Three Skeletons for the Price of One
By Anna Caulfield
My paternal grandmother had always been vague about her father’s family. I knew
her parents’ names: Hugh Ward and Mary McNulty. I even knew of Mary’s
parents and had two photos of her. But Hugh was a mystery. An aunt had given me his date
of death of November 30, 1920, of pneumonia, but I had little elset o go on, especially since
both my father and grandmother had passed away before I began my
research. I knew the family had lived in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn, and were of Irish
origin. My grandmother was born in 1909, and her only sibling in 1911, so I
estimated her father’s age at that time as 20 to 40, and his birth date between 1869 and
1889.
I started at the Brooklyn GenWeb page. A search of that site turned up several Hugh
Wards who were not in the right age range. Luckily the Italian Genealogy Group
(italiangen.org) has indexed many vital records for Brooklyn. I found Hugh and Mary’s
marriage certificate number from 1908 and ordered it from the Municipal Archives of New
York City. I also found Mary’s death certificate, but none for Hugh. I was not surprised to find
no birth record for either of them, since recordings of births in those days was inconsistent.
When the marriage certificate arrived, it provided some great information: Hugh’s birth year
(1884),address, and the names of his parents: Hugh Ward and Elizabeth Kane, both born in
New York. He was a Junior! The witnesses, Charles Heslin and Alice O’Roarke, gave me
another clue. Heslin was probably Hugh, Jr.’s, best friend.
Armed with this information, I searched the US Censuses for 1900, 1910, and 1920. I
found Hugh in 1900 living with his mother, a brother, a sister, a stepfather, and two halfsisters. I was unable to find him in 1910. In 1920, however, I found Mary and her two
children, Madeline and Charles, living in Brooklyn. Mary gave her marital status as married,
but Hugh was not listed. Where was he?
There were several possibilities:
1. He was off somewhere else working. This was not likely because he worked for the
Brooklyn Daily Times (driving a newspaper wagon) and was a union member.
2. He had deserted the family; not at all unheard of. However, my grandmother had
mentioned a fond memory of her father to me, which I supposed she was unlikely to
do in such a case.
3. The death date I had been given was incorrect. The census page was dated January
7, 1920. Perhaps he had just died and Mary was too emotional to call herself a
widow.
4. Maybe he suffered from a chronic illness such as TB and was in a sanitarium?
I spent hours at the Family History Center searching microfilms of all New York City
death certificates from 1920 to 1921. No Hugh. I decided to try another tactic.
Fultonhistory.com has digitized many old newspapers from New York, including the
Brooklyn Daily Eagle. A search for “Hugh Ward” turned up over five hundred references,
including a priest, a politician, and an actor, none of whom were mine. However, an article
from 1897, mentioning a Hugh Ward, age 13 (born in 1884!) caught my eye. “Stole Eagle
Almanacs” ran the headline, “Three small boys who made a haul.” It went
on to say that Hugh Ward had been caught in the act of stealing almanacs from the bindery
on Nassau Street,and arrested. His two accomplices escaped. Later that same year, Hugh
Ward “having transgressed before” was sent to the Disciplinary Training School. Was this
myHugh?
I noted the addresses of the crimes, then checked the Brooklyn city directories online
for the addresses of Hugh’s stepfather. They were all within a few blocks of each other. I
decided this more than likely was my Hugh. The trouble had apparently started soon after
his widowed mother had remarried. I imagined Hugh rebelling against his stepfather’s
authority and his mother too busy with the new baby to intervene.
Next, I found an arrest in 1900 of Hugh Ward, age 17, for burglary. Again in March
1901 he was arrested for attempted burglary and in October of the same year for
assault and robbery. In October his accomplice had been Charles Heslin. I remembered
where I had seen that name: Charles Heslin was a witness at Hugh and Mary’s wedding.
After looking at other local newspapers, I found a total of eight mentions of Hugh
Ward, right age and neighborhood, being arrested for various crimes including a stabbing.
The most recent was in 1906, only two years before he married my great-grandmother.
Hugh had two brothers, Jack and Charles, so I decided to search the newspapers for
them, as well. I found nothing for Jack, but Charles was a gold mine. The first arrest I found
was in 1900, for theft. Others followed for malicious mischief and robbery. Then in
November of 1906, Charles was accused of pushing another man off a
streetcar, causing serous injury. A few days later, the newspaper reported the man had died
and Charles Ward had been murdered!
It was a sensational story, repeated in several papers. Following an argument over a
game in a pool hall,Charles had been shot and killed by a lifelong friend. He was only
twenty-one years old and left a wife and baby. I sent for the death certificate and confirmed
that thisCharles Ward was indeed the brother of my great-grandfather
(and not quite twenty years old).
One of the arrest stories about Charles Ward mentioned that the magistrate said he
had known Ward’s father and thought it likely he would soon be in the penitentiary. That
reference sent me searching the papers for the senior Hugh Ward, who I had discovered
had been born in 1859. I soon found several arrests of a Hugh Ward of the right age and
neighborhood: in 1880 for illegal voting, 1878 for assault, and 1877 for theft. Not only were
my great-grandfather and great-uncle criminals, but my great-great grandfather as well.
At this point I decided I should look for my missing 1920 Hugh in jail. He was neither
in New York City Prison nor the Kings County Jail. Some databases were difficult to search
for the name “Ward” because of the division of cities into “wards.” I branched out into other
areas of the state and found a Hugh Ward, age 35, in Suffolk County, New York, in the
Kings Park State Hospital, occupation “insane inmate.”
I searched the Internet for the Kings Park State Hospital and found out it had been
closed years ago, but its records were held by a successor institution. I wrote them asking if
they could confirm that this was my Hugh and maybe even give me his diagnosis. A few
weeks later I received a reply: They would provide no information, because “a patient’s right
to privacy doesnot end with his death.”
Meanwhile, I made some discreet inquiries of aunts and uncles, not mentioning the
mental hospital, but they professed to know nothing. One of them then contacted
a relative in her 90s who told him that Hugh had been in a mental hospital. Bingo! Now I
knew why there was no death record in Brooklyn: Hugh had likely died in
Suffolk County.
So I sent for his death certificate, which arrived two weeks later. My greatgrandfather had indeed died November 30, 1920, of pneumonia, in the
King’s Park State Hospital.
The secondary cause of death was “general paresis.” Unfamiliar with this term, I
looked it up. General paresis is “a brain disease occurring as a late consequence of syphilis,
characterized by dementia, progressive muscular weakness, and paralysis.” So that was
why he was in the mental hospital. It was no wonder I had never heard much about my
Ward ancestors.
I did a little research on syphilis and discovered that general paresis takes about
fifteen years to show up. At least I had the consolation of knowing that Hugh had
contracted the disease before he married my great-grandmother.