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on 02/10/2007
on 02/10/2007The Ferris Family Genealogy Project - 2007
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1888 was a leap year that started on a Sunday. The United States presidential election of 1888 was held on November 6, 1888. Incumbent President Grover Cleveland received the greatest number of popular votes, but Republican challanger Benjamin Harrison's 233 electoral votes topped Cleveland's 168 to win the election. This marked the first time since the controversial election of 1876 that a President-elect failed to win the popular vote. In London, England on November 9 of that same year the dead body of Mary Jane Kelly is found. She is consdiered to be the fifth, and last, of Jack the Ripper's victims. On that same date Thomas Ferris is born in Cambridge, Massachusetts to Robert James Ferris and his Irish born wife Sarah Mae (Porteus) Ferris. Thomas was the second of eight children born to Sarah and Robert. Two months previous in Washington D.C. the National Geographical Society was founded. Locally in Cambridge, the Cambridge Rindge and Latin School began as the Cambridge Manual Training School. That same year the architectual firm of Lonfellow, Alden, & Harlow designed the Cambridge City Hall. Thomas' grandfather and namesake died on July 1, 1887 and never met his grandson.
The Federal Census Record of 1900 show Thomas as eleven years old living at 17 Park Street, Somerville, Massachusetts with his father and mother. His father, Robert, also Cambridge born was listed as a peddler and Sarah, Thomas' mother as a homemaker. Thomas' siblings were Sarah, called Sadie who was thirteen, Robert Junior aged nine, and Laura Nelson just one month shy of her first birthday. Thomas' other siblings to come would be Ethyl, George, Edith and Beatrice Cora. On December 27, 1911 in Cambridge, Thomas married Mary Catherine Maloney, a bookkeeper living near the Charlestown Monument on 46 Lexington Street in Charlestown a neighborhood of Boston. This would be the couple's first and only marriage. Thomas was twenty-two and Mary was seventeen at the time of the ceremony. E.C. Simpson a clergy from 1541 Cambridge Street in Cambridge performed the ceremony. Thomas was living on 6 Hamlet Street. in the Prospect Hill section of Somerville, Massachusetts.
Mary Catherine was the daughter of Thomas Maloney and Bridgett Donnelly both of Carbonear, Newfoundland in Canada. Thomas Maloney was living in Boston now working as a longshoreman and his wife as a homemaker. Sarah Mae, called Sal was born on June, 22, 1913 to Mary and Thomas followed by Robert James, named after his still alive grandfather on March 18, 1917. Records show that Thomas, using the name Paul Williams, joined the Army and was in a Tank Corp stationed briefly in Georgia during the war. He enlisted on November 6, 1918 and left on April 18, 1919. Edna's birth followed on December 23, 1919 but she died the next day on the twenty-fourth. On December 9, 1921 while residing at 9 Richdale Avenue in Somerville,
Albert Thomas was born. Later on December 14, 1923 after moving to 91A Boston Avenue, Thomas, called Tommy was born. Tommy was struck and killed right outside his house on March 16, 1927 just three months shy of his fourth birthday. Walter was born on February 2, 1925 and William Joseph that same month on the 16th of 1928. Finally Mary Catherine was born January 29, 1929.
Thomas owned Ferris Garage and was a good mechanic and car salesman. He was a property owner and had a summer home in Camp Ellis, Maine called Camp Wa-Wa. Some or all of this was lost during the depresssion. It is said that Thomas loved people and horses. At the age of fifty-four years, five months, and fifteen days, on April 25, 1943 Thomas died in the Soldier's Home Hospital in Chelsea, Massachusetts from Bilateral Bronchopneumonia. He had been living on Puritan Road in the Ten Hills section of Somerville when he passed. E.G. Bryant Funeral Services interred him in Range 76, Grave 16 in the Cambridge Cemetery on 76 Coolidge Avenue, Cambridge, MA on April 27, 1943. Buried ahead of him in the same plot was William P Ferris who died at the age of one year and three months on January 30, 1897 from enteritis. Two years later Thomas's uncle Charles Alexander Ferris died from phithisis on January 22, 1899 at the age of thirty-two. Several young children, Walter E. Ferris only one month and four days old died on December 5, 1902, Edna Ferris who died from premature birth survived only one day and was buried on December 26, 1919, and finally Stella Ferris joined the remains of her family living only one month and twenty-one days perishing from Broncho Pneumonia.
The grave would remain closed without a headstone for nearly twenty-one years until finally opening to receive the body of Thomas. Ironically this grave was one of two grave sites purchased many years ago by his great grandfather and namesake. Now the two men of the same name rest in the same grounds. To this day Range 76 Grave 16 contain the remains of seven of the Ferris family and is without a headstone. The grave opened one final time to allow the seventh and final family member to be buried. On June 5, 1952 surviving Thomas by just over nine years, Mary Catherine followed her husband to the cemetery buried by the same Ellwood Bryant Funeral Services. After fighting for forty-eight hours at the hospital Mary succumbed to Broncho Pneumonia. An autopsy confirmed that Hepatic Necrosis Gastro Intestinal Hemorrhage contributed to her death. She had been living at 26 E. Shephard Street just a few minutes from the Cambridge Common in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Her son, Albert Thomas Ferris was informed of her death and so this generation of the Ferris Family was passed on to the next.
© 2007 John Joseph Ferris Sr.