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 1911 - 2000 (89 years)
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| Name |
SPANG, Rosemary |
| Born |
26 Jan 1911 |
New Haven, Connecticut, USA  |
| Gender |
Female |
| Died |
08 Feb 2000 |
Shrewsbury, Worcester, Massachusetts, United States of America [1, 2] |
| Buried |
12 Feb 2000 |
St. Lawrence Cemetery, New Haven, Connecticut. |
| Person ID |
I191 |
Connecticut Spangs |
| Last Modified |
23 Jun 2015 |
| Father |
SPANG, Henry Augustine, b. 01 Aug 1868, d. 12 Jun 1943 (Age 74 years) |
| Relationship |
Natural |
| Mother |
MURRAY, Rose Mary, b. 27 Aug 1868, Collinsville, Connecticut , d. 14 Mar 1957, New Haven, Connecticut, USA (Age 88 years) |
| Relationship |
Natural |
| Married |
05 Aug 1895 |
St Mary's Church, New Haven, Connecticut |
| Photos |
 | Murray, Rose Mary
Grandma Spang and her children(Dorothy, Geraldine, Austin, Rosemary and Virginia [missing: Murray]) at Nancy Spang Becque's Wedding in Springfield Mass in 1953. |
 | Murray, Rose Mary
Grandma Spang and her grandchildren - standing L to R: Thomas Spang, Austin Spang, Suzanne Sippel, Nancy Spang Becque, Pat Spang; Kneeling: David Spang, Charles Donahue |
| Family ID |
F64 |
Group Sheet |
| Family |
DONAHUE, Charles, b. 26 Dec 1980, d. Sep 1979, Eastchester, Westchester, New York, USA |
| Children |
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| Last Modified |
23 Jun 2015 |
| Family ID |
F77 |
Group Sheet |
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| Notes |
- Written by Rosemary Donahue about her Grandmother, Teresa Mary McMahon, at the request of her nephew, Thomas Spang (about 1995-1997)
"My Irish grandmother and Tom's father's (our mother's mother) lived with us from my babyhood until I was a sophomore in college, when she dies at ninety. She was perfectly well until a year before she dies. Spent the last year in bed and succumbed to old age. As I remember she never had any of the ailments that trouble us today.
She came to this country in a sailing vessel when she was ten years old with her parents and a brother, Michael, two years younger. They were the only passengers that didn't get seasick. All the adults were laid low. The sailors made pets of them, gave them the run of the ship, and showed them how things worked on a sailing vessel. All her life she loved the ocean, and thought Long Island Sound a sissy place to go swimming. While waiting for the boat to dock in Liverpool, she lost her little brother, but found him again in time to make the ship. Your father, Tom, was as fascinated by her stories as I was. He was crazy about her.
Her parents, Stephen McMahon and Nancy Lyddy McMahon, passed through New York (something my mother could never understand) and settled in Collinsville, Conn. I suspect they did so because they felt safer in a rural environment. The town of Ennis, County Clare, which I have visited several times, is hardly a metropolis, even today. My great grandfather, Stephen McMahon, had a job there with a utilities company (it must have been a gas co.) And Nancy Lyddy, my great grandmother, owner her own little shop on the main street of Ennis. She was accustomed to people dropping into the shop and giving her the news (and gossip no doubt) and Grandma said she was very lonely in Collinsville. I'm sure you know, Tom, your sister was named after Nancy Lyddy, and that the handsome willowware platter your sister has mounted on her living room wall was brought to this country by Nancy Lyddy, the first.
When they arrived, there was no Catholic priest in Collinsville. A priest came out from Hartford once a month to say mass in my great-grandfather's house. I now have the crucifix they used on the altar. The figure is solid brass, and the cross it hands on is solid cherry, a shame to all the cheap plastic junk they manufacture today. I understand that today Collinsville is a posh suburb of Hartford (I haven't been there since World War II). It was anything but posh when my mother was growing up there (the village where she was born). There was a "Yankee St." and a "Paddy St." and never the twain did meet. Living in such a place, my grandmother had her own kind of bigotry from across the street. The amazing thing is that this sort of thing can still flourish in northern Ireland. It's so true that human beings never learn from history.
I think but am not sure that the Collins factory manufactured weapons for the Union army during the Civil War. I know they were still at it in World War II. I hope by then their employees were unionized but I doubt it. My grandfather, Peter Murray, whom grandma married at 19, died young from occupational tuberculosis from working in what, in those days, was probably considered a model factory. I never knew him, nor my two Spang grandparents, they all had died before I was born.
My only grandmother lived a rural village life, the kind you read about in novels of the period, before I knew her. She never went to school. There was no convent school and, because she was a girl her father wouldn't send her to the village school. He had a fairly decent education himself and taught her at home. She had a fairly thorough knowledge of history, American and Irish, and quite a sound theology for the time - much better than those went to parochial school in the 19th century. She was always very well informed on current events as she the newspaper from cover to cover. (Your father used to say, Tom, he only wished she didn't have the sports page in her room when he wanted to read it)."
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| Sources |
- [S228] Social Security Death Index, Ancestry.com, (Name: Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2011;).
Social Security Death Index,
- [S197] Obituary Daily Times, Worcesterr T-G.
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