ship records and found that on January 13, 1864, the O’Hara family traveled from Liverpool to New York on a ship called “The Cultivator”. Margaret O’Harrah was 45, listed as a widow, originally from Down County, Ireland. Her daughter, Mary, 19, was born in Lancashire and was listed as a “boot braider”. Her sister Catherine was 15. Hugh, her brother was 9. Agnes 7 and young Margaret, was 4. I am confident this is the same family because I happen to know that Catherine and Margaret were sisters (through a friend of my uncle’s who has since passed away) and later documents backed it up. (Below is an ad for a packet ship not unlike the one that my ancestors took from Liverpool).

In 1870 the O’Hara househould shows up in the census living in Brooklyn. Mary, Catherine and Hugh are all listed as “shoe fitters”. This was not a surprise to me as my uncle Brooks had once told me that our Irish ancestors had been in the “shoe business.” The important thing here is that young Margaret is listed as “daughter.” If she had been a niece or cousin, they would have most likely described her as “other.” (Below is a photograph of an American shoe shop, similar I would imagine to the type of establishment my forebears would have toiled in during the 1870s and 1880s in New York.)

To put a final nail in the shoe leather, so to speak, I sent for a census record from England, and found that Margaret O’Hara and her children lived in Salford, Lancashire with her husband Peter O’Hara, “boot and shoe maker.” He and his children are enumerated in the 1851 census. In 1861, they reappear, with young Maggie listed as their daughter, 2 years old. Peter must have died sometime between that census and when Margaret, the elder, sailed with her brood to the new world. (Below is another photo I found of an old-fashioned shoe shop in England. I imagine the O’Hara store was similar in spirit.)

I wanted to find out more about Peter O’Hara, the shoemaker, and contacted a researcher in England. She helped find a wedding record of a Peter O’Hara, “cordwainer” (shoemaker) who wed a Jane Wright in Manchester England in 1847. But that would mean their daughter Mary was born before they were married, as certain dates would indicate from census records. So either this is the wrong couple or perhaps Peter had a daughter from a previous marriage, or perhaps most likely, the date was transcribed incorrectly when it was entered later into an index. If it were 1844 or 1841, it would match the rest of the details perfectly. Such questions are legion when conducting research into a family’s background. It’s best sometimes to ignore it until all the facts are straight, if they ever are.

(Below is a photograph I found on the web showing a typical Salford street in the 19th century.)

I can only imagine what life must have been like for them in Salford. Immigrants from Ireland, living in the poorer section of an industrial, heavily polluted town. Although I hardly think they were impoverished. A “cordwainer” (which derives from the French word cordovan) was a step above a “cobbler.” A cordwainer worked with new leather to create new shoes, while a cobbler mostly repaired old shoes, or worked with used leather. The 1861 census indicates that Peter O’Hara hired two assistant shoemakers. This would put him on a par with Charles Laughton’s character Hobson in Hobson’s Choice. The entire premise of the play and film is that Hobson is eventually outsmarted by his allegedly dim-witted boot hand, aided in his quest for partnership in the firm by his clever wife, Hobson’s daughter.

I suspect Margaret O’Hara was as clever as Hobson’s daughter. She managed to pay for her entire family’s trip across the Pond to America. And they traveled in what was described on the Passenger Register as “After Upper Between Decks” which I imagine was a cut above “steerage.” I can just see Margaret O’Hara, my great-great-grandmother bossing her husband Peter O’Hara around, just the way Brenda De Banzie does to John Mills. Seeing Hobson’s Choice brought to life on film has made me feel closer to these erstwhile ethereal relatives. Here is a link to a clip from the film I found on Youtube. Enjoy.

This is the first in a series of postings about my family. Stay tuned for the next installment: The Quirks of Old Chicago.

Today is an important milestone for me. It’s been 25 years since I gave up alcohol and drugs. I have not had a glass of wine, a Wild Turkey on the rocks (my favorite), a hit of a joint, or even a valium in a quarter century. That’s twice as long as I drank. I first started drinking at 15 and by the age of 25 had nearly killed myself because of it. I joined AA and quit cold turkey. I was one of the lucky ones.

Shortly after my third anniversary, around the time of AA’s 50th anniversary, I was invited by the Village Voice to write a personal essay about my experiences in Alcoholics Anonymous. I debated it at the time since I was a firm believer in AA’s principles which includes remaining anonymous at the level of press and film. Of course, times have changed dramatically since 1985 when I wrote the piece that follows. Thanks to celebrities such as Betty Ford and Elizabeth Taylor, AA has been dragged out of the closet. And society no longer shuns recovering alcoholics. In fact, there’s a case to be made that going public with one’s disease can be a tremendous help to others suffering from the same affliction.

When I wrote this article, I decided to use a pseudonym. But today in honor of my 25th anniversary, I am going to republish it under my own name. Keep in mind while reading it that I wrote it many, many years ago and it was one of my first published pieces. Today, I probably would have written it much differently. But I think it stands up over time. And I hope it helps someone else out there who might be wrestling with the same issues I was way back when.

Living Sober

by Brooks Peters

(This article first appeared in The Village Voice, July 23, 1985)

A psychiatrist once asked me if I was gay. I replied jokingly, “No, I’m worse than that.” Making light of my homosexuality was a clever way of rising above it. Today, I don’t condescend to my gayness. I embrace it. Four years ago, my alcoholism had progressed to such a degree that I had no self-esteem left. At 24, I had given up any hope of having a successful and meaningful life. I was willing to die.

Homosexuality played a major role in my drinking story — or perhaps I should say, I used gayness as a reason to drink. For many gay alcoholics our first drink and our first homosexual experience occur about the same time. Liquor gave me the courage to act like a “man” — or at least what I supposed a man was.

When I drank, feelings of isolation and fear disappeared. I became outgoing, outspoken, and outrageous. Since I could drink more than anyone I knew — more even than the largest football player — I not only felt like one of the guys, I was treated like one of them.

Drinking was my entree into the Gay World… a world that seemed to me to be one never-ending, sizzling, cocktail party. I only met gay men in situations where there was booze: bars, discos, parties, etc. By the time I learned about the baths and the parks, I had no interest in them because liquor wasn’t served.

I went to my first gay bar on Independence Day, 1976. It was the Bicentennial in Boston, my freshman year in college. I cruised a man at the Boston Pops concert at the Esplanade and ended up in 1270, a popular gay disco on Boylston Street. Thus began a love affair that lasted six years — a love affair with gay bars. Lots of gay men describe how they needed a drink just to go to a gay bar. I needed a gay bar so I could get drunk.

By sophomore year, it took just one drink to set me off on a steeplechase. Blackouts became a common experience, terrifying but unpreventable. I began to take drugs and to use sex as a form of self-abuse, where quantity was more enticing than quality. After college, I drank my way across the country, using gay bars the way travelers once used inns.

I came back to New York, drank around the clock. Within a few months, I was drinking alone. Not even gay bars would have me. I started stealing money, panhandling, taking speed to stay awake to drink more. I started hallucinating, shaking uncontrollably, and crying involuntarily. I became more erratic and violent. I was slugged a few times and once landed in jail. My liver was so enlarged, I gave it a name, Larry. My kidneys hurt so much sometimes I couldn’t stand up. I started to vomit blood and lose control of my bladder. By the end, I was sleeping with bums on street corners because I wanted to be one of them.

Perhaps few of you can relate to my experiences, but maybe you can identify with the feelings of hope and faith I discovered upon joining the fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous. When that psychiatrist I mentioned earlier suggested I go to AA to stop drinking, I told him that I didn’t think I could make it unless I went to a gay meeting.

The first AA meeting I went to was the gay group, Live and Let Live, on the Upper East Side. The speaker that night was a handsome bartender — the kind I used to kill for. He’d been sober over a year then and as I listened to his story — how as a gay man he knew no other life than that of bars and sex, I identified. He was not only telling his story, he was telling mine. One of my reservations about quitting drinking had always been, what does a gay drunk do other than drink, get down and do drugs?

What I discovered changed my life. I learned that gay men have much more to offer each other and the world than simply living it up, partying, and camping out. I had to get over my own self-hatred before I could possibly contribute anything of value. Once I was satisfied to play the clown, laughing with the crowd, at myself. The gay groups of AA have taught me that I am not a joke. I no longer have to say– I’m worse than that.

The last three years and eight months have been the most exciting times of my life. Anyone who thinks that AA is boring has never been to a gay meeting. The same humor and attitude that often make gay life so enjoyable are in play in the program, only the goal is different. You don’t need to be drunk to have a good time. In AA, we’d laugh and carry on just as much as in a bar, only we do it around a coffee urn or a jug of lemonade.

Here in AA our sole purpose is to stay sober and help other alcoholics achieve sobriety. What they don’t tell you when you first come in is that sobriety means more than just not picking up — it means a complete reevaluation of your life and your self. Sobriety is a positive approach to reality.

Getting better doesn’t happen overnight. It took me almost three years to open up enough to let other members of AA even have my telephone number. I went to New Group, a gay meeting in the Village, regularly every Sunday for three years, refusing to go to other meetings or any group functions, dances or the yearly convention for gay alcoholics called the Big Apple Round-up. I was finally brought out of my shell by a very patient fellow member who became my sponsor.

There’s an expression in AA, “Don’t drink before the miracle.” I never understood that expression, only thinking of miracles in religious terms. But miracles occur daily in minuscule ways, some hardly noticeable. The miracle happened for me when I told this fellow alcoholic that I did not want to have sex with him. His reaction surprised me. He didn’t become defensive or bitchy, or analyze me. He didn’t even judge me. He simply wished me well. What he wanted, even more than me, was my sobriety. As a recovering alcoholic, he needed me to be sober too. It was the first instance in my life when I felt I could really open up to another human being.

Since then I have taken part in the program, working the 12 steps suggested as a means to recovery, and helping to form a new gay group on the Upper West Side called Lambda West. I have also reached out to other alcoholics, attending a weekly schedule of non-specifically gay meetings. To me it is just as important to be accepted and to accept “straight” people as it is to embrace my own sexuality. I don’t think I could have become so tolerant and comfortable if it weren’t for the support and affection demonstrated by all rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous.

Now I see that I was a prisoner of alcohol and that my homosexuality had nothing to do with it. It was my conception of gayness that was negative, not gayness per se. Society at large encourages the gay alcoholic to keep drinking by condemning homosexuality, but it is our choice to drink.

Many gay people come into the fellowship of AA confused by our conflicting needs and our place in society. What we have been lacking has been there all the time, but we’ve been too busy trying to establish an identity that we’ve overlooked it. The answer lies in our inherent humanity.