Alfred and Olga Mooney

“We can never truly find the past, yet we should never stop seeking it.” That is the advice given by Larry Lowenthal in his introduction to From the Coalfields to the Hudson: A History of the Delaware & Hudson Canal.

The Winter 2000 issue of Natural News included a story ("Mountain Road") by Charles Barnett, grandson of Alfred and Olga Mooney.

Our family histories are often anecdotal, based on what we presume to be the truth, but it’s a truth that’s often unprovable. While working with Charles Barnett on the publishing of the Mountain Road story, I found a listing for an envelope mailed from Yugoslavia to New York. Some unknown urge and my unabated curiosity led me to ask to whom the letter was addressed. The seller of the envelope, a stamp dealer in Rochester, NY, told me that this envelope was sent to someone named Mooney. Further searching by the dealer located several additional envelopes addressed to Dr. Mooney, his wife Olga, or his sister (also named Olga). Several envelopes were listed by the stamp dealer for auction and, fortunately, neither the stamps nor the cancellations on the envelopes were valuable. Yet the real value of the covers rests in the story that they tell.

The first cover (shown at left), dated December 1893, was written by Pietro Lucic from Orasac/Valdinoce to his sister Olga. Lucic used an envelope that had his return address pre-printed on the lower left side. Gravosa is a town on the north side of the same peninsula on which Dubrovnik is located. Most of what was recently known as Yugoslavia (except Serbia and Montenegro) was at that time part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and would remain so until the end of World War I.

The next cover (below, right), from Goez, is also addressed to Olga at the same East 115th Street address. There is no return address. Goez is a common town name in both Serbia and Austro-Hungary but the Serbian Goez can be eliminated because the cover bears a Austrian stamp.

The third cover is mailed from Odessa, Russia in 1901 to Olga in care of her husband, Dr. Mooney, now at East 112th Street. Unknown to the writer of the letter, Olga and Dr. Mooney had recently moved.

The letter was forwarded to her in care of a drug store at 2240 1st Ave. Olga Lucic Mooney’s great grandmother and other relatives lived in Odessa. A year later a letter to Dr. Mooney from Brno (now the Republic of Slovakia) from someone attached to the Berlitz School of Languages is addressed to East 116th Street. The letter was most likely sent by Dr. Mooney’s brother, Hubert, who was in charge of the Paris office of the Berlitz School of Languages.

Six years later, in 1908, a letter mailed from Dubrovnik to Olga finds the Mooney residence one block north at East 117th Street.

During the fifteen years that the five covers were written (1893-1908) Olga and Dr. Mooney moved at least four or five times but never farther than a few blocks.

The big move from Manhattan to "the suburbs" took place around 1918. The last of the six covers is mailed from Bologna, Italy in 1927 to Olga by Emma Merlin, a very good childhood friend, and addressed to the Bronx.

Dr. Mooney purchased the Mountain Road house in Rosendale (below, c. 1910) during the heyday of postal cards. During their summer visits, the Mooney clan must have sent many a postcard. Six envelopes, some over 100 years old, have survived. Where are those postcards hiding?

Many thanks to Renee Smith, Dr. Alfred Mooney’s granddaughter, who has maintained the family photo album and much of the family history. [dew]