John Augustine Henry, my maternal grandfather, was born 9 July 1881 in Chicago, the fourth of six children born to James Henry (1850-1891) and Mary Byrne (1855-1899). James and Mary were born in Knocknaskeagh (Thornhill), a small town near Kiltimagh in County Mayo, Ireland. James was the son of Patrick Henry and Nellie Kilgallon, Mary the daughter of Michael Byrne and Hanora (Nora) Higgins. John Augustine Henry was baptized at St. Bridget's Church on Archer Avenue, his parents' local parish in the Bridgeport neighborhood of Chicago's South Side.

John Henry's parents were married in Kiltimagh, County Mayo, Ireland, on 30 Dec. 1872, shortly before immigrating to the United States in June 1873. The couple was accompanied by two of Mary Byrne's brothers, Patrick and John, who lived with them for several years. They all settled in Cleveland, Ohio, where the first three of James and Mary's childlren were born: Patrick (1875-1905), Thomas (1877-1922), and James (1879-1934). It was in Cleveland in 1876 that James Henry filed his intention to become a U.S. citizen. In 1880 the family moved to Chicago and settled in an apartment at 1061 31st Street in Chicago's Bridgeport neighborhood..  For the rest of their lives, James and Mary called Bridgeport home.

A younger sister of Mary's, Ann, and Mary's widowed mother Nora Higgins Byrne (1831-1896) immigrated to the United States in the mid-1880s and joined the Henry family in Chicago.  In the 1890s, one of James's younger brothers, Patrick (1866-1912), left Ireland and came to Chicago to live with them, too.   Two more children were born to James and Mary Henry: Nora (1883-1943) and William (1885-1886).

Tragedy struck the family on 8 September 1886 when the youngest child, Willie, aged eighteen months, wandered away from a group of children as he followed an Italian organ grinder across 31st Street.  The child was run over by a horse-drawn streetcar in front of his house and killed instantly.  Heartbreaking accounts of the event and the subsequent inquest, during which the streetcar's driver, Jacob Bergman, was exonerated of all blame, appeared on the front pages of the Chicago Journal and the Chicago Daily News.  Willie was buried on 9 September in the newly-opened Mount Olivet Cemetery at 111th Street and California Avenue.

Most of the Henrys, in fact, were not long lived:  James Henry died on 13 April 1891, aged 41, at his home at 2974 Deering Street and was buried with Willie in Mount Olivet.  After her husband's death, Mary Henry and her children went to live with her married brother John at 2921 Bonfield Street in Bridgeport and then around 1898 took an apartment at 2953 Elias Court.   Around this time, the children seem to have been divided up among various aunts and uncles who lived nearby.  Mary Henry's mother Nora, who lived at 3029 Haynes Court with her married daughter Ann McAvoy, died in 1896 and was buried in Mount Olivet.

In March 1899 Mary Henry died, aged 44, and also was buried in Mount Olivet.  About a year later, her eldest son Patrick married Clara Langlois, by whom he had two children, Patrick and Bernard. Patrick, his wife Clara, their two children, and Patrick's siblings, as well as Patrick's uncle (also Patrick) lived together on Elias Court. After the younger Patrick's death in 1905, his widow remarried, but the Henrys continued to live together in the same apartment; in fact, Nora and James were still living there in the late 1920s. John and his siblings attended St. Bridget's School, where John must have known a classmate, John O'Connell (1882-1944), whose younger sister, Mary Ellen O'Connell, John Henry would later marry.

Except for Patrick, none of John Henry's siblings ever married. Thomas was killed on 2 November 1922 in an accident at the meat-packing plant in the Union Stock Yards where he worked. James and Nora Henry lived together in Bridgeport and later at 59th and Racine Avenue. James Henry died in 1934. After his death, Nora moved to the Brighton Park neighborhood and in her last years lived in an apartment above the Brighton Theatre on Archer Avenue. She died in 1943.

Around 1912, John Henry went to work for the Grand Trunk Railroad as a conductor. For the rest of his life, he worked for the Grand Trunk, in later years in the Elsdon Yards on the South Side as a switchman and finally, at the time of his death, as assistant yardmaster.

John Henry was married to May O'Connell on 2 June 1915 at St. Bridget's Church on Archer Avenue. The couple honeymooned at St. Joseph, Michigan, and then took up residence in May's family home at 1234 W. 32nd Street. Shortly after their marriage, they moved to a bungalow at 7541 S. Peoria Street where their first child, Thomas Raymond, was born on 4 May 1916. The family then moved to an apartment at 6112 S. Fairfield Avenue, where their second child, Loretta Mary, was born on 16 March 1918. John and May Henry bought a lot on S. Talman Avenue in the Chicago Lawn neighborhood of the South Side, and in 1922 built a brick bungalow at number 6137. Their third and final child, Rita Kathryn, was born 3 November 1922.

Life was simple for the Henrys. Like most of the families on their block, they didn't own a car and did their commuiting via streetcar and the elevated. John Henry worked seven days a week for the Grand Trunk in the days before paid vacations, pensions, or Railroad Retirement benefits. He usually worked an early shift (7:00 A.M. to 4:00 P.M.). The family attended St. Rita of Cascia Church on 63rd Street, and all of the children were enrolled in St. Rita's School.

John Henry was a kind man. Three of May Henry's siblings--Sinon, Claribel, and Henry--lived with the Henrys until their marriages. In 1930, when May's brother John O'Connell, who was living with his married sister Kathryn Wiggins, lost his job and couldn't pay her his room and board, John Henry invited him into his home and let him stay for free.

In July 1932, John Henry underwent emergency surgery for a perforated ulcer at St. Bernard's Hospital on S. Harvard Avenue. He died there on 12 July and was waked at the family home at 6137 S. Talman. He was buried in the O'Connell family lot at Mount Olivet Cemetery, and many of his co-workers road the Grand Trunk from the Elsdon Yards at 51st Street to the cemetery at 111th Street to attend his burial. 

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