Know Your Roots
In New York City people meet new people all of the time. When two enter a conversation the standard script at some point enters to “Where are you from?’”
To this I usually say, “Here” and wave my hands about in the general space surrounding me. I am deeply proud to be a New Yorker, and modestly enjoy sweet satisfaction from being a native species.
For many this doesn’t answer the question well enough so I continue on with more information. But which piece depends on my mood.
“I grew up 10 miles across the river in Bergen County.”
“My dad’s side of the family has been in Manhattan since the mid-1800s”.
“I’m first generation on my mom’s side; my American family is from New York.”
And depending on the caliber of the audience the reply could be two stiff iron words with no further explanation: New Jersey.
Being from somewhere is not the same as belonging somewhere.
I’m fortunate to live in a place where both are true.
My father is a neuro geneticist and throughout his life has investigated The Higgins Family Tree. In my years I have gathered word-of-mouth knowledge from the elder’s stories and examined records on our ancestors. I began taking a greater interest in this topic the last eight years where I have lived in New York City. Because I learned recently that I’m the sole surviving direct descendent of James E. Davis who remains a resident of the boroughs.
A man named James E. Davis was born in New York in 1865 from two Irish immigrant parents. His family lived, worshipped, worked, married, died, and belonged to institutions in New York. And 161 years after his birth, one of his descendants remains in the city where he was born.
So Kalyn, “Where are you from?”.
Here.
The city I know now is a completely different city than the one he knew.
The Manhattan of Mr. Davis was assembled of impoverished tenement housing, immigrant neighborhoods riddled with territorial violence, local farmer’s markets, penny oysters, community-driven Catholic churches, and laborers in factories earning meager wages.
James was a firefighter in the FDNY. He rode horseback downtown to extinguish fires and protect the public. In my mind’s eye, on first instinct I paint this as a lovely picture.
In earnest he was likely often covered in soot from charred wood beams and brickstone, while he whipped his horse to speed him away from disaster along the horse dung lined streets teeming with sewage, waste and flies due to poor sanitation practices.
To put this into more of a social historical context, his reality was the late 19th-century mass immigration, urbanization, and industrialization of New York as it transformed into a modern city.
My Manhattan is colored with neighborhood gems like Chelsea Market, The Whitney Biennial, Little Island, modern art galleries, coffee shops with $8 lattes (literally bean water and milk), and the breeze off the Hudson River on the park where I volunteer by weeding, clearing, and planting new growth.
This is my inheritance. I have lived in other cities including Philadelphia and Austin. Roots aren’t necessarily about remaining in one place but it could be about repeatedly finding your way back to the source.
In 2020, I discovered the Basilica of Saint Patrick’s Old Cathedral in SoHo on Mulberry and Prince and felt a connection with the space. On the facade of the building I discovered the crest of the Ancient Order of the Hibernians (AOH). The name seemed familiar.
The AOH is the oldest and largest Irish-Catholic fraternal organization in the United States. My memory lit up when I made the connection with my great Uncle Jimmy (1942-2020), the grandson and namesake of James E. Davis (1865-1940), as the Drum Major and leader of the Orange County Division of the AOH Pipe and Drums. Yes friends, Uncle Jimmy was a bagpiper.
You really can’t get more Irish than that.
I’ve always been fond of the bagpipes. I swear that sometimes I hear the faint sound of them calling me. Oh Danny Boy. If you’re Irish you know all too well the delight we take in nostalgia, melancholia, and the olden mysteries of sorrow and joy from the legendary days of yore. I’m fond of the pipes because I’m biologically predisposed to get excited at the sound, whether it be for times of mourning or celebratory occasions.
Through research, my father located ancestral gravesites found in the Old St. Pat’s catacombs. Genealogically, the parish in SoHo is where family members of mine were laid to rest.
About a month ago, I attended a morning mass service with my father at Old St. Pat’s. It was a rainy morning and the grounds were wet. I love the way deep green moss looks in the rain. Could that feeling have been inherited too?
My dad chatted with the groundskeeper and dropped a few names. Brady. McDermott. Davis. The man knew who he was referring to and brought us past two locked gates to a white marble entombment beneath the church.
Kneeling at the pews in prayer, my dad said to me, “I wonder what it must have been like for them, sitting here and wondering what their future would look like.”
“We are their future,” I replied. To this comment, his Irish eyes twinkled and watered up in a sentimental way, but I stopped there and didn’t push my words far enough for tears to roll down his ginger beard.
I am a godmother to my niece Magnolia, and she is the firstborn of the next Higgins generation. She is the first-in-class, and the only great grandchild who has had the honor of meeting another eldest daughter of the family, Jean Higgins (maiden name Davis), before she passed away in the fall of 2023.
Ancestry is not solely experienced as a family tree. It can be experienced as one generation holding the next; whether it’s resting in in carved oak church pews, in the names recorded in census books, in graves beneath old churches, and in the arms of a grandmother holding a baby who is too young to understand that she is part of the story.
