FAMILY FACES: ANNA EGAN KANE

As I creep (vault seems more like it) toward the only deadline worthy of the name, it occurs to me there aren't many left in the family who can identify the faces of the people in old family photographs or can remember their stories. So I've started this thread to contribute what I know.

My facts may be wrong. Many stories were passed down to me from my father, who was his mother's youngest child and her willing listener, as I was his. Lots of room for mistakes there. So, please, anyone who can correct my facts, or has different versions of these stories, or different stories altogether, let me know.

This photograph, taken sometime in the 1930s, shows my grandmother, Anna Egan Kane, and my cousin Vera, her granddaughter. As far as I know, my grandmother had ten children, not necessarily in this order--Mae, Anna, Thomas, Francis, Leticia, Elizabeth, Charles, Joseph, and two Andrews, both of whom died young.

My grandfather wanted a son named Andrew, after his grandfather, an early Union organizer. When the first little Andrew died, he gave the name to the next boy, then when he died wanted to pass it on to the next, my father. "Oh no," said my grandmother. Not that she was superstitious, but there was no point tempting fate. "This child is mine. I'll name him." And so my father became Joseph, not Andrew 3.