Dubuque Diary – Day Two
I see Dead Caseys. Not really. The ones I’m looking for are all safely underground, but I still like graveyards. What’s the point of a headstone if no one comes to see it? Ever since I learned that there were relatives, regardless that they’re slightly distant (from my Great Great Grandfather’s 2nd marriage), I’ve wanted to come here. Having met and hung out with my half first-cousin twice-removed, Beverly, it was time to find the ones I didn’t get here in time to meet.
It was a sound night’s sleep, and I woke up to again hit my slow dial-up connection, again wade through a mountain of spam, and get some morning work done. Once cleaned up and ready to face Dubuque, I hit the coffee shop across the street. At another table a woman is working on a laptop while she nibbles her muffin. Could it be? Do I dare to hope? I open up my Powerbook and it happily hones in on a high-speed wireless connection. I like this coffee shop!
I spend more time working, reading email, writing my first blog entry, and then call Ken and Bev to see if they’re game for Day 2. They are and they come and get me.
First stop, Mt. Olivet Cemetery, final resting place of Mary Casey Paul (Michael Casey’s 2nd wife) and one of the son’s she had with Michael, Patrick the fireman. Not having received a response to the letter I wrote previously looking for plot locations, we arrive with no idea where they might be, and no sign of life at the cemetery office. I wander a bit, as do Ken and Bev, but it’s cold out and the brute force hunt doesn’t look promising. At a school across the street, the office secretary happily looks up the cemetery’s phone number and I call but get an answering machine. I leave a message. Back to hunting, my cell phone rings and the guy remembers my letter and directs me to the basic vicinity where he thinks I’ll find the relatives. Confident I’m now in the right ballpark, I’m still having little luck and getting discouraged. Will I strike out two days in a row?
No! I won’t. There’s Mary Casey Paul! It was a flat stone, very overgrown and covered in dirt, and I have no idea how I spotted it. I go and fetch Beverly from the car to bring her over to meet her grandmother. Although she’s lived her whole life in Dubuque, Beverly says she’s never once been here before and she’s obviously moved to come now. I grab some snow to was the stone off, and take some pictures.
With that success, I continue the hunt to find her son Patrick. I’m hunting and hunting and hunting, nothing. I call the cemetery guy back and ask him if he can help again, and he tells me that Patrick is in the same plot as Mary and that if there’s no stone it may be he just doesn’t have one. Patrick was the Chief of the Dubuque Fire Department. His name is listed on the Iowa Firefighters Memorial, having died in the line of duty at the scene of the Hub Clothier’s Fire in 1952, and I’m not buying that he was buried in an unmarked grave. On a hunch, I try a whole different section. Ken and Bev follow slowly in the car, while I hunt up and down rows. Bingo! There’s Pat and his wife Carmelita! Nice to my half Great Great Uncle.
From the cemetery we go and start a driving tour of Dubuque. It’s always great to have a local show you around a new town, and Ken and Bev are excellent tour guides. They know every inch of this town and have a story for each one. It was really great. We saw the building that used to be Patrick’s fire house, and the shop that used to be Beverly’s salon. We viewed the Mississippi from high on the Bluffs, and from down by the riverside where dozens of eagles could be seen soaring and fishing between large floes of ice.
We go next to the Library, and after hunting and finding Casey trails in Dubuque City Directories, Kev and Bev leave me behind to carry on. I spent about an hour there. No major discoveries, but some evidence of Casey shadows from long ago.
Walking home, it’s starting to rain. The Dean Headquarters is on Main Street, as is my hotel, so I figure I’ll pop in to get a head start on tomorrow. I should know better than to think that I’ll pop in and say, “I’m here to volunteer tomorrow”. They didn’t hear that last word, and sat me right down to get to work preparing precient walking maps for use by volunteers the following day. But most importantly, I’m given my ‘Iowa Perfect Storm’ knit cap which is the tell tale icon of Dean volunteers in Iowa. After about an hour or so, I’ve finished organizing Precient 4 into six walking maps. I head out into the rain, frozen onto slippery sidewalks, and come back to my favorite Dubuque wireless Internet coffee shop (they serve pizza and beer too!), and that my friends catches us up. I’m taking my last swallow of beer, and signing off.
Stay tuned…