who was born in new york city, 1852.
Well In 1860, his father took him to cooper
Union to hear the presidential candidate when Abraham Lincoln Yeah
, he talked to lincoln. Yeah. No
, he lived there until 1930 and then came and
lived with us. So during my teens here he
was right handy And so there's plenty of discussion
about what was happening in new york city between the
time when there were no high rises and no electricity
and no telephones until when he left there with the empire
state just opened up,
wow. Yeah. And you know, you think
back, well, why the hell didn't I ask
him this? That and the other while I was
at it, he must have been there when the
Brooklyn bridge was opened. But yeah, come on
. Uh huh, wow. Yeah. Well,
well, let's go back to the question. I
asked you off camera and then told you to wait
. Um, what's your, tell me your connection
to the, to the college? Well, in
, When I was ready to start college in 1938
, of course VPs, I would call it had
an engineering extension in Richmond where I lived. So
I went through my freshman year there and the word
was, well, of course you'd be an engineering
student as such After two years. You come here
the campus. If you were in architecture I after
one year, you better come up to the campus
. Well, my father's situation wasn't, he was
changing jobs after all the great depression you hear about
and so on. So the idea of my coming
up, which is just not in the cards at
that point and they had of the extensions. Well
, yeah, but you can do it. Oh
, I said, well, I still got the
financial problems. Well, oh, we can take
care of that. He got me teaching, saw
the Jamboree, the students that well acted. So
here I was at 18, being a teacher in
uh college already yet. Anyway, so I come
up here 1940 september and of course the first word
was, oh well you can't finish in two more
years because you're behind some of the design courses and
so on and so on. And my father,
of course raise cain, hey, well Professor Kogel
, Clinton Kogel who had brought architecture here in 1929
. Obviously we're still running that show and look at
it. And so a course of study was set
up whereby that if I went through and got my
masters as well, I could do the whole thing
In one extra quarter. I was the most irregular
students who ever saw. You looked at that record
. But anyway, in fact, it was so
irregular when I went to Burrows Hall and came back
with my Bachelor's. What did I do? I
went up to the drawing room and finish the drawing
. I already had a degree for that's how much
they bet the record to allow me to do what
I did. But at any rate, uh obviously
as a student in architecture in those days within the
engineering college, if you look back at the record
, while we had to take all of the math
, physics, chemistry, mechanics, everything the engineers
did in their basic courses. And then there,
even on top of that, when it came to
came time to teach us about electrical and mechanical aspects
of architecture, why we went over to engineering.
And what do they do they take say well,
here's a way you can estimate how many foot candles
occur on a working plane. Well, course,
the problem with that is architecturally, that's not the
first question. How do you want this space revealed
? Now? We can get that foot can also
and you can carry that over into hard verdict,
capable hot or cool. But how about this building
structure that goes along with it? It's just as
important example. I Site on that one is this
idea engineer that built a house over with great big
single plate sheets of glass with a little register under
each one of them. My first question too much
. And you didn't double glazed those windows? Oh
no, the mechanical engineer said, Mhm I wouldn't
save enough on fuel to make it. Mhm.
Yeah. Worthwhile. I said that's not the issue
issues comfort. You know when it goes to zero
and you're trying to maintain 70 inside what the inside
surface temperatures, that glasses, It's 22° and you're
radiating to it. You haven't even got a radio
. Come on. I have not been able to
get into the house to see what it's like now
, but I know done something changed. But this
sites why uh, in developing architecture to the point
it would be a college. We had to bring
courses into the college out of engineering that weren't taught
as it should be two architects. And so,
uh, what happened? Well, I came here
. That's a, uh, that's what you win
second for the clock. Okay. Oh, Every
15 minutes it. Anyway, uh, 1946,
I came in the fall to a reunion and Professor
cole said, well, had I ever thought of
teaching? I said, well, yeah, not
really. But I've done it. And of course
, jesus were coming and he knew he was going
to have to have more faculty. And his comment
was, well, I'll probably call you spring sometime
. So I go back home and hear the architecture
firm I was working for was having it struggles to
get going after the war and by Galileo let go
their highest paid family member, uh huh. Technical
member nations. Anyway, I thought to myself,
gee so what's going to happen here? Well and
about the same time cold call me anyway, you're
way ahead of time when he said he was So
my comment to him as well. Okay, I
think I'm going to make a change. You've got
first crack. Yeah. So um, they made
their offer what was a little below what I was
making and had been making even during the war?
No, you gotta meet that. So and so
when So he went to President Newman said I want
this man. So they agreed. So I wound
up here in March of 1940 seven. And one
of my jobs was to establish these courses relating to
heat, sound and sanitation, all that we've gotten
from. Mhm. Engineering it back in my student
days. Yeah. At the same time when I
went to school here There were two options, a
design option and a construction options. That was because
well if you want to be an architect, you
took the design of what you want to be a
contractor. Building contractor, you took the other.
Okay. Uh not too long after I got here
, they decided that instead of that arrangement we needed
of course or curriculum and a degree that related to
building construction. And so the building instruction option expand
away from being just the department in an engineer.
God, you know. Yeah. And I think
to it was that time of the, you know
post bauhaus, you know, international style. Yeah
. Yeah. Well in fact. Oh, bows
. The fellow responsible about Gropius rather was here I
think. Uh Well sometimes in the 60s anyway.
Yeah, I think there's a connection to him through
burchard. I think it was is or may have
been our effort and there's some good oh yeah,
great world gee. But it sounds like even even
for you, like you said it was sort of
post Bose arts. Uh Yeah, so that was
, it was changing. Yeah. Well in my
student days we had to do the classic orders and
using chinese inking stage and shadows and all that stuff
. I don't know whether they can do that now
or not. And of course the music thing is
that when I went to work after the World War
Two, we're architectural firm in Richmond. Yeah,
one of their members was mm pretty old fellow grew
up back when really people really learned to draw.
And uh obviously some architecture was yeah so called cologne
young stuff with some of the orders. It's part
of the skiing on the drawings, contract drawings.
Well here would be front elevation with Corinthian columns on
it. That fellow could take his pen and ink
and draw that thing right on. Don't No problem
. Uh huh. We could do that now.
I don't know. It's not even taught. I
mean that would be something you learned on your that
in fact. Well um I did some pen and
ink, mostly structural drawings when I was working for
him. Pen, ink, pen and ink on
linen. But nothing like that free and stuff that
guy could do. Come. Yeah we were doing
some buildings for the University of Virginia. Yeah.
An old boy. I have another question for you
. So you you you obviously designed furniture and build
furniture, did you? Is that something that came
out of architecture for you? Or uh from the
design standpoint? Maybe a bit if you look at
that clock on the way up, it doesn't look
like the typical grandfather scar with Mhm. Did you
know this is uh modern tall clock is what I'd
call it uh told us I could make it to
fit in where it was going and so I call
it a grandmother's clock if you want to but any
right. Uh huh. Here it is Philippine mahogany
, mm plywood and aluminium corners where the door shuts
and the glazing, it's plastic so nobody could break
it. Yeah, the only thing that looks old
, the hands that came with the movement I bought
obviously were intended for the oh, classic stuff and
I didn't make new hands to deal with that.
But other than that way I designed it and I
made it. Yeah. Uh huh and house I
built for myself the same way in drag pipes.
John lives in Dallas. The younger one younger than
one lives here. I was amazed when he came
and he saw my dining table in here which is
kind of harks back and you knew perfectly well.
Teakwood thing that I had. Sorry, it was
quite from a design point different. In fact our
whole house was well, there's, I was right
up there. Beautiful. Yeah, yeah. Anyway
, yeah. Say you, you looks very post
World War two uh modern. Of course the amusing
thing to me was people would look at it and
go inside and would mentioned frank Lloyd wright. I
said, well yeah, there is a similarity in
this respect. Right? That wanted a material to
look like what it was. Well, those are
entered with a colored block. The would work inside
was large. You try to buy some of that
now all with a natural finish on it. So
from the standpoint of the materials, obviously being what
they are. Which for? Right, that was
a big deal beyond that. Uh huh. Because
he liked some nice low ceilings. He was just
, yeah, although he wasn't opposed to sloping ceilings
of course. But that house the only flat ceilings
with the little holes leading right where the bedrooms connected
to the bears. That was it. Or at
the main entry, which was just to buy a
bite square those that's the only factory when you find
the whole building. Uh it seems more, you
know. Kindle like annoy tra uh Anyway. Uh
huh. One of the artists think that this was
on a street corner. Yeah, this was the
front street and on a side street over here.
So my problem was how do I put a main
entry? Which is this, you can see the
main injury right behind that tree trunk treats, not
going away. But the carport. What? And
I finally built a garage to our right, careful
, you're still like, yeah there's a two car
garage. It used to be a carport here.
Originally. Then I built the garage. So you
get out here and you come in and the back
and front entrance are practically on top of another.
But as you go inside, oh you gotta know
what you're doing there. Actually connected the door between
the two so they're entirely shepherd and then the kitchen
was right in the middle bedrooms down this way,
living room here, living dining, family, and
then finally the master bedroom behind. So the two
bags were well master bedroom on this side, the
boy's bedroom on the other anyway it was a great
house really one night Uh huh. Had no trouble
selling. In fact I had sold it, the
man was an architecture student at florida as a matter
of fact uh huh and when I told it my
neighbor dying across this way I want to buy your
house, I said well you're a little late sister
. Yeah. Mhm Which proves the point, I
think well designed building the problem and so much of
what we do is come on. Yeah. Mhm
. Or just so far I mean what's interesting for
me as a student again is trying to understand this
the truth, you know the things that never change
about architecture and not the through what's what's new and
exciting, you know, exciting there it seems to
me just certain things that are principles my judicial built
in north florida with no air conditioning. Mhm.
And oh most people course around there would have they
have the air conditioning and they have air systems well
more friday gets pretty damn cold. In fact the
first when I was there I had a thought a
pipe so I can get out of water. What
? So I have baseball radiate radiant heat in that
place because I had single well that's south you see
there 5-foot high windows with yeah. Uh I think
all right then I designed how the roof I hang
over is there? So that all through the summer
the shadow was at the sill or below in the
winter other way uh And the clear story at the
top there put light into the kitchen. Oh.
Mhm. And all these sloping roofs and so on
all that had an air in it and there came
up over the insulation and then out at the top
. In other words, all the heat trying to
go in through the roof got ventilated out. So
you have like a soft event that brought it.
Yeah. So in the roof itself, so that
every I had well, I'd roof doing this for
this as you can see there. But the point
is that even here clear story, the air if
you come in here and come out here below those
windows there because there was an outlet there. So
uh uh and furthermore, you could open windows low
down and you could open those clear story windows here
. Come in. Yeah, only one problem.
That piano, you see there is not the first
one I bought 1st 1. I bought my younger
son who was aspiring piano. Hey, well,
so Bowman had to bring me another one. Well
, this damn humidity isn't doing the piano very much
good. Not only that, I pull out my
slides, the black spots on them. Well,
damn it. Yeah, I guess I got to
do something about this community. So I went ahead
and install the air conditioning and when my wife found
out along about a little over three tons, you
know, oh, someone's always got four or five
, I don't give a damn. We don't have
that much. Getting that is the problem. Uh
huh. So yeah, you're just using as a
dehumidifier basically. Yeah. Uh, so it's like
, I would tell some people, I said,
well, I can do things that you can't do
. I am cool this thing down like nothing bad
. And if it gets too cool, I can
just turn on the heat and get it back,
which I never did it anyway, the biggest problem
I had was that, that south side, obviously
that heated up the living room, dining room,
family room, and master bedroom. But the other
side of the house, it didn't. So if
you put the thermostat on the south side, the
other side be too cold because this says it don't
need it, you put it on the other side
, it's the other way around. So what I
finally had to do to saw that was, but
the thermal step here on the north side, but
they do make thermostat tickly control valves that I could
put it in the circuit on the south side to
cut down the water flow if it's sensing, hey
, you don't need it, you know? And
so when I sold the house to these people,
I said that's it. Just don't touch it because
we do, you got screwed orders. Yeah,
yeah. I recently saw retrofit that you can do
to just an old fashioned radiator that I actually put
it on its own zone regular anyway. So,
but another thing I did, uh, that you
can do, you can buy a he transferred device
that can take the heat from your outside side unit
and circulate the high pressure gas over to this unit
to heat water at, which can go to your
domestic water tank. There you go. We're about
300 bucks. I could buy that, have that
do it. So here just thing instead of throwing
heat back outdoors, getting them like and spending less
to cool down because you're doing it. And the
thing that got me was that the local uh,
mm electric utility people there, we'd get us together
and talk about what, well, maybe using solar
energy and some of that sort of thing. And
when I brought up this, I said, hey
, that's you know, come on hell of a
lot cheaper to put in and it well, can't
get this plumbers to hook up each other things,
hook him up, right, or make them work
right, or whatever. I said, well,
it's not that complicated, buddy, come on.
Uh huh. Oh, geez. Anyway, yeah
, well um of course in florida down near the
Cape, they had this research facility for energy utilization
and so on. And here I've done all these
things, they're talking about trying to convince people to
do, you know? Mhm. So I got
the example right here, I already done it,
Come on. Yeah. Anyway, yeah. Uh
one one problem I've had in teaching of course is
that most people who teach in the architectural curriculum are
closely allied to certain aspect of it, like design
our structures or in my case environment stuff. And
some of them are so focused, well let's say
design that they don't even realize what the rest is
all about and obviously that affects what their students do
. I remember once for example, you're the student
in the days of bare bone structure and all that
. So here he had this concrete structure thing.
As I remember it was some kind of museum art
gallery or whatever and he was no, I was
on the jury looking at all this. Well this
is a rare condition. Yeah. Well tell me
how you get to hear from burn in earth what
you know, bare bone structure? Well he went
through it not too easily, but he did.
Well yeah, that's it. He was feeling very
good with himself. He told me how to do
it. I said now next question how do you
get it back? Oh ha. Yeah when I
told this story to bunch of mechanical engineers really administer
. Well that's a bad reputation that we get right
because contractors or whoever you know I don't have today
. They never think about these things that well the
lash. Yeah the last acoustical job I did for
Mr Berman in Tampa. It involved keeping air conditioning
quiet for hospital edition. Well this meant well they
had penthouse to hold this equipment. Well if you're
going to keep up air conditioning and a great big
old fan in it quiet you've got to have room
to put some um isolation. No no these uh
what's the my terminology has been so long since anyway
um These units attenuate sound uh at the discharge of
the as well as the return intake. And they
do take room And mind you it had to be
in the penthouse because the minute you go through the
floor, you're right there where you start distributing in
these areas, there's no room to put these units
in. There has to be then to make the
penthouse bigger by a whole bay. And then when
we well that's what it takes. Come on.
Well, even the mechanical engineer you see, wasn't
on top of it, much less the arctic.
Yeah. See I think it's talking to a lot
of people like yourself. One thing that's become clear
to me is that certainly in the earlier days of
the program everybody had practiced, right? So there
was this reality of of what you were doing as
an architect that was brought to the teaching. Well
, good point there because when I was here,
there was an opportunity to go to Princeton on some
research they were going to do. And uh I
thought, well, mhm. Ah, printing at
that time was offering a PhD yet. And then
the these days before phds something everybody had to have
, you know, and I and he's, the
dean wrote me a letter back said, well,
look, you're a registered architect and got this teaching
experience behind me and all that. I hope we
never get to the point where we think everybody has
to have a PhD. Because if you've got the
professional credentials, what the heck? That's ought to
be enough to what you I feel like writing vaccine
. Okay. So why are they, what are
you doing this? Which is leading right to it
? Which of course it adds. Uh So,
but my point being that so many faculty members down
the years and I've been associated with are not even
registered architects have never been in practice. And yet
these and these guys to design buildings. I remember
, for example, where here was this program for
high school music facilities, which meant a bunch of
practice rooms, obviously a great big band room and
this fellow um, showed it to me and I
looked at it. Mm hmm. How many people
in there? About 80? I said, yeah
. So you get this double door thing so people
can get in out. Yeah. Yeah. Where
is the second entry or exit? Oh Well when
you've got more than 50, you got to have
it. And here he was surrounded by so much
stuff. There was no way he could add it
without completely redoing his old relation of everything. Come
on. That's like first year stuff. Yeah.
Uh, well, it's like other changes, you
know, there for so long through most of my
practice, Uh worrying about people with disabilities was Yeah
, come on nowadays, come on. You can't
even do a remodeling project. Yeah. Touch a
restroom facility without realizing what you gotta do to it
. And I can be or uh and height without
getting into a cost of an elevator. Keeping up
with code these days, it's really enough to drug
up the wall. He is, it makes it
harder to find room for the art for architecture.
Well, yeah. Well, you know, I
seriously considered I you know, I got really interested
in architecture because I was in California and I was
building mm and reawakened. You know what I loved
about architecture? I decided I to come back but
I gave it a lot of thought because I thought
really I like building. Yeah. And I think
you know the instruction and the meeting people like you
and experience get sure teacher is priceless but there's not
a lot of building you know there's not a lot
of it's just interesting for me to see the sort
of lack of the practice side. Yeah. In
the curriculum now. Well the problem of introducing into
the design process. Yeah. Some of these constructive
things that you have to deal with, it's kind
of tough if a well say when somebody wants to
design a house and they're not the least been aware
of basic frame construction, No two x 4,
two x 16 and what they will do or not
do that side of it. You can't ignore in
the design process, you just can't do it.
Well it seems to me you go one of two
ways right? You either say it's all theory at
this point and you just just go and don't worry
about reality or you say you have to practice in
reality and maybe you should be aware of the company
. Well that's the whole problem that architects has been
defined as a fine art. Well it is but
it's so much more than that now, so if
you really want a really fine art, well you
better go to painting maybe or sculpture. Uh Not
even music though because the music has a lot of
physics with it if you don't understand it. I
think you got a problem anyway. One of my
favorite quotes um is the same idea but about film
filming and I forget totally forgetting the quote is from
now it's you know, film is a business that
occasionally rises to the level of art. And I
think architecture is above that. I think architecture is
more than that, but I think it's you know
, it occasionally rises to the level of a fine
art occasionally. Yeah, anybody can build a box
but. Uh huh. Yeah, you g I
feel like I've taken up an awful lot of your
time. Well I'm getting to the point where I
try not to worry about uh what time is it
now? Yeah. Uh Mhm. That organ there
is now in Blacksburg and I'm making it when it
was given to me, it was not quite that
big, those great big bites are not part of
it. So it was given to me when I
live in here and I brought it florida, so
when I came back, what do I do with
nutritional? Let's put it back where it was.
I said oh there's a problem there, I started
changing it to make it a decent organ. But
it was it was well maybe ok for a little
bit of practice organ in the studio for a church
. Come on, forget it. So I was
adding to it. Those great big pipes were the
bottom of the pedal, which the thing didn't even
have when it was here. I said so I'm
in the process of making it a decent to manual
and pedal organ until I'm through. It's not usable
as an instrument. So, I've been here A
little over five years and I'm still working on it
. It's got 10 sets of pipes in it.
We originally had four. Only one Of those original
four are still in it. The rest are gone
. So there's 10 sets of pipes in there.
I wish there were few more. But anyway,
so it has its own pedal, right? Mhm
. three on the floor of annual, six on
the top. Anyway. And all of this would
requires then a control system for all this. Well
in these days they don't do it the way they
used to with all this wiring and contacts all over
the place. They do it with solid state controls
. Yeah. Which I've never done. I've built
or rebuilt a few organs in my time. Some
pictures of some other ones around the corner. But
so here I'm right now wiring up this solid state
stuff. And I mean I've got to roll the
wire this big around number 24 wire that I'm using
up to do this. And that's the way I
spend a lot of my afternoons doing and this uh
But again interrupted like Mhm Churchill and christian were actually
play sunday. Well, well that means I got
worry about do a little practice and what is it
they're going to do instead of going over warrant.
So uh it's an old story when you retire,
you thought you're going to have a lot of free
time. No way. That's great. That's that's
important. Yeah. Yeah. So bye. The
interesting thing to me is going to be that,
okay, this is back in their old church building
and it's not quite as big as the one in
the main sanctuary, but the one of the main
sanctuary is all behind with swell shades or the whole
thing to make it louder and softer. Well,
most organs aren't built that way. The Lord Bagnall
is just the pipes coming right at you and the
upper manu is the so called swell organ with the
shades. Then there's the pedal stuff. So as
I've built it, that's the way it is with
these nice Shiny Tin pipes in front of the lower
manual stuff. I've built five Winchester for this thing
. So totally and visually it is very different from
what they've got and use every sunday. So when
I get this thing all wired up and start to
play what's going to be a reaction of the average
joe. It doesn't know a damn thing about organs
, but you can see the difference and I would
think here's some difference. What's the comment going to
be? It depends how set in their ways they
are. Sounds different. Yeah. Anyway, we'll
see and they talk about uh well in building these
days where you can use reusable stuff, recycle stuff
, you get a good lead. There are only
22 pipes in that organ of the brand new because
I made him which I had to do because well
this one set of pipes that I got that originally
were in Bruton Parish Church, Rutenberg, believe it
or not. Uh huh wasn't a complete set and
I had to build the bottom end to get make
it complete. And then I picked up some other
old pipes one time and I they were in a
barn I miss getting to. And I discovered so
I had to build a C sharp in an F
. Uh and compared to what the others. Yeah
, they look a little newer but when you hear
You can't tell the difference between the two. Come
on. Uh but all the rest came out of
other organs, including those big pipes which used to
be in first Methodist church Gainesville florida and the church
organist wanted some rather smaller scale than those big so
what did he do? They threw these out on
the back, that's a hell lot of zinc,
come on, I've gathered them up and cap them
off which made him speak an octave lower and I
built the Winchester play them. That's one octave there
. I've got I've got the next 20 to make
32 were the federal. But anyway It cost me
about$300 to do that. I could buy that
stuff brand new from an organ supply house For about
$3,000. Come on. Uh huh. Uh huh
. Mhm. Just Yeah. Well I I I
always buy waste from Maine and I'm I've got yankee
yankee yankee spirit. Why would you buy something new
? Yeah. Well it's not gonna be as good
anyway. Yeah, I mean oh you're from Maine
. I'm from west Virginia. My wife's from me
. Oh okay. Well you didn't ask me where
I was born in massachusetts. Okay. My mother
yankee from way back and I do mean right down
the line, right through the Mayflower, my waist
family too. Yeah. And so when it comes
to genealogy, no problem. It's the other side
. Mhm. Drives me up the wall trying to
figure out it's amusing thing to me is that my
grandfather which I mentioned from new york city, he
married Rather late, he was 41 and somehow or
another he met this girl from philadelphia. My father
grandfather was son of a Quaker and a methodist mother
. And who did he marry? The daughter of
an irish roman catholic In 1893? Well if you
were catholic you just didn't do that. Yeah.
Uh So uh Yeah. Well I never knew her
because she died before I was born. My father
would talk about her obviously but I heard her obituary
, she She died in 1916. It was 54
times. Uh huh. Her siblings saw to it
. She was buried in the catholic cemetery in True
but if I try to get anything about records from
the diocese of levy, forget it. She's not
there when I'm trying to chase history back you know
? Yeah yeah I'm telling you. But yeah I
went well I had, the obituary said she was
buried in Old Cathedral Cemetery. Oh well the old
cathedral Is about five blocks south of Independence Hall.
So I go there and of course this is bit
of a graveyard outside. I go in directory as
I know where my grandmother is. Look but she's
not here. I said oh which sits over here
. Oh well you know we ran out of space
here so we started this old this new one on
the edge of town and it's called old catholic.
Oh cathedral cemeteries what it's called. I bet if
you go there you find her we're going the door
and I mentioned the name. Oh yeah she's buried
over a new corner plot. I said no where
? I had never heard the name. O Connor
but her mother was an O Connor. Uh In
fact she's buried right. Makes my grandmother. Yeah
. And so you Yeah. G anyway, so
what happened was you see Uh huh. I'm sure
my grandmother went to new york city. Met my
grandfather here were these two people beyond the normal age
you get married decided they were going to do it
. But from the religious standpoint, what do you
do about it? I know what they did.
They hopped on the ferry, went across the Hudson
River to Jersey City and he went to Saint.
Which one was it? Anyway, visible church whole
. So I write the church and say, hey
what's on your record there? Because I have this
certificate signed by the rector that he married him.
Yeah, March 18 93. And I did get
a postcard to put because I didn't no my grandmother
, mothers fathers name because she died right after she
was born. I figured that out. But anyway
, uh his card was a little slow in coming
back then when it finally came back. Oh well
we're closing the church down and I'm assembling the records
to something. The diocese officer in Newark. But
it says Wear Jeans 2041 whose parents are so and
so and so. Well that's all right mary ann
Connolly aged 31. Well that's a lie. She
was 33. That unknown bags. Michael O Connor
and Elizabeth Oh counter mhm. But Michael Conley.
His father. And so I Okay, great.
But when I look in the 1860s census for a
Michael and Elizabeth Conley with infant daughter, which I
showed her since she was born in february. Uh
huh. Not there. So what the hell is
going on? Well here next year I get this
communication from some gal in massachusetts whose related to the
same crowd. But it turned out she said I've
got your grandmother's birth certificate as uh oh how about
send me a copy what she did, Father john
not Michael. So I need to get back to
1860. Anyway, my conclusion has to be that
since she never knew her father and this director,
I had to have a father's name. She had
an uncle by the name of Michael. I know
. So she just pulled up Michael. This might
the fact that it's not correct. It's like the
old story with all this stuff. If you can't
get to things that degree, you don't know whether
one does or not. Come on. O G
. Yeah. Yeah. I tried going through the
Ellis Island stuff where the names are like they just
, they just randomly gave you a name or change
the name or. Yeah. Well, yeah.
Well of course the Quakers keep very good records and
I'm hoping to plug some holes because the family bible
that had a lot of information in it got burned
in new york city Burnett to Fire one of the
places they lived. And so I know what my
grandfather says about. We are related to. There
were 12 commissioners James at first I think it was
, yeah, a lot a bunch of Quakers to
come to Burlington, New Jersey and set up that
place in 1677. Unbelievable. Anyway and there was
a john Kinzie didn't spell it the same way I
do. But anyway, okay and in philadelphia there
was a john who was in their legislature rubbing elbows
with Ben franklin, all those good crowd. You
who in this fella died in 1750. He was
Supreme Court Justice for the province of Pennsylvania. He
was also a big shot in quicker affairs. Yeah
. And their early meetings alternated between philadelphia and Burlington
. And all that records there. Well, this
john had a son, john and James, But
John died when he was 18 because he decided you're
going hunting, you know? And so they went
over there across this google river and apparently gun dropped
or something and then discharged and did him in.
So elected by the brother john who was a member
of the 1st Continental Congress. Well quicker, you
know, come on, you talk about war quicker
soon. So he didn't go to the second Congress
. But anyway, uh when Jersey, when the
revolution was over in New Jersey, he was the
first chief justice of the Supreme Court, New Jersey
, I cannot get from him to the crowd that
went to New york city in 13. Uh huh
, 18 39. Well uh I know where the
records are for the new york society of friends way
back then in its former college and pennsylvania. Because
if I can get that, maybe a blue work
backwards and society quite a mystery. Yeah. But
anyway, but New England. No problem. And
Yeah. Well it so happens. I'm related.
That's what I consulted in during all my teaching in
florida. So it's like when students asked me,
oh we go, which job should I take it
? Just take one. You'll never know uh what
you're good at and what you really want to do
until you get out there and dry it. And
if you'd asked me when I had two degrees behind
my name to predict what I'd be doing, there'll
be no relation between it and what. Yeah,
yeah, that's for sure. Yeah. I was
in this uh subject that I wasn't talking one word
about, but I'm gonna remember the user side of
member of America. In fact, I'm a fellow
in it and you don't get that from doing nothing
. Yeah. Come on. You know, I
don't think I'm getting anything now. You're uh here
mike. Mm. Check this. Never hopes.
See. Oh, sorry, sorry. There you
go. Me. I still