The Weaver

In  a 1901 Billerica town directory, Mary Jane was listed as "Widow of Cornelius, Weaver, 15 Lowell Street".  She was a mother to 4 children, and held down work in the mills.

She was born Mary Jane Cox to John and Mary Cox in Fermanagh, Enniskillen, Northern Ireland and left to come to the US, on her own, when she was just 15.  Her brother John stayed behind in Enniskillen to start a family.  He was her only relation that we are aware of.

She listed her year of immigration as 1873, and she married Cornelius McCusker in Lowell on May 7th, 1880. She and Cornelius show as borders on 44 Williams Street in Lowell on a 1880 census with a Devlin family.  They were surrounded by other young Irish immigrants who found work in the Mills.

Lowell Mill girls, 19th century

Mill work was dusty, monotonous and loud.  Very loud.  An operative in one of the mills wrote about how life in the mills wasn't all bad.  Methinks she doth  protest too much:

Pleasures, did you say? What pleasures in factory life? From many scenes with which I have become acquainted, I should judge that the pleasures of   factory life were like  "Angels visits, few and far between"-said a lady whom fortune had placed above labor. I could not endure such a constant clatter of machinery, that I could neither speak to be heard, nor think to be understood, even by myself. And then you have so little leisure-I could not bear such a life of fatigue. Call it by any other name rather than pleasure.

But stop, friend, we have some few things to offer here, and we are quite sure our views of the matter are just, having been engaged as an operative the last four years. Pleasures there are, even in factory life; and we have many, known only to those of like employment. To be sure it is not so convenient to converse in the mills with those unaccustomed to them; yet we suffer no inconvenience among ourselves. But, aside from the talking, where can you find a more pleasant place for contemplation?

 I'm sure I could come up with a few.

The work was drudgery and the hours exhausting.  They worked six days a week, twelve hours a day.  They got out "early" on Saturdays when the dismissal bell rang at 5:00 pm.

 The work schedule for the mills.  From 6:30 am to

6:30 pm with a half an hour for lunch.

But the work allowed her to save enough to help her daughter with a down payment on a house years later.  And she was known to send money back to her brother in Ireland.

Mary Jane was widowed in 1896 when Cornelius died at age 38.  By this time they were living in Billerica.  The 1910 census says that she had 5 children, 4 of them still living. 

She would lose 2 of those 4 surviving children during the 1917/1918 epidemic.  Etta and Joseph were in their 30's when they passed away.  Uncle Vin's memoirs says there is reason to believe the cause was possibly the Spanish Flu which was quite lethal at that time, but I have not been able to find their death records online to verify.

In 1930 she was 69 and  living with her daughter, my grandmother Anna R. and  grandfather Frank Mahoney in North Billerica.  My uncle Vinny remembers her this way:

Grandma McCusker was a very nice woman. I remember her well.  She was a quiet, kind woman who minded her own business, a woman who certainly couldn't have had a very soft life.  

Physically, Mary Jane was a fairly tall and spare woman.  She had a good sense of humor, but a very subtle laugh, almost a chuckle. I never remember her roaring with laughter like the Mahoneys.

Things, mostly little things that I remember about Mar' Jane (pronounced by her friends as   "Mare Jane  "): her hair bun almost on top of her head,(I swear Grandma and mother both called these "pugs".  Perhaps it's an old Irish expression?) her metal rimmed glasses; her long slim, wrinkled aging fingers; her gold tooth (only one I think, but she had her own teeth until she died.)

She and mother took me to Lowell occasionally.  On one occasion they took me to a Chinese restaurant roughly located at Merrimack and Central upstairs over the "Five and Ten".  I was probably under 5 years old, and I was scared to death.  It was not only the looks of the Chinese and the fact that their English was barely understandable (although that was a lot of my problem) but the booth with the glass bead curtains or whatever they were plus the food, to which I was absolutely new - all in all it was too much.  I don't imagine mother and Grandma had a very enjoyable meal!

[But] Grandma McCusker was always  "there  " with Christmas and birthday gifts for Henry and me. Things like sheepskin coats and snow boots. 

 She was a great Grandma.