The Real Timothy McSweeney

An odd and touching story by Dave Eggers, founder of Timothy McSweeney's Internet Tendency. His website, literary journal and publishing house bear the name of a mysterious man who shared his mother's maiden name.

She grew up in Milton, Massachusetts, one of five children, the daughter of an obstetrician, Daniel McSweeney, and his wife Adelaide Mary McSweeney.

When Eggers was a kid, his family started getting "strange mail" addressed to him and his mother.

These were usually notes written on pamphlets and other sorts of mail that required no postage. The messages were confusing, but generally seemed to be written by a man named Timothy McSweeney, who thought he was related to my mother, and who was hoping to visit soon. Sometimes Timothy would include train schedules and other plans. Sometimes they included drawings and diagrams. Usually the letters had a sense of urgency, as if after many years of searching for his relatives, he had found my mother and I, and wanted to reconnect as soon as possible.

Eggers, having appropriated the man's name for his publishing concern, learned a few years later of Timothy McSweeney's identity.

One day in Boston in 1943, my grandfather Daniel McSweeney delivered a baby. This baby was put up for adoption, and was adopted by another McSweeney family.

Timothy McSweeney grew up to become an artist, fell mentally ill, and was eventually institutionalized.

It was from this institution that he began to send letters. According to his brother David, he would search through city and state records, find names, and write to the people he found.

Presumably, he saw my grandfather's name on his birth certificate and came to think Daniel McSweeney might have been his father, not simply the delivering obstetrician. And thus he sought out the children of Daniel McSweeney. [Link]

The real Timothy McSweeney died last month at age 67.

Gravestones Under Glass

Someday we might all be carrying bottles of liquid glass to the graveyard.

Spray-on liquid glass is transparent, non-toxic, and can protect virtually any surface against almost any damage from hazards such as water, UV radiation, dirt, heat, and bacterial infections. The coating is also flexible and breathable, which makes it suitable for use on an enormous array of products.

The war graves association in the UK is investigating using the spray to treat stone monuments and grave stones, since trials have shown the coating protects against weathering and graffiti. Trials in Turkey are testing the product on monuments such as the Ataturk Mausoleum in Ankara. [Link]

Annie Information Would Be Appreciated

The latest chapter in the Annie Moore saga involves the discovery of a photograph that may or may not show Annie and her brothers at Ellis Island in 1892.

Megan asks for help in proving the authenticity of the photo. My advice: check the back to see if their names are written there. Other than that ... I've got nothing.

Rome Was Far From Home

There might be a genetic reason that Uncle Mario prefers eating at the Szechuan Palace.

Some people of Italian ancestry, like me, might have a surprise in the family tree—a man of east Asian descent, who was living and working 2,000 years ago in the boondocks near the heel of the Italian boot. The discovery is the first good evidence of an Asian living in Italy during Roman times. [Link]

Salinger's Mom Born in Atlantic, Not Across the Atlantic

I do love correcting the New York Times:

[J.D. Salinger's] mother, Marie Jillisch, was of Irish descent, born in Scotland, but changed her first name to Miriam (the name, incidentally, of the wife who drives Seymour Glass to suicide) to appease her in-laws. [Link]

Not quite. His mother was the daughter of George and Nellie Jillich, born 11 May 1891 in Atlantic, Cass County, Iowa. Here she is in the 1900 census with her parents. They too were born in Iowa. I'm pretty sure that I've seen ship manifests which confirm Miriam Salinger's exact place of birth, but—like the Times—I am too lazy to double-check my sources.

The Times obit also says that J.D. "married a German woman, very briefly — a doctor about whom biographers have been able to discover very little. Her name was Sylvia, Margaret Salinger said, but Mr. Salinger always called her Saliva."

Dr. Saliva's full name was Sylvia Louise Welter. An article in this newsletter (pdf) discusses their brief marriage. The couple arrived in New York aboard the Ethan Allen on 28 April 1946. The manifest indicates that the doctor was a citizen of France, 27 years of age, born in Frankfurt-au-Main, Germany, and was fluent in English, French, German and Italian. No wonder he dumped her.

They Buried the Competition

The towns of Ponca City and Cross were both founded in Oklahoma's Cherokee Strip in 1893. Only one would survive.

Both aspired to be the county seat, and the war between them waxed so warm that several men bit the dust. Finally the mayor of Ponca City called a public meeting one night and urged the citizens to keep up the fight until they made Cross a cemetery.

It is thought by his remark that the mayor actually advised the destruction of the city and the people of Cross by winchester rifles, but if so his threat was not executed in this manner.

Ponca City gave a town lot to every owner of a house in Cross and paid for the moving, and in this way stampeded the residents of the rival town.

Nothing being left but the town site and schoolhouse, the bluff of the pioneer mayor of Ponca was made good a few days since when the council bought the town site for a cemetery and made the schoolhouse the residence of the sexton. [Link]

Only the Title Is Titillating

I'm sure I'm not the first one to find "The Lesbian Ancestors of Prince Rainier of Monaco, Dr. Otto von Habsburg, Brooke Shields and the Marquis de Sade" a disappointing read.