The Callans and McClarys, by John Edward Callan - Callanworld

The Callans and McClarys
Trail and Eighth Street. This was
the same period when Nancy
(Byrd) Nunamaker and her
husband George were living in
George’s mother’s house in
Miami. Virginia would often visit
them. Nancy recalls that Virginia
“loved to gamble and would go
to Freeport (Louisiana) on a
boat to gamble.” Nancy says she
and George once went to the
dog races with Virginia, Layman,
Virginia’s daughter Arlene and
Arlene’s husband. That day, says
Nancy, ”They all won and
George and I lost.”
Virginia kept a large
wooden rosary on a curtain rod
at her house. One day she took
it down for Nancy to see. “It
seemed to quiver in my hands,”
says Nancy. Virginia said Nancy
was the only one who had
experienced this, and so promised
to give it to her when she
passed away. Peggy and George
Gunkle, who are featured in the
following chapter, went up to see
Virginia a while later, and
Virginia gave the rosary to Peggy.
When Peggy moved to Springfield,
Mo., from Rochester, she
gave Nancy the rosary, and it
hangs on one of Nancy’s curtain
rods today.
Henry Henry, Henry who married a
woman named Wilma and lived
in a French settlement in
Highgate Center, Vermont.
Arthur, Arthur, who married a
woman named Lilliam, and lived
in Hartford, Connecticut, and
died of diabetes. Nancy recalls
that when the family went to visit
Arthur in the 1950s, he had in
his bedroom a hospital bed and
a large mirror on the back wall
so that he could see his hind end
when he gave himself insulin
shots. “He was a model railroad
collector, wore a engineer’s hat,
and had a large room completely
set up with train tracks.”
So, these were the children
of Henry Lambert, and the
brothers and sisters of Libbie
Lambert, who married Joseph
Messier..
Joseph Messier, the grandfather
of Margery (Byrd) Callan,
died when Margery was only 11
years old. Both Margery and her
sister Nancy recall vividly the trip
to Vermont they took when they
heard he had been diagnosed
with lung cancer and did not
have long to live.
“Grandpa died during
World War II,” says Margery.
”He died at home. He looked a
lot like Uncle Fran (Francis, see
below) did in later years. He was
a jolly old guy, a drunk too.
When he died we had to get gas
stamps to go up to the funeral. It
was up in Connecticut. Grandma
and grandpa were living in
Hartford, Connecticut, so there
was a “V” in the road. If you
took one road you go to Vermont
and if you took the other,
you go to Connecticut.”
Nancy continues the story:
“We were driving in a ‘41 Chevy.
We had all kinds of troubles that
night with the lights on the car.
The headlights kept going out.
We were having trouble with the
battery or something. Two truck
drivers fit us in between them as
~ 46 ~
we drove up there. In the middle
of the night , there was two big
clouds in the sky , shaped like
the letters I-S. Like I suffered. So
Mom thought he was dead. She
wanted to go to Vermont, which
is where all the family was
buried. We couldn’t go because
the allotment said Connecticut.”
Because of this, says
Margery, they went to their
grandparents’ home in Hartford
instead, “Aunt Kay was there,
Billie and Dottie and all their
kids. Because we chose Connecticut,
and he was buried in
Vermont, my mother didn’t get
there for the funeral. That would
have been about 1945. We were
living on Garson Avenue. I know
rationing was still on, you had to
get coupons for sugar and all that
kind of stuff. I can still see the
pictures. I can still describe the
house they lived in Vermont.”
After Joseph died,
Josephine spent about 20 years
as a widow. When in her 70s,
sometime between 1961 and
1967, she remarried, in a ceremony
held at Corpus Christi
Church in Rochester, New York.
She married David Brown, a
Presbyterian Scottish man. Since
he was not Catholic, the priest at
the ceremony supposedly asked
him to confirm that they would
raise any childen they had in the
Catholic Church. David passed
away just a few years after their
marriage. For the remainder of
her life, our family referred to
Josephine as “Grandma Brown.”
Until her last months,
Grandma Brown was alert and
an avid debater of politics and
anything in the news. When Al
Callan’s family moved away from
Rochester on Jan 5, 1973, they
spent there last day and evening
in New York at the home of
Grandma Brown. John Callan
clearly remembers Grandma
Brown watching television
coverage of the opening of the
Watergate Hearings which
convened that week.
The The Messier Messier –Lamberts –Lamberts
–Lamberts
As was said above,
Josephine Lambert married
Joseph Messier. The couple had
ten children, nine of which
survived to adulthood. The ten
children were: Roland, Francis,
Cecilia (Margery’s mother), Alta,
Irene, Evelyn, Catherine (“Kay”),
the inevitable “Joseph,” Wilfred,
and Bernadette. Of this generation,
all have passed away except
Catherine and Irene. Catherine
lives with her daughter Carol in
New York; Irene lives with her
daughter Mary in Ohio. Lorraine
Messier, the widow of Francis,
lives alone in Naples, New York.
In order of birth, the ten children
were as follows:
Roland Roland Messier Messier Messier was born
on 18 May 1908 in New Hampshire.
He died of cancer Oct. 9,
2001 in Manchester, Connecticut,
after spending just a few days
in a hospice there.
Francis Francis Messier Messier
Messier was born
on 10 Mar 1912. His first wife
was named Midge, by whom he
had a daughter, who now lives in
Rutland, New York. Francis’s