l gotta hand it to Tom, one of my fellow Oak Ridge High School class of ’65 pioneers…he is a pro on ancestry.com and Find A Grave and all the other sites to uncover family history. And, he started researching mine after my post on my great grandfather, Maximo Suck, who passed in 1953 at the age of 86.
It’s an unusual name, in my humble opinion, so one would not think there were a glut of them out there. He left Hamburg, Germany, in 1885 at the age of 18 to travel to Venezuela. Seven years later, he immigrated to the United States, landing at the port of Mobile. A year later, he married Grace Dominique, age 19. On subsequent census records, he is listed as a broker and family lore has it that he was successful in the importing business.
Three daughters enhanced this household: Eulalie in 1895, Grace in 1897 and Lucille, my grandmother, in 1900. I don’t think this was a very boisterous brood. Their lives centered on music, reading and writing. The parents closed the door to the parlor at 1 o’clock every Saturday to listen to opera on the radio … not to be disturbed under any circumstances.
Maximo never claimed his German heritage nor did his parents. On subsequent census documents, he claimed to be born in Venezuela and his parents were English. Who knows where the truth lies? His parents exited his life after his marriage. We have no idea what their names were or if there were siblings. Why? Not sure. Some say it was because his wife, Grace, taught business subjects at a nearby college,….such a radical woman back then! Maybe it was because she was Catholic and he was Jewish, although we’re not sure even of that. But, maybe that explains the need to drop the German heritage.
Then, about five years ago, my mother and her siblings heard from a German lawyer who claimed that they may be heirs to to some serious money through the Maximo Suck connection. Of course, no one ever had any real idea about what kind of money we were talking about here. I assumed the worst. There wasn’t all that much money and that we’d have to pony up and go to Germany to see it through, which was NOT going to happen. Then, the lawyer mysteriously disappeared and the new lawyer determined that we were out of the money loop. The money belonged to another Maximo Suck family. Really?! We were all aghast! Who could have that name?
Well….Tom determined that there were a myriad of Maximo Sucks but ours was the one that immigrated to South America and settled in Mobile. That’s my great grandpa!
My great grandmother, Grace, is the first Grace, which is now in its fourth generation. She was the French-Irish connection. Hence, the Mediterranean skin and the feisty personalities. She was a Kelly. Yep! Our Grace Kelly!
Actually, she was only a half-Kelly. Her mom, Mary Kelly, immigrated as a young child, from Ireland during the height of the Great Potato Famine, along with several sisters, into the port of New Orleans. I don’t know what happened to all the Kelly sisters….how I wish I had recorded my gossipy Great Aunt Eulalie, regaling us youngsters with the family stories.
Two things I do remember, however. The first is that one of the Kelly sisters never married and was a well known men’s tailor in New Orleans with her own shop, no less! The second one is that Mary, was a servant in the house of Pique Dominique, a French native, who resided in Mobile.
Now, I don’t know if he was married or a widower, but he did marry Mary, my great great grandmother, when she was around the age of 23 and he was 39. I presume they were devout Catholics since they succeeded in having six children: Rosa, Jeannette, Grace, Francois, Isabelle and Thomas. He was 41 when the first child was born and 51 when the youngest came along. Census records list him as being a grocer but we also find documentation that he
had four slaves, a father, mother and two children. I’m certainly not thrilled to find that out, but I guess the grocery business was doing quite well. The 1880 Census lists him as being retired at age 59.
He passed two years later, leaving his children, ages 9 to 20 for Mary to finish raising. I would find that rather daunting. Mary lived to the age of 66. Sadly, she had to commit her son, Frank, to the Bryce Hospital for the Insane three years before she died. I cannot imagine how heartbreaking that would’ve been.
For years, during my childhood, we travelled to Mobile to catch up with my great aunts, Grace and Eulalie, eating steamed shrimp and picnicking at Dauphin Island. Eulalie was none too pleased with having little kids around. Grace was far more tolerant. They never married. Only my grandmother dared to leave the Mobile homestead for that Georgia dirt farmer she adored. So naive. What did she know?
I remember them talking about all the Dominique cousins. Isabelle had married a Sullivan and they had six kids, too. There were way too many families for me to get it straight. So, how I have to look at birth, death, marriage and census records to figure it out.
But, how I’d love to find a diary or two from way back then to answer all my burning questions. How did Grace and Dominique meet? Why did she drop the Kelly name and go by Grace Pique Dominique? Where were Maximo’s parents born? Did they leave Venezuela and start over in Chicago? Why was there a falling out between Maximo and his parents?
Guess I’ll have to wait until I meet them again!!!
