Rudolph Row and the Boland/McCaffery Connection

​I recently wrote a post about my paternal grandfather’s boxing career and mentioned one of the venues he fought at was known as Rudolph’s Open Air  Ring located in front of of a group of employee row-houses known as Rudolph’s Row. 

After I wrote the post, I remembered my maternal grandmother Ann Marie McCaffery’s birth certificate that stated she was born in a house on the grounds of Pencoyd Iron Works. On a hunch, I went back to look at my research records on the McCaffery (also spelled McCafferty) clan. Lo and behold, I was able to connect the dots and solve another piece of the puzzle. My grandmother was born in one of the Rudolph Row houses. I discovered that employees of Pencoyd Iron Works also lived in Rudolph’s Row-Houses. At first I thought it was only the employees of Sebastian Rudolph’s paper mill known as Ashland that resided in those homes. I discovered that John and Agnes (Bridget) Boland McCafferty resided at Rudolph’s Row and that my grandmother was born there. John McCafferty immigrated from Letterkenney Ireland to Philadelphia Pennsylvania in 1908 and found employment at Pencoyd Iron Works. John’s brother Columb (later Americanized to Collum) was already living in Manayunk and working at Pencoyd. Later, I discovered the the connection between Letterkenney, Ireland and the neighborhood of Manayunk and Pencoyd Iron Works.

Before John McCafferty left his home in Ireland, he already had a place to live and work in Philadelphia Pennsylvania. 

By 1908 and even as early as Columb’s immigration in the late 1800’s, the worst of the Great Famine had passed. However, it left County Donegal economically “stagnant”. At the same time, Manayunk in Philadelphia was booming in textiles, locomotive manufacturing and steel production. As a result, young men from County Donegal left in the thousands to travel to a little section of town known as Manayunk “Workplace of the World” to seek employment. 

Rudolph was a historic collection of connected mill worker houses that housed the employees and their families of Ashland Paper Mill and Pencoyd Iron Works. Though the houses were located on the west side of the River known as West Manayunk, it was deeply connected to the industrial and social fabric of next door Manayunk. Today, West Manayunk is Belmont Hills and Rudolph Row was removed to build the Schuylkill Expressway in the 1950’s. 

I believe my maternal great grandfather was an employee of Pencoyd Iron Works who lived with his wife and his wife’s family. In the 1910 census records, my great great grandparents John and Ellen Boland resided on River Rd with their children. What is interesting about that is my great great grandfather did not work at Ashland Paper Mill or Pencoyd Iron Works but worked digging graves at nearby Westminster Cemetery. I always thought 137 River Rd was on the grounds of Westminster Cemetery only to discover it was a Rudolph Row house. In 1911, John McCafferty married their daughter Agnes (Bridget) Boland and Agnes gave birth to their daughter (my grandmother)  in that house in 1912. 

Living at Rudolph Row meant you shared one water well located on the sidewalk, had no indoor plumbing, lived between a river and railroad tracks which had locomotives belch out thick coal smoke, high noise and pollution levels from nearby industries and close to prize boxing fights and carnivals at the Rudolph Open Air Ring that was located across from the row houses.

Work conditions at Ashland Paper Mill and Pencoyd Iron Works were physically grueling and dangerous. At Ashland Paper Mill, workers were crashed by machines or drowned in large vats that contained bleaching agents. At Pencoyd, there were blast furnace accidents, intense heat, toxic gases and ash that polluted the air. Employees worked 12 hour shifts six days a week without overtime or benefits with few breaks. Child labor was abundant where children worked long hours with even less pay. It was a time where industry was unregulated and life threatening. 

Attached are pictures of my grandmother Ann McCaffery/McCafferty’s birth certificate and the 1910 census records of the Boland family on River Rd. I also added the pictures of Rudolph Row, John and Ellen Boland, marriage certificate of John and Agnes Boland Mccafferty/Mccaffery and Ann McCaffery Gallagher. The last picture of Rudolph Row, I added a white line pointing out the Boland House (137) where my grandmother (Anna) was born. 

Wild Buck Fleming

In the 1920’s my paternal grandfather, John Wisloski (later Americanized to Weleski) was a boxer known as “Wild Buck Fleming”. 

Born and raised in the Manayunk section of Philadelphia, he was the third and youngest son of Lukas and Eva Wisloski. 

As a boxer he was very popular in the working-class neighborhoods of Manayunk, and Roxborough. He had the ability of drawing massive, passionate crowds of neighborhood supporters. The crowds nicknamed him “Wild” because of his high intensity, aggressive and crowd pleasing fighting style. He fought with heart, passion and forward pressure as oppose to strict defensive moves. While researching my grandfather’s history, I came across this exact quote, “he was an absolute warrior and a genuine local legend during the peak of the Golden Age of Philadelphia boxing”.

In 1926, he fought a highly feared middleweight contender from Conshohocken named Francis “Bunny” Blake. The match took place on a very hot and humid evening in July at the Rudolph’s Open Air Ring in Manayunk that was located along the Schuylkill  River. Rudolph’s ring was a boxing venue situated by the old railroad tracks used by Pencoyd Iron Works and next to the stone pillars of the Manayunk Bridge. It sat in front of a group of row houses built by Rudolph for his paper mill (Ashland) employees. The crowd favored “Fleming” and “Fleming” came out fighting in his usual wild aggressive nature. “Bunny” made several sharp defensive movements and in the fifth round threw a hard punch that cut a deep bloody gash above “Fleming”’s eye. But despite the deep gash that covered his face and the blood in his eyes, “Fleming” never gave up and continued to fight. 

Other places he fought at were the Olympia Athletic Club at Broad and Bainbridge against Johnny Dundee, but it was at the Auditorium Athletic Association venue in North Philadelphia that gave him the reputation of being an aggressive, relentless, crowd pleaser. 

I never knew him because he died four years before my birth of a cerebral hemorrhage. He is interred at Laurel Hill (East) cemetery in the East Falls section of Philadelphia.

Virtual Cemetery

​​I have online virtual cemeteries for several cemeteries but worked on uploading all the Voigts and Ritters interred at Bethany German Lutheran, Laurel Hill East, Laurel Hill West, Westminster, Mount Vernon, Mount Peace and Leverington cemeteries. Many were reinterred from dysfunctional cemeteries such as Glenwood located at 27th and Ridge, Odd Fellows at 24th and Diamond, American Mechanics at 22nd and Diamond and the German Lutheran cemetery that once was located at 31st and Lehigh Ave. 

After all these years of researching, I still cannot wrap my head around the fact these cemeteries were closed, and bodies moved as a result of “eminent domain” so housing projects could be built in its place. First, city politicians and urban planners banned new burials stating the cemeteries were overcrowded, then the cemeteries fell into ruin from lack of funds. Secondly, those same politicians and planners condemned the cemeteries because they viewed these cemeteries as undeveloped land and it was cheaper than tearing down neighborhoods or spending large amounts of money for commercial property. 

Mass exhumation began. Bodies were dug up. Few notices were placed in the newspapers to alert descendants of the plan to unearth their ancestors. Families who discovered the city’s plan went to court with deeds in hand stating they owned the land where their relatives were buried, but were told by the courts that “the deeds” only gave rights to burial in that space and not ownership. The courts determined it was more important to provide housing, highways and parking lots for the living than preserving the cemeteries of the dead. Families demanded that the city pay to have their loved ones reinterred at the cemeteries of their chosen. The city agreed so some families had them reinterred. Because there were few notices in the newspapers and most families were left unaware, the courts allowed the mass exhumation of bodies and had them reinterred in mass graves. Since they thought it was “too expensive” to move tombstones, the city sold them to contractors who threw them in the Delaware to act as a foundation for the Betsy Ross Bridge.

On a more personal note, I remember my Uncle Gene telling me how the caskets were piled up on each other. He said, some of the caskets were old and deteriorated to the point where you could see the decomposed bodies. He was horrified that the contractors in charge of exhuming the graves were careless and displayed a lack of dignity for the deceased. 

In 2013 as  modern day contractors were working on a playground built over the once burial ground of Odd Fellows, they encountered 28 caskets of remains that were never exhumed and reinterred prompting the creation of new laws that made the courts stop new developments and appoint state archaeologists to properly document, exhume and reinter at the city’s expense that which should have occurred in years past.

Sometimes I feel like a detective doing genealogy work. Creating the virtual cemeteries then adding in the ancestor’s information had given me the opportunity to review dozens and dozens of death certificates and burial records to confirm where they were buried and of course following the paper trail if the ancestor’s remains were moved from the original place of burial to their present place of burial. Though the Ritter line had their share of early deaths, the Voigts had an overwhelming number of early deaths especially children under the age of 10 years old. The records clearly display the dangers of childhood at a time when vaccinations and antibiotics were yet to be discovered. Whereas several women in the Ritter line lost their lives to “Childbed Fever”, the Voigt line lost children to diphtheria, Typhus, spinal meningitis, scarlet fever, pneumonia, and asthma.

Guten Morgen, Montag!

​I have looked at so many records written in German, Latin and Polish that I feel like my eyes are crossed. I have new information and a few stories to tell but I have to get all the facts straight in my head in order to relay the information. I was able to go back another generation on the Wisloski line and the information is fascinating—well at least to me. After all these years I have gotten pretty good at reading German and Latin documents. I still have some words interpreted for me but all in all I am good at reading. Just do not ask me to speak it!

Things have been busy around here with Aubree back in school. Early mornings, school drop offs, pickups, homework on top of weekend riding keeps everyone in this house moving. We also have a yard project going on so contractors have been here for a week and we expect to have them working for the next couple of weeks. Concrete foundation, pavers, fencing, retaining wall along with cameras with video surveillance installed. 

My grandson Nikolas has been working on the wrought iron fence on the front porch. He is stripping and repainting it. Since he does wrought iron and welding for a living, I hired him instead of hiring someone else. Because the masonry contractors started the backyard and we needed the porch to store a few things, the porch project is in a holding pattern. 

I have to say I really have some wonderful grandsons. They have grown up into amazing men and I am so proud of them. I love spending time with them. They can make me laugh. Just thinking about it brings a smile to my face. 

Family Genealogy Update

Genealogy work takes many forms, and lately, I have focused on honoring my ancestors by managing 105 (and counting) of their memorials and building 43 (and counting) virtual cemeteries. Though this project is tedious and time-consuming, it is the best way to ensure their digital records accurately match my genealogical research. However, this project has also exposed a dark chapter in our family history. I discovered that numerous Mervine ancestors were disinterred and relocated decades after their original burials. When Philadelphia cemeteries like Odd Fellows, American Mechanics, and St. George M.E. Church were dissolved in the late 1940s and 1950s, families were supposedly notified. Yet, the sheer number of Mervine relatives who were separated and buried in mass graves makes me doubt that city officials did their due diligence. Instead of receiving proper reburials, many were split up, while their headstones were used as infrastructure fill in the Delaware River to build bridges. Uncovering this history only makes me more determined. I will continue searching for our displaced ancestors to ensure they are properly remembered and memorialized.

Mom and Dad and Brother

​

Mother of Sons

The years slip by so quickly. One moment you have three little boys clinging to your skirts and the next moment they are adults. Meanwhile, you are left wondering where all the time went. ​

Leverington Cemetery

​

St. John the Baptist Cemetery

​