This website is named for my parents, Stanley "Buster" Major and Helen Smolinski, who were married in 1929 in Solvay, New York. My father was the grandson of one of three Major brothers who emigrated from County Derry, Ireland, in the 1860s and settled in Central New York. My mother was the daughter of one of three Smolinski brothers who, in the early 1900s, left Kolno, in what was then Russia-controlled Poland.

Unfortunately, I did not ask enough questions while the people who knew the answers were still among the living. For example: Did the Major and Smolinski brothers have siblings who never left their native land? I don't know, bit I suspect there were at least some Majors who never left Ireland. (Large families prevailed; the three brothers who did leave had at least ten children each.)

Charles Major settled in Skaneateles, with William living nearby in Skaneateles Falls. John Major lived in Skaneateles for a while before moving to Buffalo. Boleslaw (William) and Helen Smolinski lived for awhile in New Jersey where their first child, Wanda, was born in 1904. They briefly returned to Poland, had a second child, Boleslaw (William), and then, with Ignacy (James) and Josef and theiir parents, Rosa and Berwis (Stanley) Smolinski, moved to the United States and settled in the industrial village of Solvay, New York.

Berwis and Stanley are names that appear either in the United States census or a Solvay directory. I believe they are the same person and he was my mother's grandfather. I don't recall her ever mentioning him. She would have been about four years old when he returned to Poland.)

INFORMATION about the Irish side of my family is readily available. Not so the Polish side, at least, if you don't understand the language. To my surprise, both Smolinski and Kalinowska, my maternal grandmother's maiden name, turned out to be quite common in Poland. And to my confusion, Smolinska and Kalinowski res fairly common surnames.

I believe my grandmother has relatives — Kalinowskas or Kalinowskis — who settled in or around Scranton, Pennsylvania, but the closest thing I have to proof are photographs from a Pennsylvania trip my parents took to the Scranton area in the early 1930s. People in these photos are not identified, which, unfortunately, often is the case in photographs passed down to children or grandchildren.

The first generation of American-born Major children arrived many years before the Smolinskis were in the United States. So I will continue with lists of the children of the three Major brothers, my paternal grandfather outlined in light blue, as is my maternal grandmother further down among the Smolinski family trees.

Before the union of a Major and a Smolinski, there was the marriage of my grandfather, John Major and Rose McLaughlin. Both were raised in Skaneateles, but settled 20 miles east, in Solvay. The McLaughins, like the Majors, left Ireland to find a better life in America, and those who settled near Skaneateles, New York, may have done so because it reminded them of their homeland. (The Majors relocated from what later becme Northern Ireland.)

Best known of the first wave of McLaughlins in Central New York was James "40 Acres" McLaughlin, though I believe he may have been preceded by a cousin, also named James. "40 Acres" was so nicknamed because that was the size of the farm he purchased in Skanateles after he left Ireland because his first three children had died during the potato famine.

He was the son of William McLaughlin Sr., who lived and remained in Linsfort, Ireland, though James and most of William's children eventually settled in the United States. The McLaughlins would have a big impact on Skaneateles and became known for their their business which involved teasels. The McLaughlins weren't the only folks who grew and harvested this unusual plant. For years it was the most famous crop grown in Skaneateles.

Of most interest to me is John McLaughlin (1832-1922), who had a twin sister, Helen. He was my great-grandfather. Also of special interest is William McLaughlin (1836-1909) whose children included Mary Ann McLaughlin, who became better known as Sister Antonia, a nun, whose book, "From Convent to Conflict," detailed her experience at a Belgium convent during World War One. Sister Antonia was an occasional visitor to our home in Solvay, and I embarrassed my parents every time because I had an irrational fear of nuns.

When John W. Major and Rose McLaughlin left Skaneateles after their marriage and moved to Solvay, it was probably because the village that bordered Syracuse was heavily industrialized with more jobs than its factories could fill, particularly at the Solvay Process Company, later a part of Allied Chemical. John and Rose had six children. Their first-born, Emmett Leo Major, died when he was 12 years old. Their fifth child, Stanley (nicknamed "Buster" after comic strip character Buster Brown) became my father.

That gets us back to the Smolinski brothers and our first born-in-the-USA generation, though William Smolinski, one of the relatives in the three lists that follow, was born in Poland in 1906 when his parents were briefly moved back to their homeland after living in New Jersey. When they returned to the United States, they settled in Solvay

Here are family tree information on other Majors in our family:

Other McLaughlins:

The O'Neill connection
There are other family trees put together from newspaper obituaries and information sent to me by distant and not-so-distant relatives who stumbled upon this website. For example, my great-grandfather, William Major, married Mary Ann O'Neill. Not only did two of his brothers also emigrate to the United States, so did some of her siblings. As you'll see if you continue readings, Liz Major, the self-appointed family historian, was quite proud of our O'Neill connection, because the O'Neill clan is one of Ireland's most famous, and Liz, who was my father's aunt, delighted in telling stories about the Hugh O'Neill, the Earl of Tyrone, and his son, Shane back in the days of Henry VIII and Queen Elizabeth I, long before any O'Neill met a Major. (Alan Hale Sr. played Hugh O'Neill in the not-so-historical 1939 drama, "The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex," starring Bette Davis and Errol Flynn.

To see my sketchy O'Neill family tree.

O'Hara connections
Three McLaughlins and one Major married O'Haras for whom I created family trees, though the family of Bridget O'Hara (1890-1917), who married Henry (aka Harry) McLaughlin (1885-1967) coninues to elude me. Theirs was an unusual wedding. It took place at St. Patrick's Church in Syracuse on April 2, 1913.

The Syracuse Herald went even further, saying the wedding was unique when "at a double ceremony, two sisters were married. They were Bridget O'Hara and Miss Catherine O'Hara of 706 Tompkins Street. At the first ceremony, Miss Bridget O'Hara and Henry were made man and wife and changed places with Miss Catherine O'Hara and John P. Coughlin when Rev. James Magee repeated the ceremony and solemnized a second marriage."

Tragically, in 1917, Bridget Agnes (O'Hara) McLaughlin died at the age of 27. She was survived by a daughter, Grace; her father, Patrick O'Hara; two brothers, Patrick and Martin O'Hara, and two sisters, Catherine O'Hara Coughlin and Mrs. Fred Blattner, whose first name was not mentioned in the obituary. That's as far as I've gotten in putting together her family tree.

Other marriages that united a McLaughlin or a Major with an O'Hara:

Mary O'Hara (1851-1905) and Dennis McLaughlin (1851-1925)

Elizabeth "Libbie" O'Hara (1864-1916) and Cornelius McLaughlin (1863-1943)

Michael J. O’Hara (1858-1934) and Anna J. Major (1863-1931)

Meet 'The Irish Lord of Skaneateles'
Edward J. McLaughlin (1874-1933), son of Mary O'Hara and Dennis McLaughlin, married Mary Ellen Carrigan (1872-1931), daughter of Mary Jane O'Neill and Patrick Carrigan. Her mother was not related to the other O'Neills on our family tree, so far as I know, and was born in Massachusetts. Her father was born in County Tipperary, Ireland.

Mary McLaughlin (1868-1918), Irish-born daughter of Cornelius "Neal" McLaughlin, left home and joined other relatives who had settled in Central New York. She married Thomas Carrigan (1860-1918), son of one of Skaneateles' most interesting characters, Patrick C. Carrigan, the self-anointed "Irish lord." I couldn't resist looking into the family of a man with such an ego, so I created a small family tree, with the "Irish lord" as the trunk.

Also
There's are small tree for the family of ill-fated Tony Kane, first husband of my Aunt Lola Major and one of our family's most colorful characters.

In 1931, Floyd "Blackie" Major married Anna Loretta McGinn, which prompted me to assemble a starter tree for the McGinn family of Skaneateles. Years earlier, John J. Major married Catherine McGinn.

There's also are twigs devoted to the Doherty family connected by marriage to Catherine "Kate" Major. Whether this Doherty/Dougherty group also is connected with Elizabeth McLaughlin, who married Patrick Doherty, remains an unanswered questiion.

There also are small family trees for families who married children of Bolelaw and Helen Smolinski. Their son, Boleslaw (William) married Gertrude Maltby. Thus we spotlight the Maltby family, thanks to information provided by the lateJim Maltby. There also is a Kaldowski family tree, assembled from newspaper stories. My Aunt Wanda Smolinski married Peter Kaldowski.

If only Aunt Liz were here . . .
Liz Major, well known around Skaneateles, New York, always reminded me of one of those two eccentrics in "Arsenic and Old Lace." And during some of the years I knew her, she lived with her sister, Sadie (aka Sate), who was even better suited for a leading role in the famous play.

Liz was the self-designated family historian, as Irish as it is possible to be. Because of that, I tended to regard a lot of her tales as so much blarney, but have come to realize her version of family history was as much fact as fiction, even with her embellisment.

Which is why I regret not having paid more attention. She'd have been a terrific resource for this website. When this began I had no information on my maternal grandmother — didn't even know her maiden name, in fact — and gave short shrift to my paternal grandmother, Rose McLaughin Major, except to make a statement that resulted from a false assumption on my part: that she had a sister who had become a nun known as Sister Mary Antonia.

Sister Mary Antonia settled back in Skaneateles after spending several years at a convent Belgium. Invading German troops in World War One chased her to England, and after working with Belgian refugees for awhile, she returned to the United States and wrote a book about her war experience, "From Convent to Conflict."

SOON AFTER my website was launched, I received an email from a distant relative I had never met, Lisa McHugh Rigge, of Camillus, New York, who told me Sister Mary Antonia (nee Mary McLaughlin), did not have a sister named Rose.

So I began to research the McLaughlins of Skaneateles, unaware my Grandmother Rose was just the tip of an enormous iceberg. (As it turned out, Rose and Sister Mary Antonia were first cousins.)

With help from Lisa and from two others who early on discovered this website — James Dougherty, a Skaneateles resident and very distant relaltive, and Charlie Major, a Skaneateles legend and not-so-distant relative — I was able to start a McLaughlin tree.

Of enormous help has been www.fultonhistory.com which makes available old newspaper pages from New York. There's a ton of information available online, though I hasten to add I have not enlisted any genealogy websites; the only genealogist-approved information on my several family trees has come from relatives who have shared it with me.

Most of my information has come from newspapers, which, of course, are fallible, though obituaries tend to fairly reliable — except for spelling of married names —because they are submitted by the family of the deceased, usually through a funeral home. Families occasionally forget some survivors who should be listed. (Obituaries for my grandmother Rose and two of her sisters had three different spellings for married name of the fourth sister.)

ONCE I STARTED down the road that led to other families in the Major-McLaughlin tree, I couldn't stop. The O'Neills, for example, were very important to Liz Major because her mother was Mary Ann O'Neill, who married William Major.

Liz's parents left the village of Bellaghy in the town of Magherafelt in County Derry (aka County Londonderry), Ireland, in the late 1860s and settled in Skaneateles Falls, New York. William had two brothers, Charles and John Major, who also emigrated to America. They were the sons of John and Mary Major.

Why Skaneateles Falls? I'm not sure, though there is some resemblance between the Finger Lakes region and part of Ireland. That familiarity may have attracted early Irish settlers. Another possibility is the James O'Neill, older brother of Mary Ann O'Neill Major, had settled in Skaneateles, and may have been the first person connected with our Major family to do so.

In any event, Charles and William Major settled in Skaneateles Falls, their brother John moved west to Buffalo. (Two of John Major's descendants, Kevin William Major and Rita Major Crawford, furnished family tree information.)

MAJORS DONT figure much in Irish history. Some folks don't even consider Major an Irish name, and it didn't do our reputation much good among diehard Irish that the best known Major — first name John — was a prime minister of England.

According to Liz, our Major family originated in France and showed up in England and Ireland about the 11th century. She said the original spelling as Majeur. I began to doubt her story when I noticed she tended to blend the Majors with the O'Neills long before they were actually connected by marriage in the 19th century. It seemed to me she was saying Shane O'Neill, chased out of Ireland way back when, had fathered a bunch of children, one of whom married a Majeur who emigrated to Ireland. (It seemed odd that Liz, a devout Catholic, took such delight in talking about an ancestor's illegitimate children.)

Liz's tale of Shane O'Neill's adventures in France was fantasy, but history does indicate the Major family —with various spellings of the name — showed up in England in 1066. Those spellings included Malgier, Mauger, Mager, Major and Mayger. Just when a Major settled in County Derry, Ireland, I have no idea, but Liz always gave me the impression she believed the family went directly from France to Ireland. I don't think she liked to consider that most of the Majors who left the continent had settled and remained in England.

AS FOR THE McLaughlins, Liz talked mostly about one Dr. John McLaughlin, saying he was our most famous ancestor. Like her tales about our French connection, this story is questionable.

Dr. McLaughlin, sometimes called "The Father of Oregon," was born in Canada, and his grandfather arrived there approximately 100 years before any of our Skaneateles McLaughlin ancestors left Ireland.

Also, the preferred spelling of the Oregon pioneer's last name is McLoughlin, which may be of little significance because I've found different spellings for several people from the same family. (Most common example in our family tree is Daughterty/Doherty where even siblings can't agree on the spelling of their last name.)

Dr. John McLoughlin's grandfather grew up on the Inishowen peninsula in County Donegal, Ireland. That's where a certain William McLaughlin was born in 1793. Eight of William's children left Ireland for America, though one returned, leaving his son, William, to live with a brother, James McLaughlin, nicknamed "40 Acres" for the size of the land he purchased in the Skaneateles area in 1848.

While it's a longshot, Liz Major may have been correct about Dr. John McLoughlin (or McLaughlin), whose grandfather may have been a sibling of William McLaughlin's grandfather

CHANCES ARE I'll never know for sure unless I join one of those genealogy websites. As soon as your research goes into the 1800s you discover families tended to draw from short lists of names for their children. In our case, it's a challenge to tell one William McLaughlin from another. James is another given name that can test your patience. (Also, there once was an election in Skaneateles where the name John McLaughlin created confusion because voters claimed they didn't know which of the town's three adult John McLaughlins was running.)

Meanwhile, other descendants of Donegal's William McLaughlin are gathering information on the family history. Some have visited Ireland and provided photos.

Maureen McLaughlin Lester, a great-great-granddaughter of James "40 Acres" McLaughlin, took the photo at the bottom of the "40 Acres" page.

Owen McLaughlin, a great-great-great-grandson of "40 Acres", proposed to his wife in the ruins of an ancient church by the cemetery in Linsfort, Ireland, where William McLaughlin is buried. Owen hopes to learn more about our family history.

On the Major side, Charlie Major has visited Ireland and the church where John Major and Mary Ann O'Neill were married.

Smolinski information, by comparison, is scarce. As far as I know, three brothers from a town called Kolno moved to America in the early 1900s.

I believe my grandfather, Boleslaw Smolinski, and his wife, Helen Kalinowska, were first. They lived for awhile in New Jersey, had their first child, Wanda, then returned to Poland, where their second child, Boleslaw Jr. (William), was born.

My grandparents returned to the United States, this time settling in Solvay, New York, where they were briefly joined by his parents. Two of Boleslaw's brothers also moved to Solvay. One of them, Ignacy (James), remained; the youngest of the three brothers, Joseph, joined the United States Army and later was assigned to West Point. He married, raised a family, and remained at West Point, living in nearby Highland Falls, New York.

Why Solvay? Well, in the early 1900s Solvay was one of the country's most industrialized villages. Leading the way was the Solvay Process Company. If you were looking for work, chances are you could find a job in Solvay. Also, there probably were others from the Kolno area who had gone to Solvay earlier and had recommended it to friends and relatives who wanted to move to America.

My great-grandparents split up in Solvay. He returned to Poland — actually it was Russia-Poland at the time, Poland nearing the end of a long period during which it was divided in three, the other two parts controlled by Prussia and Austria — and my great-grandmother remained in Solvay and remarried. My mother's notes indicate her grandmother's name was Rose Koziol and that she had three husbands, the third being Peter Lubok. (My mother's uncle, Joseph Smolinski, according to marriage records available online, listed his mother as Jessie Kaziol.)

MY GRANDFATHER Boleslaw left the family, settling in another part of New York. He asked my grandmother to join him, but she chose to carry on without him, raising four children, including my mother, by herself. We did not have Smolinski reunions and my mother did not often talk about her family. By the time I was born, in 1938, my grandfather was a closed subject.

However, it was my own disinterest that kept me from asking questions about my grandmother's family. Her maiden name was Kalinowska (or Kalinowski). She had relatives in and around Scranton, Pennsylvania, and I discovered photos of a trip my parents, my grandmother and my uncle, Edward Smolinski, made to Pennsylvania, probably in the early 1930s. Unfortunately, the first time I saw these photos was after I had prints made of negatives I found in a box after my mother had died, so I have no idea who most of the people are.

In any event, there is no Smolinski-Kalinowski family, while on the Irish side of my family, thanks particularly to the McLaughlins, you'll find a small forest.

THANKS TO Will Hier of Otisco, New York, for a small O'Neill family tree which lists my great-grandmother, Mary Ann O'Neill Major, and her siblings.

There is another O'Neill connection, this one on the McLaughlin side. James McLaughlin Jr., son of the fabulous "40 Acres," married Mary Jane O'Neill, who was born in Canada in 1850. Her family moved to Central New York about 20 years later. I do not know if her family was related in any way to my great-grandmother's. (Regarding James McLaughlin Jr., he was the driving force in the family's teasel business.)