An exceptional success story

[smcarberry]

This will come off as brash and bragging, but I don't see it as out of place to post it. It shows not only the triumph of this family at a time when women did not have such experiences, but also I found it through sheer perseverance, after slogging through literally hundreds of news articles in the past two weeks. I had no idea that this event had happened; my search term was merely "Carberry + marriage" in the Philadelphia Inquirer. Along with many misses which were marriages for other families, not a Carberry in sight, up pops this gem. I don't know what happened to the watch, but for me the reward
is seeing success happen for a grandchild of a man who lost his life trying to get his family re-settled in Montreal, after the family lost the girl's great-grandfather during the Famine and then saw their home pulled down during a winter eviction in 1849.

Girls in this era (the below event took place in 1897) did not usually continue in school beyond age 14. Bernadette moreover continued her schooling in the sciences, a definite male domain at the time, and became a biology teacher, our family's first female professional. She died single in 1967, outlived by her brothers Joseph (who died later that year) and my grandfather Frank, who lasted until 1974. They are all in the same cemetery, in the central, very visible plot purchased by Bernadette in 1929. Her photo appears on this Forum in the discussion on Clare Irish of Worcester, Mass.,
although this family lived in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (no known relatives in Mass.).

Sharon Carberry

Bernadette's school honor.jpg (258.35 KiB) Viewed 3559 times