Overview
After Sena Thompson O’Donnell died in 1912, Dad’s father James married Margaret McIntyre in 1915, when she was 27 and he, 42. She became the mother of:
- James J. (1918-2010) (Dad)
- William F. (1922-2004)
- Marie (1925-1926)
- Laurence L. (‘Lorny’) (1927-1961)
- Marion (b. 1931)
Little could be discovered about Dad’s mother before she married his father in 1915, and not much more afterwards.
The best place to get a sense of her character and personality is in her letters to him while he was in the Navy during World War II. There her voice is warm, unassuming, affectionate, and self-deprecating. The same is true of those from Dad’s father. In them we get a vivid sense of his kindness and gentleness of spirit.
Parents and Early Years
According to her birth, death, and marriage records (below) she was born in Milwaukee on January 10, 1888, daughter of George McIntyre and Elizabeth McDonough McIntyre, who were also natives of Milwaukee. A note on her birth record (below) says that the family was better known as “Mack” but its legal name was “McIntyre.” Both names are as common as trees in a park even if a search is confined just to Milwaukee; if the search is widened and variant name spellings included, the trees multiply into a trackless wilderness. Without additional information with which to triangulate her in the general population, finding anything more about Margaret McIntyre/Mack’s early years proved impossible.
With one exception.
The only documentation about her parents is a marriage record in which “George McEntyre” married “Lizzie McDonogh” (note the variant spellings) in June 1886, with a notation that the event had occurred eleven months earlier (May 1885). After this one reference the two could not be traced any further.
The exception noted earlier might explain their disappearance from public records. In the 1900 census a Margaret McIntyre is described as an “inmate” at St. Rose’s Orphan Asylum. The name alone wouldn’t be sufficient to positively identify this twelve-year-old girl as our ancestor, but not only is the birth year the same, so too is the month, making an identification tentatively possible. Not a certainty, but a good chance.
No death records could be found for either George or Elizabeth McIntyre/Mack, so we can only presume that they died, together or separately, sometime between 1888 and 1899. On her marriage application Margaret lists the names of both her parents, who do not have to be living to be cited.
The St. Rose Orphanage was opened in 1848 by the Daughters of Charity to care for orphaned or destitute girls. Outgrowing its original Jackson Street site, it moved in 1888 to a larger building in the 2300 block of Lake Drive, where it continued to serve the Milwaukee Archdiocese until 1973, when it was sold to St. Mary’s Hospital for an expansion. Its spirit if not its original purpose lives on in the St. Rose Youth and Family Center, offering behavioral and emotional services to at-risk girls between twelve and eighteen.
Margaret McIntyre had the good fortune to spend only a relatively short time at St. Rose’s. At some point she was welcomed into the household of her paternal grandfather, Peter McIntyre (the 1905 state census record is above). When she left the orphanage couldn’t be found, nor when she left her grandfather’s house after 1905, nor her life between 1905 and 1915, when she married James J. O’Donnell Sr.
Her Death
Margaret McIntyre O’Donnell died suddenly at the young age of 56 on May 4, 1944, less than a month after Mom and Dad’s wedding. The cause was left ventricle heart failure following bowel resection surgery to eliminate a colorectal cancer. In left ventricle failure the heart can’t propel oxygenated blood with sufficient force to completely reach the rest of the body. Blood pools in the ventricle and then around the lungs, causing heart enlargement and culminating in congestive heart failure. Among the symptoms are breathlessness, nausea, tiredness, cough, and more.
She probably had been displaying undiagnosed cardiac symptoms for some time before seeing a physician about the colorectal cancer symptoms. She underwent the resection surgery on May 3, 1944, but must have been so weakened by the untreated ventricle failure that she died the following day at 7:00 in the evening (see her death certificate below).
Photo Collection
Besides her letters to Dad during the war, the collection below contains several pictures of her as well as a few miscellaneous documents.
