Winifred Helen Meagher Tunney
Winifred is my great-grandmother.
December 24, 1892 ~ June 5, 1971
On Christmas Eve, 1892, in Colorado City (later to be renamed Colorado Springs), proud parents, Harry and Agnes Meagher (pronounced meer), welcomed their only child together. Her name was Winifred Helen. Her mother had a son from a previous marriage named Thomas McCabe, Jr. and Winnie now completed this family of four. Tom was older by seven years and he and his little sister were always quite close.
Catholicism played an important role in the Meagher family and one week after she was born, on New Year's Day, 1893, Winnie took her first step in becoming a member of the Church, when she was baptized at St. Mary's Church, which is now a cathedral.
When she was seven years old, she lived at 430 Colorado Avenue, Colorado City. It's possible this was the only home she knew at this point, but the 1900 census was the first record I found with her address. In this document, it reported that she began attending school one year earlier, at the age of six.
By the time she was 18, her family moved next door to 432 Colorado Avenue. Her mother ran a boarding house in her home, so it is possible, they kept adding to their home by buying neighboring properties, but they may have also just moved next door.
She attended St. Mary's School as a child. After high school, she continued her education at St. Joseph's School of Nursing. By 1913 she was a practicing nurse.
A year later, in 1914, her father, Harry, passed away.
Her sadness over her father's passing, probably brightened a bit when only a few months later, on April 8th, 1915, Winnie married her beloved, Joe Tunney. Grace Lawrence (I assume her friend, but possibly a family member) served as her witness. The following was printed in the local paper regarding their nuptials:
Winnie and Joe moved around a lot for a few years. After they were married they lived with Winnie's mother Agnes, but by 1917, Winnie, Joe and Helen moved to San Francisco. They lived at 1281 Geary Street (cross street Gough). However, sometime before 1920, they were back in Colorado living with Agnes.
Shortly before Jack was born, however, they moved down the street. They lived only eight blocks away from Winnie's mother. And on June 3rd, 1920, Jack made his entrance into the world. 1701 West Colorado Avenue in Colorado Springs was Jack's first home.
However, California seemed to be calling the Tunneys back to her. By 1925, the now family of four moved to Los Angeles for a short period of time. It was here where Jim was welcomed to the world on July 12th of that year. Winnie was still listed as a housewife on his birth certificate.
Winnie's mother-in-law and brother-in-law, Anna and William, moved to L.A. on or around the same time that Winnie's family did. They continued to live there until William's death in 1936. However, Winnie, Joe and the kids headed north, presumably to head to proverbial greener pastures. They dropped anchor in Oakland and their adopted city became their home.
Initially they lived at 2682 Fruitvale Avenue, then at 3144 27th Street, but somewhere between 1930 and 1933, they found their permanent residence at 3943 Park Blvd.
Like their mothers' had before them, Winnie and Joe rented out part of their residence for extra income. According to Susie, "It had a living area, kitchenette, bedroom and a cute little nook area. The windows upstairs were really unique and let in a lot of light. The rental gave them extra income and I believe they liked to rent it out to a single woman or a young couple. The stairway upstairs to the unit was located in their hallway and perhaps that is why they switched rooms, so their living room was more private for when people came and went." (1)
A few years after moving to the Bay Area, Winnie's mother, Agnes, passed away in October of 1929.
Winnie stayed home with the kids until Jim was twelve years old. In 1937 she was an egg candler. Candling eggs is a method of testing eggs while they are incubating to determine if they are viable or not. "Viable" means that the egg is fertilized and an embryo is able to develop and hatch...The term "candling eggs" comes from the process used before electric bulbs were used. It was common to use a candle as the light source for testing eggs. One put the candle in a box or container of some kind, then cut a hole large enough to put the egg onto but NOT large enough for the egg to fall through. Do this in a dark room and the light from the egg candler will shine through the egg and you can determine if the egg is developing." (2)
By the time she was an egg candler, modern technology had made using a candle for this job no longer necessary. She used a light bulb instead. She worked long hours at this period of her life and she was on her feet all day long. While working as an egg candler, she met her future son-in-law, Ed, who worked there too. It was she who introduced her daughter Helen to Ed—and it wouldn't be long before they married. So, at least once in her life, Winnie played matchmaker.
Family was important and after Joe's brother's passing, her mother-in-law, Anna, moved in with Winnie and Joe for the last couple of years or so of her life. After Anna's passing in 1944, one of her obituaries was written in the Oakland Tribune, but her funeral was held in Los Angeles, where she lived for several years with her other son, William.
In 1954, her brother, Tom passed away. Understandably, Winnie was devastated by this news.
Through the ups and downs that life showed them, both Winnie and Joe felt it was important to participate in the election process. Throughout their long lives, they maintained their voter registrations and presumably voted in each election. They were registered democrats.
Unfortunately, in the last couple of years of her life, Winnie's health began to deteriorate due to her diagnosis of dementia. She was placed in a convalescent hospital in Alameda. Sadly, in the end, she didn't remember any of her relatives.
On June 5th, 1971 Winnie passed away in Alameda, California. She is buried with Joe at Holy Sepulchre in Hayward, California in Section J, Row 46, Grave #42.
Our Memories of Winifred (aka Nana):
From Susie:
"Nana & Joe used the front room as a dining room & the room behind that room was used as their living room. I loved that room because it had huge windows looking out over the back yard. There was also a side door on the left side of the living room which led to a deck that had a porch swing & Nana's beloved geraniums. It was so pretty out there."
They had a large plum tree in their backyard & Nana loved canning jars of plum jam in their basement. She also canned tomatoes, but the basement was like a "man cave" of today & was her private domain, so if we were invited down there it was a treat. She had a million jelly jars & I remember that we always drank milk out of those jars."
.
From Me (Lisa):
* I have only one memory of Winnie. When I was about two years old, Bette took me to visit Winnie and Joe. I remember Nana on the stairwell, calling me towards her. The stairwell in the image on the left is exactly how I remember it. The rental upstairs was empty and she wanted to show it to me. I remember walking into the empty room and was overwhelmed by the beauty of the hardwood floors. I was so little, but I feel as though she told Bette that the floors were newly refurbished. What she couldn't have known at the time is that from that moment on, I always wanted hard wood floors. It was the 1960's and everyone had wall-to-wall carpeting then, but I wanted nothing to do with that. At the time of this writing, it has been 50 years since that day, and I still am passionate about hard wood floors.
* I have gathered from family reports that it was difficult for Winnie to give up being a nurse. My dad told me a story that she gave him a shot when he was a child. He may not have liked getting a shot (what child—or adult for that matter, would), but it would seem that even though she gave up the profession, her nursing skills never left her heart.
* Winnie died when I was five years old and I definitely remember walking up those stairs so she could show me the rental. I began walking at 8-months old, but I feel like I was probably 18-24 months old when this happened. I bring this up, because she was still living at home and at least on that day was perfectly healthy, but within a three year time span her health deteriorated to the point where she couldn't remember anyone and her personality had dramatically changed too. On the one hand, I am grateful she was healthy for so much of her life and only had to deal with this debilitating disease in the last two or three years of her life, but it also makes me sad how quickly it affected her.
The Meaning of Her Names:
Personal Name Meaning: Winifred ~ Welsh baby name. In Welsh the meaning of the name Winifred is: Reconciled; blessed. Historically Winifred was a martyred Welsh princess; traditionally the patron saint of virgins.
Surname Meaning: Meagher ~ Recorded as Maher, Meagher, Meagar, and possibly others, this is an Irish surname primarily from County Tipperary. It derives from the medieval Gaelic O' Meachair,meaning the male descendant of the kindly and hospitable chief.
(1) Susie is talking about how the front room and living room area was switched when Joe and Nana lived there, so that they would have privacy.
Also, Susie was kind enough to fill me in on a lot of details. While I knew from Bette that they rented the upstairs, I knew nothing of it's description, outside of the wood flooring. The information about the floor plan in the house in general, the porch, the geraniums, how Winnie introduced Helen and Ed to one another, how she stood up long hours as an egg candler, how she used a light bulb and not a candle for egg candling, the fact that she was close to her brother, Tom, and her personal experience story, all comes from her. I often quoted her directly from her emails. THANK YOU, SUSIE!
(2) Egg Candling information from Incubator Warehouse.
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| St. Mary's Cathedral in Colorado Springs. |
When she was seven years old, she lived at 430 Colorado Avenue, Colorado City. It's possible this was the only home she knew at this point, but the 1900 census was the first record I found with her address. In this document, it reported that she began attending school one year earlier, at the age of six.
By the time she was 18, her family moved next door to 432 Colorado Avenue. Her mother ran a boarding house in her home, so it is possible, they kept adding to their home by buying neighboring properties, but they may have also just moved next door.
She attended St. Mary's School as a child. After high school, she continued her education at St. Joseph's School of Nursing. By 1913 she was a practicing nurse.
A year later, in 1914, her father, Harry, passed away.
Her sadness over her father's passing, probably brightened a bit when only a few months later, on April 8th, 1915, Winnie married her beloved, Joe Tunney. Grace Lawrence (I assume her friend, but possibly a family member) served as her witness. The following was printed in the local paper regarding their nuptials:
Meagher - Tunney !
Miss Winifred Meagher and Mr. Joseph Tunney were married at 8:00 Thursday morning at the Catholic Church, by the Rev. Father Brinker. The wedding was a very quiet one, attended only by the most intimate friends, and relatives and was followed by a wedding breakfast at the home of the bride's mother, Mrs. Agnes Meagher.
The young couple left almost immediately for California, where they will visit both expositions and places of interest, returning here about the first of May, where they will make their future home.
The Panama-California Exposition took place in San Diego, while the Panama-Pacific International Exposition was in San Francisco, both beginning in 1915. They, of course, celebrated the opening of the Panama Canal. In San Francisco, the Palace of Fine Arts was a product of the expo and was meant as a temporary display only, but thankfully, the City decided it was too beautiful to just throw away and instead it was made into a historical landmark that people may visit—and Winnie and Joe were one of the first people ever to see it.
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| The Palace of Fine Arts |
Not only did they see beautiful sites on their excursion, they immediately got cracking on starting a family. Nine months later, after they had returned to Colorado Springs, Helen was born.
The three Tunneys lived with her mother Agnes. At that point, Winnie hung up her nurse's uniform and stayed home to raise her daughter. Two more children would follow. My grandfather Jack joined the Tunney clan in 1920 and his brother Jim followed suit in 1925.
The three Tunneys lived with her mother Agnes. At that point, Winnie hung up her nurse's uniform and stayed home to raise her daughter. Two more children would follow. My grandfather Jack joined the Tunney clan in 1920 and his brother Jim followed suit in 1925.
Winnie and Joe moved around a lot for a few years. After they were married they lived with Winnie's mother Agnes, but by 1917, Winnie, Joe and Helen moved to San Francisco. They lived at 1281 Geary Street (cross street Gough). However, sometime before 1920, they were back in Colorado living with Agnes.
Shortly before Jack was born, however, they moved down the street. They lived only eight blocks away from Winnie's mother. And on June 3rd, 1920, Jack made his entrance into the world. 1701 West Colorado Avenue in Colorado Springs was Jack's first home.
However, California seemed to be calling the Tunneys back to her. By 1925, the now family of four moved to Los Angeles for a short period of time. It was here where Jim was welcomed to the world on July 12th of that year. Winnie was still listed as a housewife on his birth certificate.
Winnie's mother-in-law and brother-in-law, Anna and William, moved to L.A. on or around the same time that Winnie's family did. They continued to live there until William's death in 1936. However, Winnie, Joe and the kids headed north, presumably to head to proverbial greener pastures. They dropped anchor in Oakland and their adopted city became their home.
 |
| A modern image of Winnie and Joe's home. |
Like their mothers' had before them, Winnie and Joe rented out part of their residence for extra income. According to Susie, "It had a living area, kitchenette, bedroom and a cute little nook area. The windows upstairs were really unique and let in a lot of light. The rental gave them extra income and I believe they liked to rent it out to a single woman or a young couple. The stairway upstairs to the unit was located in their hallway and perhaps that is why they switched rooms, so their living room was more private for when people came and went." (1)
A few years after moving to the Bay Area, Winnie's mother, Agnes, passed away in October of 1929.
Winnie stayed home with the kids until Jim was twelve years old. In 1937 she was an egg candler. Candling eggs is a method of testing eggs while they are incubating to determine if they are viable or not. "Viable" means that the egg is fertilized and an embryo is able to develop and hatch...The term "candling eggs" comes from the process used before electric bulbs were used. It was common to use a candle as the light source for testing eggs. One put the candle in a box or container of some kind, then cut a hole large enough to put the egg onto but NOT large enough for the egg to fall through. Do this in a dark room and the light from the egg candler will shine through the egg and you can determine if the egg is developing." (2)
By the time she was an egg candler, modern technology had made using a candle for this job no longer necessary. She used a light bulb instead. She worked long hours at this period of her life and she was on her feet all day long. While working as an egg candler, she met her future son-in-law, Ed, who worked there too. It was she who introduced her daughter Helen to Ed—and it wouldn't be long before they married. So, at least once in her life, Winnie played matchmaker.
Family was important and after Joe's brother's passing, her mother-in-law, Anna, moved in with Winnie and Joe for the last couple of years or so of her life. After Anna's passing in 1944, one of her obituaries was written in the Oakland Tribune, but her funeral was held in Los Angeles, where she lived for several years with her other son, William.
In 1954, her brother, Tom passed away. Understandably, Winnie was devastated by this news.
Through the ups and downs that life showed them, both Winnie and Joe felt it was important to participate in the election process. Throughout their long lives, they maintained their voter registrations and presumably voted in each election. They were registered democrats.
On June 5th, 1971 Winnie passed away in Alameda, California. She is buried with Joe at Holy Sepulchre in Hayward, California in Section J, Row 46, Grave #42.
Our Memories of Winifred (aka Nana):
From Susie:
"Nana & Joe used the front room as a dining room & the room behind that room was used as their living room. I loved that room because it had huge windows looking out over the back yard. There was also a side door on the left side of the living room which led to a deck that had a porch swing & Nana's beloved geraniums. It was so pretty out there."
They had a large plum tree in their backyard & Nana loved canning jars of plum jam in their basement. She also canned tomatoes, but the basement was like a "man cave" of today & was her private domain, so if we were invited down there it was a treat. She had a million jelly jars & I remember that we always drank milk out of those jars."
.
 |
| A modern image of the front-end of their home. |
* I have only one memory of Winnie. When I was about two years old, Bette took me to visit Winnie and Joe. I remember Nana on the stairwell, calling me towards her. The stairwell in the image on the left is exactly how I remember it. The rental upstairs was empty and she wanted to show it to me. I remember walking into the empty room and was overwhelmed by the beauty of the hardwood floors. I was so little, but I feel as though she told Bette that the floors were newly refurbished. What she couldn't have known at the time is that from that moment on, I always wanted hard wood floors. It was the 1960's and everyone had wall-to-wall carpeting then, but I wanted nothing to do with that. At the time of this writing, it has been 50 years since that day, and I still am passionate about hard wood floors.
If you would like to share a personal story about Nana,
please send it to me via email and I will add it here.
Supposition:* I have gathered from family reports that it was difficult for Winnie to give up being a nurse. My dad told me a story that she gave him a shot when he was a child. He may not have liked getting a shot (what child—or adult for that matter, would), but it would seem that even though she gave up the profession, her nursing skills never left her heart.
* Winnie died when I was five years old and I definitely remember walking up those stairs so she could show me the rental. I began walking at 8-months old, but I feel like I was probably 18-24 months old when this happened. I bring this up, because she was still living at home and at least on that day was perfectly healthy, but within a three year time span her health deteriorated to the point where she couldn't remember anyone and her personality had dramatically changed too. On the one hand, I am grateful she was healthy for so much of her life and only had to deal with this debilitating disease in the last two or three years of her life, but it also makes me sad how quickly it affected her.
The Meaning of Her Names:
Personal Name Meaning: Winifred ~ Welsh baby name. In Welsh the meaning of the name Winifred is: Reconciled; blessed. Historically Winifred was a martyred Welsh princess; traditionally the patron saint of virgins.
Surname Meaning: Meagher ~ Recorded as Maher, Meagher, Meagar, and possibly others, this is an Irish surname primarily from County Tipperary. It derives from the medieval Gaelic O' Meachair,meaning the male descendant of the kindly and hospitable chief.
(1) Susie is talking about how the front room and living room area was switched when Joe and Nana lived there, so that they would have privacy.
Also, Susie was kind enough to fill me in on a lot of details. While I knew from Bette that they rented the upstairs, I knew nothing of it's description, outside of the wood flooring. The information about the floor plan in the house in general, the porch, the geraniums, how Winnie introduced Helen and Ed to one another, how she stood up long hours as an egg candler, how she used a light bulb and not a candle for egg candling, the fact that she was close to her brother, Tom, and her personal experience story, all comes from her. I often quoted her directly from her emails. THANK YOU, SUSIE!
(2) Egg Candling information from Incubator Warehouse.
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