A Fanning Father's Day

Everyone has a father. Not everyone has a dad. I am fortunate to have a great dad.

My dad, Richard Fanning, has been a great inspiration to me. He and my mom raised my sister and I with a wonderful sense of family pride. He made sure the we did family things even when there was not a lot of money on hand. Trips to the Bronx Zoo & Botanical Gardens and the local beach (Orchard or Rockaway) grew into trips to Virginia Beach, Disney World, Chincoteague Island, Massachusetts for skiing, and frequent visits with relatives even if it meant taking the subway to a bus at the Port Authority.

My dad's promotion to Deputy Chief

My dad spent 32 years as a fireman in NYC after 2 years as a Transit Policeman. I watched him work hard and rise through the ranks of the FDNY to become a Deputy Chief. There were usually lots of fire science books and binders around the house during those years before a promotion test and mom made sure she occupied us kids so not to disturb him while he was studying. I did not become the excellent test taker he was but I did come to realize the value of hard work because of him. I would like to think that I inherited his sense of service and bravery. I have heard from many in the fire department of what great guy he is and a pleasure to work with/for. I used to love to read his scrapbook as a kid with the articles of heroics and mayhem... The Jennings Street Collapse, the two times he apprehended burglars in our Bronx apartment building, and narratives of awards earned. I relished the visits as a young lad to the firehouse. If there was such a thing as direct deposit back then, I surely would have been cheated of many visits to Ladder 19 & Engine 50.

Not everyone can say their dad was Superman.

My dad has a great sense of humor and is always the life of the party sometimes to my mother's chagrin. I believe he inherited that from his parents, Joe & Vera, who knew how to have a good time. I always loved the stories of my grandparents summers in the Rockaway bungalow courts and the St. Ignatius parish hall in Yorkville. One particular story had them and their friends in either O'Gara's Bar or the Paddywagon Pub across from Playland when a fight broke out. They were caught in the back of the establishment near an open window. Rather than get caught up in the fray, the men passed the girls through the window and climbed out behind them but not before grabbing a few pitchers of beer... not all of them were theirs!

Poppy Joe tries a hand at the bodhran drum.

My grandfather, Joseph Patrick Fanning... originally known to me as Pop Pop which later became Poppy Joe, was a hard working man, too. He worked in the printing business and became his own boss when he opened his own agency, FanningType. He, too, valued the family time when he could. Although my father has different recollections from hen he was a kid, my experience as the eldest grandchild included the backyard pool in NJ and beach house rentals in the Jersey Shore's Lavalette and then Long Beach, NY. As I grew older, I was fortunate to live about a mile from him after we both settled in Long Beach permanently. It was nice share a beer with him and visit for a short time unannounced during a bike ride with the kids. It is wonderful that he was able spend time with own great-grand kids. I did not get to meet my great grandfather,also Joseph Patrick Fanning.

Joseph Patrick Sr., the great grandfather, was born in Ireland in 1898 and immigrated to the US as a child with his parents. He grew up in Hell's Kitchen and raised his family there, too. Although born Joseph Patrick, he was known as "Paddy" and I have imagined him speaking in a slight brogue despite being taught the language here in the US. Census reports cite his occupation as "driver" in trucking and "chauffeur for private family".  He passed away when my dad was only 3 years old and, unfortunately, never had a relationship with him. If my memory serves me correctly Poppy Joe told me Paddy drove a car for the Ruppert family. Col. Jacob Ruppert was a well known businessman in NYC. He inherited the Ruppert Brewery in Yorkville, was a Tammany Hall politician, and owned the New York Yankees. In fact, it was Ruppert who purchased Babe Ruth from the Boston Red Sox in 1919. Coincidentally, Harry Herbert Frazee Sr., the man who sold The Babe to fund his Broadway production of "No, No Nanette" was the father-in-law of my maternal 1st cousin (2x removed) Anna May Hoffman. And to make the family connection greater, Vera Kempen Fanning's (my paternal grandmother) father & grandfather both worked at the Ruppert Brewery at some point, too.

Paddy Fanning

And the man responsible for the Fannings being in America was Peter Joseph Fanning. in 1891, at the age of 28 years old, he moved his family to New York. The 1910 census reports that his occupation was "horse shoer". I am sure he led a life of hard work, too. I don't have much information on Peter. I don't know when he died but I know he wasn't wealthy when he did. Judging from his photo, he was likely a proud man. And I believe he would be proud of all the Fanning fathers that came from his lineage.

Peter Fanning

Not forgotten on this father's day is my other grandfather, who died when my mom was young, and the other great grandfathers whose blood runs through my veins.

George Wright, maternal grandfather

Frederick Harriman Wright, maternal great grandfather

Bart Hurley, maternal great grandfather

Henry "Henny" Kempen, paternal great grandfather

Frederick Finck, maternal 2x great grandfather

Jakob "Joe" Schalk, paternal 2x great grandfather

William Hoffman, maternal 2x great grandfather

Bartholomew Hurley Sr., maternal 2x great grandfather

My First Brush with the Revolutionary War

As I continue to work my way through the Hull family lineage, I introduce to you my 5X great grandparents, Stephen Hull (1743 - 1803) and Comfort Babcock (1746 - 1806).

Stephen Hull, of Stonington, Ct., is the first ancestor I discovered who served in the American Revolutionary War as a member of the Continental Army. Using Ancestry.com, I viewed the 1920 "Sons of the American Revolution" application of Harold Bragdon Winslow. He is also a descendant of the Hull family and has documented that Stephen and his father, also named Stephen, served in the 8th Connecticut Regiment under the command of Captain Thomas Wheeler & Thomas Holmes between September 8 - November 17, 1776. They also served under Lt. Col. Oliver Smith's regiment out of New London but no dates were given. The site also provides a copy of the actual payroll for this militia and shows one of the Stephen Hulls as a sergeant. Also listed are some other names that I have become familiar with during my genealogy research, such Denison, Babcock, and Billings. I have not been able to locate much of the activities of this regiment during the time period indicated.

Roll Call of members of the Eighth Connecticut Regiment in 1776.

A year prior to enlisting in the army Stephen Hull had married Comfort Babcock in Willington, CT. According to other family trees that I have connected to they had seven children:

• Elias (1778-?)
• Comfort (1780-?)
• Ami (1782-?)
• Latham (1784-?)
• William Little (1786-?) *my 4x great grandfather
• Matilda (1788-?)
• Lucretia (1792-1870)

  According a variety of sources, they resided Willington, CT., Windham, CT., and Stonington, CT. According to the pension roll of the US Revolution, Stephen died in 1803 in Willington. The Newspaper Abstract from the Northeast reports that Mrs. Comfort Hull died in Boston at the age of 66.

Journey Through the Hull Branch

Yesterday I wrote about my 3x great grandparents, John William Hull (1810-1881) & his wife, Sophia C. Kelley (1815-?), in an attempt to manage my research on the Hull Family. JW Hull was the son of William Little Hull (1786-1836) and the third child of seven siblings. His mother was Lydia Packard (1788-1870)

William Little Hull [4th great grandfather] was born on February 2, 1786 in Willington, Connecticut. On December 29,1805 he married Lydia Packard [4th great grandmother] in a service by the Reverend Stephen Gano in Rhode Island. They had seven children:

• William Sterry (1806-1843)
• Joseph Augustus (1808-1852)
• John William (1810-1881)
• Cornelia Augusta (1812-1851)
• Charlotte (1814-?)
• Harriett (1822-1885)
• Alexander (1824-1884)

 William and Lydia moved at some point to the Rochester, NY area and he died when he was 50. He is buried at the Brighton Cemetery in Monroe County. Lydia had moved in with her son Alexander in Brooklyn by the 1855 NYS census and she was also living in Brooklyn in the 1865 census at her daughter Cornelia's home. Cornelia [4th great aunt] was married to Washington Van Zandt (1809-1868). She died in 1870 and was buried with her husband at the Brighton Cemetery.

I came across some interesting information regarding the Reverend Washington Van Zandt. He and Cornelia lived in upstate Rochester, New York. According to several books, Van Zandt, rector of St. Paul's Church, was the subject of a trial involving the seduction of 16 year-old Sophia Murdock in 1941. He was found guilty and assessed with damages of $3000. A very hefty fine in those days. It was quite scandalous for the era and was covered by many newspapers across the region. Van Zandt maintained and protested his innocence and there were several articles in the following years regarding appeals. He was dismissed from ministry by the Episcopal Bishop Delaney in 1848. A disgraced Washington & Cornelia were residents of Syracuse during the 1850 census and had moved to Brooklyn by 1865.

Portrait of Cornelia Augusta Hull Van Zandt

By 1856 Washington Van Zandt had become a newspaper editor of The Daily Star. There was a scathing column against him in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle which states, "That a creature with a character so foul and leprous; whose deeds have been recorded in the genial columns of The Police Gazette ; whose transition from the ministry to the purlieus of a three-cent grog cellar was in accordance with the natural gravitation of his character, should invite the lash of personalities by attacking others is a mystery which can only be explained by acknowledging the truth of the quotation, "Quem deus vult perdere prius dementat" ("Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad"). Quite the wordsmiths over in Brooklyn!

According to a Brooklyn Daily Eagle article from 1937, there is a portrait of Rev. Washington Van Zandt at the Zion Episcopal Church of Douglaston-Little Neck. It was unveiled at their 107th Anniversary. It turns out that Washington was the 11th son of Wynant Van Zandt who founded the church in 1830.

Working in the Opposite Direction

In the past, I have started discussing a branch of the family at its furthest point and brought the family tree back to me. I am going to go with the opposite approach with this branch of three because of its reach and distance.

As a child I was told that that one of my ancestors was famed US Navy Commodore Isaac Hull of the USS Constitution who had fought in the Quasi War, the Barbary Wars and the War of 1812. Before the days of the internet, I had seen hand written family trees where it showed my second great-grandmother was named Sophia Kelley Hull. She was married to John Guttridge Wright. I had discussed them a few years ago in this post but we explored the Wright side of the family. Now, I will escort you on my journey to reveal if Isaac Hull was actually in my family tree or is one of those long told family lore that cannot be verified.

Commodore Isaac Hull

Sophia Kelley Hull (1838-1927), born in New York City to John William Hull (1810-1881) and Sophia C. Kelley (1815- ?). She married John G. Wright when she was 19 years old and had three children (Frederick Harriman Wright, William John Wright, and Madeleine Wright) by the time she was 25. John was a successful grain merchant and they seemed to be doing well before 1880. In the 1880 Census it appears that John and Sophia were living separately. Sophia and her son William, a book keeper, were living in Park Slope, Brooklyn at 401 Third Street. John was living a few blocks away at 426 Sixth Street with Frederick, 16 years old. They were all listed as "boarders". John died in 1908 in Chaptico, MD. Sophia was located in the 1910 census in Washington DC with her son William, who had become a minister. In 1920 she was with her son William & wife Lucy Hayden Gough (1881-1969) in Statesville, North Carolina according to a local newspaper article but was also listed in the census as residing with her daughter Madeleine and her husband Cheever Newhall Ely (1849 - 1929) at 289 Madison Ave, NYC (with their two maids). She died on March 11, 1927 in Washington, DC and was buried in NYC on March 27th.

John William Hull, Sophia's father, was a railroad iron dealer according to the 1860 census. He & his wife, Sophia Kelley, lived in 21st Ward. This was the area of Sixth Ave to East River from E 25 St to E 40 St. They also resided in the same building as their daughter Sophia & John G Wright along with 2 servants. Their "Personal Estate" was worth $14,000 according to the census record. John Hull died in 1881 at 71 years old. I wonder if The Hull's were on hand for the grand opening of Central Park in 1858?

Sophia C. Kelley (my 3rd great-grandmother) was born in Philadelphia in 1815. I have not found any records indicating who her parents were. I am not sure how she came to live in NYC or how she met John W. Hull, however, after his death she lived with her daughter Sophia Wright in the Brooklyn apartment on Third St... and no servants!