One Chicago Family

Beth Johnson

  • Josephine’s story

    My grandmother Josephine Molin left Sweden at age 17, traveling alone to a new world. Later, two siblings followed in her footsteps. But bold Josephine was the first to make the trip from the slow pace of rural Sweden to the… Continue reading

  • Lifting up through education: My Sinsinawa Dominican ancestors

    The 20th century did not have a lock on independent women in my family. In the 19th century, teaching was a path to independence, a path taken by five of my female ancestors, three of them as Dominican Sisters of… Continue reading

  • From the ashes, a family rises

    INTRODUCTION During the 1860s, my young grandfather, James Renn, along with his parents and siblings, fled the Agricultural Depression in western Ireland for booming Chicago. They survived the Great Fire of 1871 and, as Chicago forged ahead, so did they.… Continue reading

  • Growing up with a teacher mother

    Teachers abounded in my mother’s family. My mom taught, as did two of her older sisters, three of her aunts, and my mom’s mother (my Grandma Bezzie). For my mother, teaching was a calling. She expressed her deep Roman Catholic… Continue reading

  • Charles Johnson: Working his way into the 20th century

    My grandfather, Charles Johnson, was born into a 19th century old-world rural life and died in the midst of a 20th century urban and industrialized one. He was born in 1862 in Nora, a mining center in the Swedish county… Continue reading

  • Caught in a web of fear

    Ten year old Sigurd Roland Johnson stepped off the ship Gripsholm at Ellis Island on December 3, 1926, with his mother, father, and older sister. Their ship had pushed through a northwest gale to reach the end of a ten-day… Continue reading

  • The Spanish Flu: Counting the bodies in 1919

    Today, as I start my writing, it is the 100th anniversary of Armistice Day, November 11, 1918, that ended World War I. Until recently, I didn’t know much about the war other than its major hits: the assassination of Archduke… Continue reading

  • Catherine Golden: From child bride to family matriarch

    Catherine Golden, also known as Kate, was my great-grandmother. She came to Chicago from Ireland around 1870 with her husband, John Connelly, and their four children: Mary Ann, Ellen, Sarah Catherine, and Bridget. Soon after their arrival, little Bridget died… Continue reading

  • A priest in the family

    He baptized us, he married us, and he buried us. My first cousin James Lester Mollohan was ordained a priest on May 3, 1951. He was a presence at every significant family event until his death in 2001. I knew… Continue reading

  • A compelled marriage and a shooting

    The life of my grand-uncle took a tragic and near fatal turn as he was starting a promising career as a medical doctor in the 1890s. His estranged wife shot him in the head then emptied her revolver as he… Continue reading

  • Bezzie and James Renn get down to business

    Newly married at Holy Name Cathedral in 1900 and returning from their honeymoon on the east coast, James and Bezzie Renn must have felt like a team that could take on the world. James, with his older brother Patrick as… Continue reading

  • My father: How did he get here?

    Nov. 22nd, 1928, two years after his arrival in Chicago, my dad wrote to his biological sister in Sweden: I am in school  every day and it is going well for me. Every month I have received prize in subjects I am… Continue reading

  • The dance begins: My mother and father meet

    My father and mother had a storybook romance and courtship. Their’s was an unlikely match and the personal attraction between them must have been very strong. Indeed, I know it was from letters they wrote and saved from their courtship… Continue reading

  • Family Tree: My mom’s paternal grandparents, Renn and Reynolds

    My mom’s paternal grandparents, James Renn and Mary Ellen Renn née Reynolds,  and their children.  Continue reading

  • Family tree: My mom’s maternal grandparents, Connelly and Golden

    My mom’s maternal grandparents, John Connelly and Catherine Connelly née Golden, and their children. John ConnellyBorn: about 1826 – Ireland, likely in County MayoDied: Aug 19, 1899, Chicago, Illinois Catherine GoldenBorn: County Mayo, Ireland, date unknownDied: Jun 21, 1926, Chicago,… Continue reading

  • A wedding at the turn of the century: Bezzie Connelly marries James J. Renn.

    In 1900, before my grandmother married on  Oct. 24th, she was living at home with her widowed mother, her older sisters Mary Ann  and Sarah, younger brothers John and Eddie, and her mother’s cousin Edwin Quinn at 62 Whiting Street… Continue reading

  • Great-grandfather James Rinn

    My great-grandfather did not leave much of a trail to help me piece together a picture of the life he lived, but  searches through paper, microfiche, and online records are slowly yielding results. I started with a list of family… Continue reading

  • The early years of Bezzie Connelly, 1872 – 1885

    I’d like to have a clearer picture of my grandmother, Bezzie Renn. My feeling is that there multiple windows through which to view her life, but of those, only one narrow slant filtered down to my generation. That’s a story… Continue reading

  • The Renn family in Chicago, 1872 – 1895

    James Renn, our great-grandfather, immigrated to Chicago from Ireland in the late 1860s or early 1870s. Our Family Record states that his siblings are “none known.”  At the time he left Ireland, he was married to Mary Ellen Reynolds and… Continue reading

  • The Golden siblings of County Mayo: Who were they?

    Our family has a written Family Record dated 1942 written, most likely, by my grandmother Bezzie Renn. It records births, baptisms, deaths and siblings of my great-grandparents and their children.  This document was the starting point for learning about my… Continue reading