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Everett Ward Gardiner's life began in scandal, wandered through shame and reinvention, and ended in dignity. http://oconnor.home.blog

A finish to the story of my great‑grandfather, Thomas O’Connor — a man whose life began hopefully in Ireland, endured immigration, hard work, three marriages, and ended during the Great Depression in a place few families ever talk about openly: Stockton State Hospital, one of California’s largest mental institutions. His story is not an easy one. But it is deeply human. And like so many family stories, it sits at the intersection of love, hardship, silence, and survival. http://oconnor.home.blog

This episode centers on the baseball life of my grandfather Gerald Desmond and the baseball scrapbook he kept as a child from 1906 to about 1914. http://oconnor.home.blog

A statue and windows in our parish church in Sacramento make a connection to ancestors on both sides of my family. Episode link

My great-grandfather migrates from Nebraska to Colorado and on to California during the 1920s, leaving a great deal behind in his wake. Episode Link

I thought it would be worth remembering my great-grandfather on this 100th anniversary of his passing. Episode Link

In 1898, my 2X great-grandfather Baldwin Gardiner was shot and killed after a botched robbery and a daring chase over San Francisco rooftops. Episode Link

In this episode, I take a look at my family’s relationship to one of the major industries that employed several of my ancestors – the railroads. Episode link

With COVID raging and the current occupant of the White House suggesting wild cures, I look back into my family tree where a not-so-reliable treatment scam figured into the life of one of my third great-grandfathers in 1830s Jacksonian America. Episode link

In this episode, as I shelter-in-place under the coronavirus epidemic, I look into how some of my ancestors endured the Influenza Epidemic of 1918. Episode link

In this episode, a great-uncle endures drought and hardship on a Dakota farm once part of the territory of the Lakota Sioux that was broken up and sold under the Dawes Act of 1887. Episode link

In this post, I continue the story of Baldwin Gardiner, who over the course of his life appears to have been a name borrower, a home-wrecker, and a financial absconder in 19th-century San Francisco. Episode link

In this episode, I pick up the saga of the O’Connor family after settling in Nebraska, particularly the story of my great-grandparents Thomas O’Connor and Rose Burry. Episode link

In this episode, I introduce a 2x great-grandfather on my mother’s side who, among other things, was a Confederate POW during the Civil War and an early settler of the town of Fresno. Episode link

In this episode, we continue Michael O'Connor's journey from Ireland in 1884 to a homestead outside of Grand Island, Nebraska. Episode link