52 ANCESTOR CHALLENGE—WEEK 7: “LOVE”

My favorite love story in my family tree is one that I read about when first diving into my dad's side. My maiden name is "Day" and many times throughout my life I was told we were Irish. I wondered if our name was originally "O'Day" and our family fled the Great Famine. Once I grew up a little and started learning our stories for myself, I quickly discovered that it wasn't the Day family that was from Ireland. I had O'Briens in my family tree!

My 2nd great-grandmother was Theresa Mable O'Brien, born in 1853 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Her parents were Henry Martin O'Brien, an Irishman, and Lydia Evelyn Houghton, born in Ireland, but of English noble descent. Theresa's mother, Lydia, had their own "love story" as well. She married what was considered below her station, even though Henry O'Brien was a very wealthy lawyer, who, himself, descended from Irish nobility.

The O'Brien family moved from Ireland to Toronto in the early 1840s and lived in Toronto for the remainder of their lives. Theresa O'Brien was the youngest daughter of eight children. Family lore says that she was going to school at the convent in Toronto and was bound for the ministry to become a nun. In 1870, however, Theresa's life changed, blazing a completely different path for her future.

Lydia Houghton O'Brien, Theresa's mother, died on 30 September 1870, when Theresa was a young woman of 17. Shortly after the loss of her mother, and perhaps because of that great loss, Theresa went to visit her older and married sister, Mary O'Brien Atkinson, in Rock Island, Illinois,

It was there in Rock Island, that Theresa met Walter L. Day, a twenty year-old local laborer. Within months of Theresa's arrival in the States, they were married! AND by a Methodist minister! Shocking, I'm sure, for an Irish-Catholic family whose daughter was supposed to become a nun.

Theresa and Walter were married for 40 years and had nine children, one of which is my great-grandfather.

I love that Theresa came from parents who didn't let social norms stop them from being together and that Theresa's own life echoed that of her parents. I suspect her late mother would have been smiling from above at her daughter's spunk and determination to be with the man she loved no matter what.