WINIFRED MCFARLAND

As I mentioned earlier, Aunt Winnie had already died
before I was born but her presence is still felt in the
family in a way most genealogy researchers find their
ancestors are remembered



These are among the oldest pictures in the family album.
Only two pictures of my grandmother Agnes McFarland
are older and these are the only ones with her younger
sister Winnie. I think the girl on the running board with
her is Aggie but that’s a guess on my part.

I think Mom once identified the two men as Uncle Mike
and one of the other uncles. The cap on the car roof had me
wondering briefly since one bit of information about my
Grandfather White was that he had worked for a time as a
chauffeur. But both men look older than the girls and I know
my grandparents were close in age when they married.I’ve
no clue to the identities of the other two girls or of the man
and woman walking up the road in the background. The only
thing I can say with a bit of certainty is that they seem to be
enjoying a day out in the country some time in the 1920’s.

Winifred McFarland was born in 1901 the 12th of 13 children.
(Only 8 made it to adulthood.) I know very little about her. She
appears as a 9 year old on the 1910 census. On the 1920 census
she was a 19 year old office clerk. By 1930 her father had died
and her older brothers and sisters were married and moved out,
so Winifred was the only one left living at home with her mother
at 950 Parker St in Boston. Winifred was listed as a stenographer
at a "chemical drug" business.

Winnie was only forty years old when she died on January
15th, 1940. I wasn't born until 1948, so I never met my grandaunt
But her boyfriend Jack Coyne visited us often because my
grandmother lived with us and I believe Jack and Aggie
stayed good friends until Aggie died.

Winnifred's death came at a time when her siblings were past having
more children and the next one was too young as yet to marry and
start raising families. I was the next child born, but my Uncle Ed
and Aunt Emily were the first to have a daughter, and so my cousin is
named Winifred White. (There was another Winifred McFarland, a
daughter of my Grand Uncle Mike, who was born back in 1917)

And so Grand Aunt Winifred is remembered through her namesake.