From the department of trivia and a small coincidence to note. I found it rather interesting.
A well told story seems to predictably emerge in all sorts of media every year it seems. The story is told time and again about the Chicago Valentine’s Day Massacre, the result of which began the long and bloody task of purging the local Mafia of the time from the local streets by honest law enforcement agencies. At least by those honest lawmen that could be found to be loyal during the twenties and thirties.
It happened on St.Valentines day in Chicago, in 1929?
The struggle between the Italian controlled Mafia of the South Side of the city against the Irish controlled Mafia of Chicago’s North Side.
This is a repeat of an e-mail shared with some family last year. It really sheds no light on our family history but when I recognized the address in Chicago where the incident occurred it just caught my curiosity. The murders happened some three months before our grandmother Mary Ellen McGinnis died in Stanwood some 40 years after her and her husband left Chicago for Seattle. I just wonder if she ever realized when hearing of the event in Chicago, did she ever recognize that it happened in her old Chicago neighborhood.
From: allie
Sent: Tuesday, February 14, 2012 3:59 PM
To: Nancy Robbins; Michael Jones; DON & JENNINE
Subject: TRIVIA
Hope all are having a memorable Valentines day............ !
Here is a bit of trivia discovered today......
As happens almost every Valentines day, some TV channel runs something about the Chicago Valentines Day Massacre of 1929 supposedly masterminded by Al Capone.
The program I watched just now on the History Channel gave the address of the infamous garage where the crimes took place..........2122 N. Clark St., Chicago, very near the lake front. That address really sounded familiar.
It seems, according to an 1885 Chicago City directory, James McGinnis Sr. and his new wife Mary Ellen Donahue were living on that very street, but a block south, at 2022 N. Clark St., some 44 years earlier of course. Our ancestors left town in 1889 and one can naturally assume the neighborhood really went downhill after they left. But it remained an Irish part of the city and eventually was under control of the Irish gangs.
An older brother of our Grandmother, Patrick Donahue, ran a grocery store in the neighborhood, in the same 2000 block of Clark St. He died in late 1930. He was still a grocer in Chicago in the 1920 census I believe. Maybe he was still in business in the neighborhood and if he was close to the mob action, he may very well have wished he had left town with his sister. I hope he didn't die of "lead poisoning" administered by some member of the Italian run South side gangs.
Like I said, it is but trivia, the kind that I really get a kick out of.
AJ
http://www.prairieghosts.com/valentine.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clark_Street_(Chicago)
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