Latest / Stories That Live In Us / Rhode Island: A Spirit of Independence (with Maureen Taylor) | Episode 106

Transcript

Rhode Island: A Spirit of Independence (with Maureen Taylor) | Episode 106 · Stories That Live In Us

• 0:00
  Maureen Taylor: And Rhode Islanders have their own way of doing things and they like things done a certain way.
• 0:04
  Maureen Taylor: The joke in Rhode Island, which um I hope no one that listens to this will be offended because it is a Rhode Island thing.
• 0:12
  Maureen Taylor: You can drive from one end of the state to the other in an hour.
• 0:16
  Maureen Taylor: But for a Rhode Islander to drive 20 minutes to go somewhere is considered just too far.
• 0:28
  Crista Cowan: Stories That Live in Us is a podcast that inspires you to form deep connections with your family, past, present, and future.
• 0:35
  Crista Cowan: I'm Crista Cowan, known online as The Barefoot Genealogist.
• 0:39
  Crista Cowan: Counting down to the upcoming celebration of America's 250th birthday, you'll meet families from each state whose stories are woven into the very fabric of America.
• 0:50
  Crista Cowan: Tales of immigration, migration, courage, and community that remind us that when we tell our stories, we strengthen the bonds that connect us.
• 0:59
  Crista Cowan: So join me for season two as we discover from sea to shining sea the stories that live in us.
• 1:05
  Crista Cowan: There are some people that you meet in your life that are just characters.
• 1:13
  Crista Cowan: A lot of people come in and out of life.
• 1:15
  Crista Cowan: Some people are forgettable, unfortunately.
• 1:18
  Crista Cowan: But my guest today is one of those people who, for more than 20 years of my career as a genealogist, has been kind of a larger-than-life character.
• 1:28
  Crista Cowan: Maureen Taylor is known as the photo detective.
• 1:32
  Crista Cowan: And she's got this really fantastic, raspy voice, and she's very direct and opinionated.
• 1:39
  Crista Cowan: Over the decades, as I have gotten to know her, not only is she brilliant at what she does, but she's also very much a product of her environment.
• 1:50
  Crista Cowan: And I didn't really understand that in full until I had this conversation with her.
• 1:56
  Crista Cowan: Maureen is born and bred Rhode Islander.
• 2:01
  Crista Cowan: And I didn't know a lot about the state of Rhode Island.
• 2:05
  Crista Cowan: It is literally like 38 miles by 47 miles.
• 2:10
  Crista Cowan: Like it's teeny.
• 2:11
  Crista Cowan: I've driven from Boston to New York several times.
• 2:14
  Crista Cowan: Didn't even realize I was in the state of Rhode Island until one trip a few falls ago.
• 2:21
  Crista Cowan: My parents and I went on a leaf peeping trip and we made a point of stopping in Providence and getting to know a little bit about the state.
• 2:31
  Crista Cowan: It's so tiny that I'm from Los Angeles.
• 2:36
  Crista Cowan: The county of Los Angeles is like three times larger in square mileage than the whole state of Rhode Island.
• 2:43
  Crista Cowan: But Rhode Island is important for a lot of reasons.
• 2:46
  Crista Cowan: One of those reasons is because it was the 13th state to ratify the constitution to become a state of the original 13 colonies.
• 2:57
  Crista Cowan: It was the last.
• 2:59
  Crista Cowan: And so as we head into these final 13 episodes of our America 250 season, I'm really excited that Maureen Taylor is the one who is here to represent the state of Rhode Island.
• 3:13
  Crista Cowan: And she does it beautifully.
• 3:15
  Crista Cowan: Not only is she the photo detective, but she's also the president of the Rhode Island Genealogical Society.
• 3:21
  Crista Cowan: And I think you're really going to enjoy my conversation with Maureen Taylor.
• 3:25
  Crista Cowan: Well, Maureen, I'm so excited to have you with us here today.
• 3:29
  Crista Cowan: You and I have known each other for what, almost 20 years, probably.
• 3:32
  Maureen Taylor: Oh.
• 3:33
  Maureen Taylor: How long have you been at Ancestry, Crista?
• 3:36
  Crista Cowan: What 22 years?
• 3:38
  Maureen Taylor: 22 years.
• 3:39
  Crista Cowan: Yeah, so there you go.
• 3:40
  Crista Cowan: Um, but I feel like I don't know you or your story very well.
• 3:44
  Crista Cowan: So I'm actually really excited to have this conversation with you.
• 3:48
  Crista Cowan: Um, of course, everyone knows you as The Photo Detective.
• 3:51
  Crista Cowan: Tell us a little bit about how you got into that business.
• 3:55
  Maureen Taylor: Oh, the photo detective business.
• 3:57
  Maureen Taylor: Sure.
• 3:58
  Maureen Taylor: So I started my career as a like assistant in a historical society library working part-time in the graphics department and part-time in the reference department.
• 4:08
  Maureen Taylor: And the people who came in in the reference department to do research, family research, never went upstairs to look at the photographs.
• 4:17
  Maureen Taylor: And the people that came in to look at the photographs didn't always go downstairs to do the research.
• 4:22
  Maureen Taylor: And I thought, this is wrong.
• 4:25
  Maureen Taylor: These connect.
• 4:26
  Maureen Taylor: And it took me a long time to have the guts to just go off on my own and say, I'm gonna do this.
• 4:32
  Maureen Taylor: And then I got named, you know, the photo detective by Wall Street Journal.
• 4:37
  Maureen Taylor: And that was pretty cool.
• 4:39
  Maureen Taylor: So it's been a while.
• 4:42
  Maureen Taylor: I've been doing this for a while, Crista.
• 4:43
  Crista Cowan: Yeah, for sure you have.
• 4:44
  Crista Cowan: And that is how I was first introduced to you as well.
• 4:47
  Crista Cowan: I think you did some work with Ancestry Magazine back in the day.
• 4:51
  Crista Cowan: I did.
• 4:52
  Crista Cowan: Yeah.
• 4:52
  Crista Cowan: So, so tell me, like, do you have a story of like one of your favorite photographic finds?
• 5:00
  Maureen Taylor: Oh, you know what?
• 5:01
  Maureen Taylor: Here's the thing.
• 5:03
  Maureen Taylor: It's a new one every day.
• 5:05
  Maureen Taylor: It's a new one every day.
• 5:07
  Maureen Taylor: The the most the one I'm working on right now is because I'm I'm about to go on a vacation and I'm going to visit the town where this photograph was taken.
• 5:19
  Maureen Taylor: And so it is not a family photo, it's one I collected.
• 5:24
  Maureen Taylor: It's a postcard, a photographic postcard of a young woman in a park painting a building in this little town in Ireland.
• 5:37
  Maureen Taylor: And she the all these older people around her, which I think are her relatives, and she mails it to somebody.
• 5:45
  Maureen Taylor: The here I am in the park, you know, and this is with named the prettiest village, blah, blah, blah, blah.
• 5:50
  Maureen Taylor: So I'm hoping when I go to the village, I can say this is where she was sat.
• 5:55
  Crista Cowan: Yeah.
• 5:56
  Crista Cowan: That's easy.
• 5:57
  Maureen Taylor: Which would be pretty cool.
• 5:58
  Maureen Taylor: So that's the one I'm working on right now.
• 6:00
  Maureen Taylor: So there's lots of stories, tons of stories.
• 6:03
  Maureen Taylor: Every one is a new one, you know, from the you know, great-grandfather that I didn't have a photograph of.
• 6:10
  Maureen Taylor: And then somebody put him up on Facebook in a group, and I was like, really?
• 6:14
  Maureen Taylor: Well, I didn't even think to look at the public library because he wouldn't actually live in this town, but there was the collection.
• 6:23
  Maureen Taylor: So I feel quite foolish about that one.
• 6:25
  Maureen Taylor: But um yeah, you know, everyone is a every single day is a different photo mystery or photo curiosity that I find.
• 6:35
  Maureen Taylor: And it's fun.
• 6:36
  Crista Cowan: Well, and we talk about, you know, there's that old saying about a you know, picture's worth a thousand words.
• 6:42
  Crista Cowan: Like there is literally a story behind every photo, too.
• 6:46
  Maureen Taylor: There is, and a lot of people just want to know when it was taken.
• 6:49
  Maureen Taylor: And the story goes way beyond when it was taken.
• 6:54
  Maureen Taylor: It's about the people that are in it, it's about where it was taken, it's how that fits into your family history.
• 7:03
  Maureen Taylor: You know, I deal in the nuance, the context of the photos.
• 7:07
  Maureen Taylor: Sure, I can date it and AI can date it, but it's the other stuff that really reveals hidden history in family collections.
• 7:18
  Maureen Taylor: Like somebody's wearing a pin and they forget to look at the pin because they're so focused on the face, or they're sure it's who it is.
• 7:28
  Maureen Taylor: And then I'm like, no, this photograph goes back a generation before the person you think is in it.
• 7:33
  Maureen Taylor: And they're like, what?
• 7:34
  Maureen Taylor: I'm like, let's look at that tree.
• 7:36
  Maureen Taylor: Let's look at that ancestry tree and see what we can find out.
• 7:40
  Maureen Taylor: It's a lot of fun.
• 7:42
  Maureen Taylor: It's a lot of fun.
• 7:43
  Crista Cowan: Yeah, I it sounds like a lot of fun.
• 7:45
  Crista Cowan: And I think what you do is such a service to the community.
• 7:47
  Crista Cowan: You mentioned AI.
• 7:49
  Crista Cowan: How do you see AI changing or augmenting what you do versus maybe replacing some of what you do?
• 7:56
  Maureen Taylor: Uh yeah, it's definitely replacing some of what I do.
• 7:59
  Maureen Taylor: It's an interesting time to be the photo detective.
• 8:02
  Maureen Taylor: Yeah, but AI does not at this point do much about the context and fit it into your family history with all your other photos.
• 8:12
  Maureen Taylor: So that's what I'm doing now is mostly working with people and saying, bring it all on.
• 8:18
  Maureen Taylor: I want to see it all in one fell swoop.
• 8:21
  Maureen Taylor: I don't want to see just one photo or three photos.
• 8:23
  Maureen Taylor: I want to see what you can cover in the timing that we have.
• 8:27
  Maureen Taylor: Bring out the boxes, bring out the photo album.
• 8:30
  Maureen Taylor: Let's talk about it.
• 8:31
  Maureen Taylor: And I love working on photo albums.
• 8:33
  Crista Cowan: That's amazing.
• 8:35
  Maureen Taylor: That really is the story.
• 8:37
  Crista Cowan: Yeah.
• 8:37
  Maureen Taylor: It tells a story.
• 8:39
  Crista Cowan: Well, I feel like I'm gonna need to hire you.
• 8:41
  Crista Cowan: I inherited my great-grandmother's photo albums.
• 8:46
  Crista Cowan: She kept a cons of them that I got.
• 8:49
  Crista Cowan: They start in I think 1907 and they go through the end of World War One.
• 8:54
  Crista Cowan: Oh, and just like page after page after page of five and six pictures to a page.
• 9:00
  Crista Cowan: As uh after she married my great-grandfather, he went off to World War I and he would send her back photographs.
• 9:06
  Crista Cowan: So there's like a whole section of one of these albums that is his military service in Europe.
• 9:11
  Crista Cowan: I mean, it's just, but there's some pictures in there that I'm like, I don't know who these people are.
• 9:16
  Crista Cowan: And that's currently like what I'm trying to figure out is how do I figure that out?
• 9:20
  Maureen Taylor: You want you want to know my favorite photo album I ever worked on?
• 9:23
  Maureen Taylor: Yeah.
• 9:23
  Maureen Taylor: Yeah, this was a good one.
• 9:25
  Maureen Taylor: So a person came to me with this photo album, and in the process of telling the story and figuring out, like maybe who put the album together, we discovered that this album had been passed down to three sisters.
• 9:40
  Maureen Taylor: As the sister who put it together died, it went to this second sister, who then rearranged some of the photographs, put some of her photographs in, then she died, and it went to the third sister who further monkeyed with the contents.
• 9:57
  Maureen Taylor: Um, it was fascinating to work on.
• 9:59
  Maureen Taylor: Absolutely fascinating.
• 10:00
  Maureen Taylor: I was like, wait, what?
• 10:02
  Maureen Taylor: What?
• 10:02
  Maureen Taylor: This doesn't make any sense.
• 10:03
  Maureen Taylor: And then we looked at the family tree and we broke it down piece by piece.
• 10:08
  Maureen Taylor: I was like, this is a big story.
• 10:10
  Maureen Taylor: These sisters really loved each other and they had a plan for this album.
• 10:15
  Crista Cowan: Wow.
• 10:15
  Crista Cowan: Uh, I wish I could talk all day with you about that, but that's what we're here to talk about.
• 10:19
  Maureen Taylor: No, that's not what we're here for.
• 10:21
  Crista Cowan: But but tell me a little bit about like, so you got into this photo detective thing because of your work.
• 10:26
  Crista Cowan: You said it was the historical society.
• 10:28
  Maureen Taylor: Yes, but really, I have to credit my mom because my mom had a small box, a couple of small boxes, cigar boxes of all things that I nobody smoked.
• 10:40
  Maureen Taylor: I don't know why they ended up in cigar boxes, maybe because they were sturdy.
• 10:43
  Maureen Taylor: I'm not really sure.
• 10:44
  Maureen Taylor: But anyway, she had these small boxes of photographs of mostly her family, some of my dad's, but mostly her family.
• 10:53
  Maureen Taylor: And she would take them out and we would look at them.
• 10:56
  Maureen Taylor: And she loved to look at them and reminisce about the things that were in the photos and the people that were in the photos.
• 11:03
  Maureen Taylor: And so every time we looked at them, it revealed a little bit more of the story.
• 11:09
  Maureen Taylor: And, you know, I really credit her for that.
• 11:12
  Crista Cowan: And is that something that she did your whole life or something that started as she got toward the end of her life?
• 11:17
  Maureen Taylor: No, this started when we were kids.
• 11:19
  Maureen Taylor: You know, it would be a stormy afternoon, and she'd say, Let's look at those photographs.
• 11:25
  Maureen Taylor: And she'd take them out.
• 11:26
  Maureen Taylor: And of course, I was just a kid.
• 11:27
  Maureen Taylor: I didn't have a tape recorder.
• 11:29
  Maureen Taylor: I didn't, you know, I would just listen to the stories.
• 11:31
  Maureen Taylor: And um, it was great.
• 11:33
  Maureen Taylor: And she had she had some on her bureau that I, you know, knew who the people were because she told me who they were.
• 11:41
  Maureen Taylor: But then as I became the photo detective, I was like, okay, wait a minute.
• 11:45
  Maureen Taylor: What?
• 11:46
  Maureen Taylor: There's people missing.
• 11:47
  Maureen Taylor: And the genealogist, right?
• 11:50
  Maureen Taylor: The genealogist I mean, why are they missing?
• 11:52
  Maureen Taylor: Where are they?
• 11:54
  Maureen Taylor: Yeah.
• 11:54
  Maureen Taylor: When was this photograph taken?
• 11:56
  Maureen Taylor: So it became a reveal for me.
• 11:58
  Maureen Taylor: But my mom.
• 12:00
  Crista Cowan: Yeah, it sounds like you've been connected to family history and family story your whole life.
• 12:04
  Crista Cowan: I think that's beautiful.
• 12:06
  Maureen Taylor: Oh, Crista, I saved my allowance money to buy Gilbert Jones' book in search of your ancestors.
• 12:12
  Maureen Taylor: And then I convinced them on a vacation once.
• 12:16
  Maureen Taylor: We went up to New Hampshire and I like really convinced my parents.
• 12:19
  Maureen Taylor: I was like, can we please stop at the New Hampshire historical site?
• 12:23
  Maureen Taylor: You were that good.
• 12:24
  Maureen Taylor: I was that kid, that weird kid.
• 12:26
  Maureen Taylor: So was I.
• 12:27
  Maureen Taylor: I get it.
• 12:29
  Maureen Taylor: And they did.
• 12:30
  Maureen Taylor: They stopped.
• 12:30
  Maureen Taylor: My mom came in with me, and you know, she was very interested in family history.
• 12:34
  Crista Cowan: I love that.
• 12:35
  Crista Cowan: How many siblings do you have?
• 12:36
  Maureen Taylor: I have two siblings.
• 12:37
  Crista Cowan: And are were they at all interested or did the bug just bite you?
• 12:42
  Maureen Taylor: The bug really just bit me.
• 12:44
  Maureen Taylor: Okay.
• 12:44
  Maureen Taylor: I mean, they're they're interested in listening to it.
• 12:47
  Maureen Taylor: Sure.
• 12:47
  Maureen Taylor: But they don't do it.
• 12:49
  Crista Cowan: Yeah.
• 12:49
  Crista Cowan: And so talk to me about growing up.
• 12:52
  Crista Cowan: Were you born and raised in Rhode Island?
• 12:54
  Crista Cowan: Have you always lived there?
• 12:56
  Maureen Taylor: Yes.
• 12:56
  Maureen Taylor: I have always lived here.
• 12:58
  Maureen Taylor: This little tiny state uh has been home.
• 13:01
  Maureen Taylor: I grew up here.
• 13:02
  Maureen Taylor: I was raised here.
• 13:03
  Maureen Taylor: I went to college here.
• 13:05
  Maureen Taylor: I only actually have left the state for like a couple of decades to go live in the Boston area.
• 13:11
  Maureen Taylor: So I haven't gone that far from home, uh, living-wise, anyway.
• 13:16
  Maureen Taylor: No, I love it here.
• 13:17
  Maureen Taylor: I love this state.
• 13:18
  Crista Cowan: It's beautiful.
• 13:19
  Maureen Taylor: I've been there a couple of times.
• 13:20
  Maureen Taylor: Absolutely.
• 13:21
  Maureen Taylor: I love this state.
• 13:23
  Crista Cowan: What?
• 13:23
  Crista Cowan: Um, were both of your parents from there as well?
• 13:26
  Maureen Taylor: Yes.
• 13:27
  Maureen Taylor: Both of them.
• 13:27
  Maureen Taylor: Both of them.
• 13:28
  Maureen Taylor: Yes.
• 13:29
  Crista Cowan: Wow.
• 13:29
  Crista Cowan: Tell me, do you know the story of how your parents met?
• 13:33
  Maureen Taylor: It's probably not worth sharing, but they marry into each other in a public event, public place, and uh then um dated for a while.
• 13:43
  Crista Cowan: Okay.
• 13:43
  Crista Cowan: Did they stay married?
• 13:46
  Maureen Taylor: Oh, yes.
• 13:47
  Crista Cowan: Yeah.
• 13:48
  Maureen Taylor: My parents were married for 50-something years.
• 13:50
  Crista Cowan: So wow.
• 13:51
  Maureen Taylor: And how yeah, they were role models for sure.
• 13:55
  Maureen Taylor: They had a lot of struggles, a lot of my dad had a lot of health problems, but my parents stayed together.
• 14:02
  Crista Cowan: Good for them.
• 14:03
  Crista Cowan: Um, what did your dad do for work?
• 14:06
  Maureen Taylor: My dad, so this is one of the things I wanted to talk about was the entrepreneurial spirit in my family.
• 14:14
  Maureen Taylor: My dad, his dad, his uncle, his grandfather, and his great-grandfather.
• 14:21
  Maureen Taylor: It was inherited family painting and paper hanging business.
• 14:29
  Crista Cowan: Oh, wow.
• 14:30
  Crista Cowan: Okay.
• 14:31
  Maureen Taylor: I have some of their tools still uh in this house.
• 14:36
  Maureen Taylor: Uh and my great-grandfather had a paper and paper hanging store at one point.
• 14:43
  Maureen Taylor: I found him in a city directory and it's like, what?
• 14:45
  Maureen Taylor: You had a store?
• 14:46
  Maureen Taylor: And there he is on the back of my wall, which I'm sure is a picture that hung in the store, which was popular.
• 14:53
  Maureen Taylor: Um, so my dad did that.
• 14:55
  Maureen Taylor: He he he worked very hard.
• 14:57
  Maureen Taylor: He was very good with um, you know, if they tested him, I sure he'd he'd turn out to be one of those super color identifier people because he could he mixed everything by hand.
• 15:09
  Crista Cowan: Oh, okay.
• 15:10
  Maureen Taylor: He was good.
• 15:11
  Crista Cowan: That's amazing.
• 15:12
  Crista Cowan: So it was your great-grandfather that started the business.
• 15:15
  Maureen Taylor: Uh, actually, either thing it was my great-grandfather or my great-grand great grandfather.
• 15:20
  Maureen Taylor: I'm a little unclear as to which one.
• 15:22
  Crista Cowan: And what town in Rhode Island?
• 15:25
  Maureen Taylor: Uh, they lived in several towns, okay, but primarily in a community called Lincoln, which is actually the thing to know about Rhode Island is there are towns, but then there are villages.
• 15:38
  Crista Cowan: Okay.
• 15:38
  Maureen Taylor: And what is the difference?
• 15:39
  Maureen Taylor: A lot of villages.
• 15:41
  Maureen Taylor: The villages are really where people identify.
• 15:45
  Maureen Taylor: Like you don't live in Lincoln, you live in Salesville.
• 15:50
  Maureen Taylor: You don't live in Berroville, you live in Pasco.
• 15:54
  Maureen Taylor: You don't live, you know, there's all kinds of towns in, I mean, little villages and post offices.
• 16:01
  Maureen Taylor: My favorite is Biscuit City, which is basically two streets that cross.
• 16:05
  Maureen Taylor: Um, but there's so many of them, and that is how people today still identify.
• 16:13
  Crista Cowan: Wow.
• 16:14
  Crista Cowan: Okay.
• 16:14
  Crista Cowan: And so was your great-grandfather's business like you said there was a store.
• 16:19
  Crista Cowan: Was that like in a village, or did they work in a lot of different places?
• 16:23
  Crista Cowan: Did he end up with, you know, was it an enterprise?
• 16:26
  Maureen Taylor: Uh, so that was that was George Taylor, and he had a store in Pawtucket, Rhode Island.
• 16:32
  Maureen Taylor: Um, but he also lived in Lincoln.
• 16:37
  Maureen Taylor: And what I just sort of found out about him is he, it seems, uh took in English immigrants who lived with him and worked in the business.
• 16:50
  Crista Cowan: And was he an immigrant himself?
• 16:52
  Crista Cowan: And so he had some sympathy for them or no?
• 16:55
  Maureen Taylor: No, he was not.
• 16:56
  Crista Cowan: Okay.
• 16:57
  Maureen Taylor: His wife was.
• 16:58
  Crista Cowan: Okay.
• 16:59
  Maureen Taylor: So I think maybe there was a connection there.
• 17:01
  Crista Cowan: Yeah.
• 17:01
  Maureen Taylor: I'm not really sure.
• 17:02
  Maureen Taylor: Like she, you know, sent a letter and said, send a couple of guys over.
• 17:06
  Maureen Taylor: We have we have some extra work.
• 17:08
  Crista Cowan: Oh, that's amazing.
• 17:09
  Crista Cowan: So, on that particular branch of your family tree, how deep do your Rhode Island roots go?
• 17:14
  Maureen Taylor: George Peter Peter is the one who um comes down here from New Hampshire.
• 17:22
  Crista Cowan: Okay.
• 17:23
  Maureen Taylor: So my dad, my grandfather, my great-grandfather George, uh, and his father, Peter.
• 17:30
  Maureen Taylor: So four generations.
• 17:31
  Crista Cowan: Okay.
• 17:32
  Crista Cowan: Wow.
• 17:32
  Crista Cowan: That's amazing.
• 17:33
  Crista Cowan: Yeah.
• 17:34
  Crista Cowan: And then on your mom's side, your mom was also raised in Rhode Island.
• 17:38
  Crista Cowan: Uh, were her parents from there as well?
• 17:42
  Maureen Taylor: No.
• 17:42
  Maureen Taylor: So her family history is French-Canadian.
• 17:47
  Crista Cowan: Okay.
• 17:48
  Maureen Taylor: And so they my grandmother, my I did, she died when I was one, so I didn't really know her.
• 17:56
  Maureen Taylor: I only knew one of my grandparents.
• 17:58
  Maureen Taylor: Um, and she lived in where were they living?
• 18:04
  Maureen Taylor: Fall River or New Bedford.
• 18:06
  Maureen Taylor: She was working in the mills.
• 18:07
  Maureen Taylor: And my grandfather came down from Quebec, as was common.
• 18:12
  Maureen Taylor: It was like a highway between Rhode Island and Quebec.
• 18:17
  Maureen Taylor: And they were married uh in 1916.
• 18:20
  Maureen Taylor: And then, as you probably know, Crista, but maybe some listeners don't know, because at that point she married a non-citizen, she lost her citizenship.
• 18:30
  Maureen Taylor: Right.
• 18:31
  Maureen Taylor: So they moved to Canada for a few years, and then the opportunities were better here, I think.
• 18:38
  Maureen Taylor: So they moved back.
• 18:40
  Maureen Taylor: Um, and then she uh applied, reapplied for her citizenship.
• 18:46
  Crista Cowan: Did for her.
• 18:47
  Maureen Taylor: Yeah, yeah.
• 18:48
  Maureen Taylor: She was a very important my mother always said it was very important to her.
• 18:52
  Crista Cowan: Yeah.
• 18:52
  Crista Cowan: Yeah.
• 18:53
  Crista Cowan: It's such a weird period of history, and it was only for a few years, right?
• 18:57
  Crista Cowan: But the we the way the law was written, right?
• 19:00
  Crista Cowan: A woman marries somebody and her citizenship is connected to his citizenship.
• 19:04
  Crista Cowan: So even if she was born here, was a US citizen, she lost her citizenship if her husband wasn't a citizen.
• 19:10
  Crista Cowan: Such a strange time.
• 19:11
  Maureen Taylor: Such a strange time.
• 19:12
  Maureen Taylor: So my grandfather was born in Canada, uh, in Quebec, uh, in a little town in Quebec.
• 19:19
  Maureen Taylor: And uh we used to go back and forth sometimes and visit cousins of my mom's.
• 19:25
  Crista Cowan: Wow.
• 19:26
  Crista Cowan: So fun.
• 19:26
  Crista Cowan: And is there a I mean, I feel like because of that connection and the highway between those communities, right?
• 19:32
  Crista Cowan: Like, like there's a lot of French Canadian influence in Rhode Island, yeah.
• 19:36
  Maureen Taylor: Oh yes.
• 19:37
  Maureen Taylor: Oh, yes, there is.
• 19:39
  Maureen Taylor: Uh, there's a there was a community in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, where my uh grandmother and grandfather and several of their relatives, I think my great-grandparents came down, and my grandmother's parents also lived there.
• 19:55
  Maureen Taylor: They pretty much all lived on the same street in Pawtucket.
• 19:57
  Maureen Taylor: Okay.
• 19:58
  Maureen Taylor: And you know, genealogist Michael Leclerc, I think, who's a French-Canadian uh researcher.
• 20:05
  Maureen Taylor: So we were doing research because we're our families are about from the same area.
• 20:11
  Maureen Taylor: And all of a sudden he's looking at the census, and I'm looking at the census.
• 20:15
  Maureen Taylor: I think this was the 1950 census.
• 20:17
  Maureen Taylor: Um, and he goes, Those are the Alice's my that he talked about.
• 20:23
  Maureen Taylor: I'm like, Yeah, that's my mom and my grandmother.
• 20:26
  Maureen Taylor: He's like, What?
• 20:27
  Maureen Taylor: He lived next door.
• 20:29
  Maureen Taylor: Stop it.
• 20:30
  Maureen Taylor: Stop it.
• 20:31
  Maureen Taylor: He lived right next door.
• 20:32
  Maureen Taylor: I don't remember if it's grandfather or great-grandfather, but they live right next door to my mother and grandmother.
• 20:39
  Maureen Taylor: And so he would talk about the Alice's all the time.
• 20:42
  Maureen Taylor: And those were the Alice's.
• 20:44
  Crista Cowan: That's crazy.
• 20:45
  Crista Cowan: That's not unheard of in family history, but it's like every time it happens, I'm like, how like how many connections like that exist in the world?
• 20:54
  Crista Cowan: But because people don't know their family history, they never think to make those connections.
• 20:58
  Maureen Taylor: They don't.
• 20:59
  Maureen Taylor: And Rhode Island is a very small place, yeah, right, Crista.
• 21:02
  Maureen Taylor: I mean, it's small.
• 21:04
  Maureen Taylor: And one of the things you have to get used to when you first move here, this is what my daughter found out the sort of hard way, is everyone knows everyone else.
• 21:13
  Crista Cowan: Yeah.
• 21:13
  Maureen Taylor: And if they don't know you, they know someone that you know, or they're related to you, or they worked with you.
• 21:22
  Maureen Taylor: It's a very insular community in some ways, in some communities.
• 21:28
  Maureen Taylor: Um, so is that it was kind of normal for Michael and I to find that connection and to be good friends too.
• 21:34
  Maureen Taylor: He's like, oh my goodness, look at this.
• 21:36
  Crista Cowan: Yeah.
• 21:36
  Crista Cowan: You know, it's interesting though, because I think sometimes like states have such identities, right?
• 21:41
  Crista Cowan: Like places, communities.
• 21:43
  Crista Cowan: Um, and and Rhode Island is small, but it's so surrounded, right?
• 21:48
  Crista Cowan: Like Massachusetts and Connecticut, and like it's not too far from some of those places.
• 21:54
  Crista Cowan: And so, what do you think it is about Rhode Island that it's been able to maintain such an identity?
• 22:00
  Maureen Taylor: Rhode Islanders have an independent spirit.
• 22:02
  Maureen Taylor: They they they love their state and they stay here for the most part and they believe what they believe.
• 22:15
  Maureen Taylor: So I could give you an example of how independent.
• 22:20
  Maureen Taylor: Um the statue on the top of the statehouse is called the independent man.
• 22:25
  Maureen Taylor: And it comes all the way back from Roger Williams and Hutchinson, and you know, those people that came down from Massachusetts, they were banished.
• 22:35
  Maureen Taylor: They started their own way of doing things, and Rhode Islanders have their own way of doing things and they like things done a certain way.
• 22:43
  Maureen Taylor: The joke in Rhode Island, which um I hope no one that listens to this will be offended because it is a Rhode Island thing.
• 22:51
  Maureen Taylor: You can drive from one end of the state to the other in an hour.
• 22:55
  Maureen Taylor: But for a Rhode Islander to drive 20 minutes to go somewhere is considered just too far.
• 23:05
  Maureen Taylor: And it's like you really need to think about well, what are you gonna do?
• 23:10
  Maureen Taylor: Like what when you get there, how long is it gonna take you?
• 23:13
  Maureen Taylor: And you know, we have all these bridges because we have all this water, we have Narragansett Bay, and we have rivers, and there's bridges everywhere.
• 23:20
  Maureen Taylor: Uh, but one of the bridges that went from um a part of Rhode Island, uh eastern part of Rhode Island, into Massachusetts, they decided, I think it was the state of Massachusetts, decided they were going to put tolls on the bridge.
• 23:35
  Maureen Taylor: And the people of Rhode Island just stopped using the bridge.
• 23:39
  Maureen Taylor: They would prefer to ride to drive all the way around than pay that toll.
• 23:46
  Maureen Taylor: They even lowered the toll.
• 23:47
  Maureen Taylor: I think at one point it was 10 cents, and the people of Rhode Island said, no, we're not doing that.
• 23:52
  Crista Cowan: That is very telling.
• 23:54
  Crista Cowan: It's very telling.
• 23:55
  Crista Cowan: That's amazing.
• 23:57
  Crista Cowan: Well, you mentioned earlier your grandmother worked in a mill when she met your grandfather.
• 24:01
  Crista Cowan: Um, talk to us about a little bit about like the mills in Rhode Island and like what is the significance of that?
• 24:06
  Maureen Taylor: Rhode Island has a lot of water, right?
• 24:09
  Maureen Taylor: We have a lot of water.
• 24:10
  Maureen Taylor: We have a lot of um water, like sort of mill dams that were built.
• 24:15
  Maureen Taylor: So there were mills everywhere, big mills, small mills.
• 24:20
  Maureen Taylor: But in the early period, you know, Samuel Slater is known for starting the Industrial Revolution here in this country.
• 24:26
  Maureen Taylor: And he um what came over from England, uh, started the cotton thread mill in Pawtucket, Rhode Island.
• 24:36
  Maureen Taylor: And then there were lots of small mills here.
• 24:40
  Maureen Taylor: Rhode Islanders knew how to mill.
• 24:42
  Maureen Taylor: They had gristmills, some of which are still in existence.
• 24:46
  Maureen Taylor: You can go and have a Rhode Island delicacy called a Johnny Cake, which is made from ground cornmeal, uh, that are very good.
• 24:54
  Maureen Taylor: And you they had gristmills, sawmills, small tiny mills in every of one of these villages.
• 25:05
  Maureen Taylor: And I just want to say that in 2020, with COVID, um, you know, our state, we really weren't allowed to leave our state, which you'd really feel how small your state is.
• 25:16
  Maureen Taylor: I mean, everybody here shops over the river in Massachusetts, so it was pretty tiny.
• 25:23
  Maureen Taylor: Um uh my husband and I uh did tours of each and every town in the state and every village in those towns.
• 25:35
  Maureen Taylor: What I have the background, I'm a local person.
• 25:41
  Maureen Taylor: I love Rhode Island history and genealogy.
• 25:44
  Maureen Taylor: This is what I did before I did the folder detective stuff.
• 25:48
  Maureen Taylor: And so I did roots that we followed, and we found the foundations of a lot of the old mills that are pretty much undocumented.
• 26:01
  Maureen Taylor: Uh, you know, it's there were little mills for a long time.
• 26:05
  Maureen Taylor: And there's something called the Rhode Island system for milling, making textile mills for the most part here.
• 26:14
  Maureen Taylor: And the textile mill owners asked for families to move here.
• 26:21
  Maureen Taylor: They were particularly interested in having the children work in the mills because children were small, they could help with the machines, they were fast on their feet.
• 26:30
  Maureen Taylor: Um, so once steam engines replace water power, one of the most spectacular things you can see when you come here, if anybody comes here, is to go to Pawtucket, go to the Slater mill, and then just go a little bit further down the road, and you can see the the power of that water rushing down the river.
• 26:49
  Maureen Taylor: And we saw we tried to, we tried to categorize and find all of the mill dams that were in the state, and we thought we had done really well.
• 26:58
  Maureen Taylor: And then the Department of Environmental Management came out with a list.
• 27:01
  Maureen Taylor: We thought we'd we'd really we'd really done it, right?
• 27:04
  Maureen Taylor: We found like 50 or 60, we'd done it.
• 27:06
  Maureen Taylor: And then the list came out and it was like 600.
• 27:08
  Maureen Taylor: I was like, oh man, we're never gonna find these.
• 27:12
  Maureen Taylor: These are not findable.
• 27:13
  Maureen Taylor: Uh, but anyway, so then once steam engines replaced pure water power, the mills got larger.
• 27:22
  Maureen Taylor: And then you have, you know, there's more need.
• 27:25
  Maureen Taylor: Um, there were lots of different textile mills here: silk mills, woolen mills, cotton mills, primarily cotton mills.
• 27:33
  Maureen Taylor: There's this whole relationship between Rhode Island and the South, and the making of particular fabric used in the South.
• 27:42
  Maureen Taylor: Uh, there were jewelry factories, silversmith factories, um, tool factories.
• 27:50
  Maureen Taylor: I mean, I remember all of these.
• 27:52
  Maureen Taylor: I'm old enough to remember when the mills were mostly still around.
• 27:57
  Maureen Taylor: They're all gone now for the most part.
• 28:00
  Maureen Taylor: So my family worked in the mills.
• 28:03
  Maureen Taylor: It was an honest, it was an honest laboring job.
• 28:07
  Maureen Taylor: Everybody worked in the mills.
• 28:08
  Maureen Taylor: In the 1950 census, my mom is a cloth inspector and my grandmother is a a spinner, probably in the same factory, probably around the corner from where they lived, because there were big mills in the neighborhood.
• 28:22
  Maureen Taylor: Wow.
• 28:23
  Maureen Taylor: Um, so it's a whole big milling system.
• 28:26
  Maureen Taylor: And my on the other side of the family, some of the family worked in the mills as well.
• 28:31
  Crista Cowan: That level of industry for a community seems massive, right?
• 28:35
  Crista Cowan: Like massive.
• 28:36
  Crista Cowan: Compared to the size of the state, like it just feels outsized that that kind of a system was put into place.
• 28:44
  Crista Cowan: And the fact that they invited families to come and live there, I think that like the industry behind that is fascinating.
• 28:52
  Maureen Taylor: Yeah, there are some of the mills have been preserved, a lot of the mills have been turned over to housing, a good number of them burned to the ground, you know.
• 29:00
  Maureen Taylor: Uh, but you can still see how people lived.
• 29:05
  Maureen Taylor: If you go to uh Cumberland, Rhode Island, and you go to the village of Ashton, and you can find that online.
• 29:14
  Maureen Taylor: It's it's searchable.
• 29:16
  Maureen Taylor: You can still see all the mill housing.
• 29:18
  Maureen Taylor: And mill housing has a particular look.
• 29:20
  Maureen Taylor: So when we were driving around looking for those mill dams, we could spot the mill housing and then think, okay, where's the mill?
• 29:28
  Crista Cowan: Right.
• 29:28
  Crista Cowan: So they were cut, they were company house, it was company housing.
• 29:32
  Maureen Taylor: There, well, first it was, yeah, there was company housing, and then the landlords took over.
• 29:37
  Maureen Taylor: And so we have housing in Rhode Island called a tenement house, which is a three-decker, which is pretty unique here, I think.
• 29:45
  Maureen Taylor: So you you have three apartments.
• 29:48
  Maureen Taylor: Um I I lived in several of those apartments, and that's where you lived.
• 29:54
  Maureen Taylor: That's where a lot of people live still.
• 29:56
  Maureen Taylor: So around 1900, there's a big push to put in a lot of housing, these triple deckers.
• 30:02
  Crista Cowan: So do you, I mean, being the photo detective, I have to ask, do you have any photos of any of your family in the mills?
• 30:09
  Maureen Taylor: I have none.
• 30:10
  Maureen Taylor: Really?
• 30:11
  Maureen Taylor: I have none.
• 30:12
  Maureen Taylor: None.
• 30:12
  Maureen Taylor: None.
• 30:13
  Maureen Taylor: Uh none.
• 30:14
  Maureen Taylor: But I mean, Lewis Hine took a lot of photographs in the Rhode Island Mills.
• 30:19
  Maureen Taylor: And there are people out there.
• 30:21
  Maureen Taylor: There's a wonderful guy who who died a couple of years ago, unfortunately, and he was unraveling the stories in those Lewis Hine photos and actually finding the descendants.
• 30:31
  Maureen Taylor: So I always hoped he would find maybe one of my descendants.
• 30:35
  Maureen Taylor: And so I mentioned George Taylor, and I said his wife was from England.
• 30:40
  Maureen Taylor: His wife in England, I found her in a census working in an English mill at age 11 with the rest of her family.
• 30:51
  Crista Cowan: So is that maybe what part of the impetus for their immigration to Rhode Island specifically?
• 30:56
  Maureen Taylor: Oh, her family, definitely.
• 30:57
  Maureen Taylor: Yeah.
• 30:58
  Maureen Taylor: They came over in about 1875, sure.
• 31:00
  Maureen Taylor: Yeah, that's why they came here.
• 31:03
  Crista Cowan: Okay.
• 31:03
  Crista Cowan: Well, there you go.
• 31:04
  Crista Cowan: That is so interesting.
• 31:06
  Crista Cowan: And so like it just feels so uniquely Rhode Island, right?
• 31:10
  Maureen Taylor: Yeah, and people don't think about it.
• 31:12
  Maureen Taylor: Like Rhode Island was Rhode Island was named the the jewelry capital of the world in 1880.
• 31:20
  Maureen Taylor: There were so many jewelry factories.
• 31:23
  Maureen Taylor: And in fact, I I didn't, I think I mentioned you this to you.
• 31:28
  Maureen Taylor: I mentioned this to you at Ruth Tech.
• 31:30
  Maureen Taylor: But my mom, I you know, she she always talked about her work in the factory as the cloth inspector.
• 31:35
  Maureen Taylor: She was very proud of that work.
• 31:37
  Maureen Taylor: It was good work.
• 31:39
  Maureen Taylor: She wasn't working with the machinery.
• 31:41
  Maureen Taylor: Um, it wasn't as dangerous, probably paid better.
• 31:46
  Maureen Taylor: And she had a job when I was a little kid, and my grandmother, my dad's mom would babysit me, um, working in a tiny little jewelry factory around the corner from our house.
• 32:02
  Maureen Taylor: And what she did in that factory was um, well, I have examples here for you.
• 32:10
  Maureen Taylor: I I have examples, it's show and tell.
• 32:14
  Maureen Taylor: She would put all the little I did a little couple of ballerinas.
• 32:21
  Maureen Taylor: She'd put the stones in, and I still have her tools.
• 32:26
  Maureen Taylor: She could fix anything.
• 32:27
  Maureen Taylor: You broke a necklace, she'd fix it for you.
• 32:29
  Maureen Taylor: Uh, but I had these, and Crista, there was not a day of kindergarten in first grade and second grade where I did not go to school with a pin.
• 32:40
  Maureen Taylor: With a pin.
• 32:41
  Maureen Taylor: I had to wear a pen.
• 32:42
  Maureen Taylor: I have an entire collection of pins.
• 32:47
  Crista Cowan: That's amazing.
• 32:48
  Maureen Taylor: I love these pins.
• 32:50
  Crista Cowan: And are all of them made by your mom or some of them like yeah?
• 32:53
  Maureen Taylor: She used to glue in the stones.
• 32:55
  Crista Cowan: Okay.
• 32:55
  Crista Cowan: So so she would bring some home for you.
• 32:59
  Maureen Taylor: Yeah, she'd bring them home for me.
• 33:00
  Maureen Taylor: Yeah, oh, this is a cute little one.
• 33:02
  Maureen Taylor: This doesn't have any stones, but it was a little, you know, everybody had a little cardigan sweater in those days, right?
• 33:08
  Maureen Taylor: This is for your cardigan sweater.
• 33:10
  Maureen Taylor: Oh, to keep the little closed at the top.
• 33:14
  Maureen Taylor: So there's all kinds of things.
• 33:17
  Maureen Taylor: The apple, the even you ready for this one?
• 33:21
  Maureen Taylor: It's a little camera.
• 33:24
  Crista Cowan: Oh, that's adorable.
• 33:26
  Maureen Taylor: Yeah.
• 33:26
  Maureen Taylor: Imagine that on my little like first grade little Peter Pan collar.
• 33:31
  Maureen Taylor: Little fortuitous there.
• 33:33
  Maureen Taylor: Yeah, I I could not leave the house without one of these pins.
• 33:37
  Crista Cowan: Oh, that's so fun.
• 33:38
  Crista Cowan: And I love that she was proud of her work and wanted to show it off.
• 33:42
  Maureen Taylor: Very proud of her work, but never wanted us to work in a factory.
• 33:49
  Crista Cowan: Um, and that's an interesting thing, right?
• 33:51
  Crista Cowan: To come from a tradition of something that is honorable work, but hard work, and to have done it for her whole life, to have that wish for you.
• 33:59
  Crista Cowan: Why do you think that was?
• 34:01
  Maureen Taylor: She valued education.
• 34:03
  Maureen Taylor: My mom was very smart, but she had been forced to quit school because she got sick.
• 34:10
  Maureen Taylor: And in those days, the it was you're too sick to go to school.
• 34:14
  Maureen Taylor: And I'd be like, You're too sick to go to school, but you're not too sick to work in the mill.
• 34:20
  Maureen Taylor: How does that work out?
• 34:22
  Maureen Taylor: So she uh valued education.
• 34:26
  Maureen Taylor: She went back as an adult when we were kids to get her um GED.
• 34:31
  Maureen Taylor: Um, it meant a lot to her.
• 34:34
  Maureen Taylor: It meant a lot to her that we get an education that we go further.
• 34:38
  Maureen Taylor: They had no idea what to do with me.
• 34:40
  Maureen Taylor: I was like, you know, they just didn't know what to do with me.
• 34:45
  Maureen Taylor: Basically, um, I was the outlier in the family.
• 34:49
  Maureen Taylor: Uh but uh it it my parents were were very good people.
• 34:57
  Crista Cowan: That sounds like it.
• 34:58
  Crista Cowan: And I like I your mom just recently passed, didn't she?
• 35:01
  Maureen Taylor: She did just a couple of years ago.
• 35:03
  Maureen Taylor: She lived in '94.
• 35:05
  Crista Cowan: Wow.
• 35:05
  Maureen Taylor: She outlived everyone in the family.
• 35:08
  Maureen Taylor: Um yeah, just a couple of years ago.
• 35:11
  Crista Cowan: Yeah, to have her that long.
• 35:12
  Crista Cowan: What a gift.
• 35:14
  Maureen Taylor: What a gift.
• 35:14
  Maureen Taylor: Because her parents, her mom died.
• 35:18
  Maureen Taylor: I've already outlived her mom, and her dad died in his 40s.
• 35:23
  Maureen Taylor: So she never expected to live that long.
• 35:26
  Maureen Taylor: She outlived all of her siblings.
• 35:29
  Maureen Taylor: Like nobody lived to be 94.
• 35:33
  Crista Cowan: Yeah.
• 35:34
  Crista Cowan: Uh, thank you for sharing her with us.
• 35:36
  Crista Cowan: She sounds like she was wonderful from start to finish as a mother, especially.
• 35:43
  Maureen Taylor: She was good.
• 35:43
  Maureen Taylor: She was tough.
• 35:44
  Maureen Taylor: She was tough.
• 35:44
  Maureen Taylor: I'm not gonna say she was the tough great stuff.
• 35:47
  Crista Cowan: I'm the oldest.
• 35:48
  Crista Cowan: So am I.
• 35:50
  Crista Cowan: Yes, believe me, I know.
• 35:52
  Crista Cowan: My my youngest brother and I had entirely different parents.
• 35:55
  Maureen Taylor: Entirely different parents.
• 35:57
  Maureen Taylor: Uh, but you know, the wit the mill stuff here in Rhode Island is very important.
• 36:01
  Maureen Taylor: The water is very important.
• 36:04
  Maureen Taylor: Fishermen, my brother was a uh a shell fisherman for a long time.
• 36:09
  Maureen Taylor: There are sort of unique ways to earn your living here in Rhode Island.
• 36:15
  Crista Cowan: Well, and I would think there would have to be, right?
• 36:16
  Crista Cowan: Because the topography is unique, the smallness of the communities is unique.
• 36:21
  Crista Cowan: That I think the independent spirit that you talked about, I think that is rare fairly unique.
• 36:27
  Crista Cowan: And so it probably creates some unique opportunities for people or they create them for themselves to to live their lives and take care of their families.
• 36:36
  Maureen Taylor: And I lost the Rhode Island accent.
• 36:39
  Crista Cowan: How?
• 36:39
  Crista Cowan: Explain that to me.
• 36:41
  Maureen Taylor: I practiced a lot.
• 36:44
  Crista Cowan: Can you slip back into it or do you find yourself slipping back into it?
• 36:48
  Maureen Taylor: Sometimes I slip back into it.
• 36:50
  Crista Cowan: Yeah.
• 36:51
  Maureen Taylor: Yeah.
• 36:51
  Crista Cowan: That's fine.
• 36:52
  Crista Cowan: Well, you are now um are you the president of the Rhode Island State Genealogical Society?
• 36:57
  Maureen Taylor: Uh it's the Rhode Island Genealogical Society.
• 36:59
  Maureen Taylor: Okay.
• 36:59
  Maureen Taylor: And in New England, we don't have state genealogical societies.
• 37:03
  Maureen Taylor: They're all private.
• 37:04
  Maureen Taylor: Yes.
• 37:05
  Maureen Taylor: And we offer programs.
• 37:07
  Maureen Taylor: We just celebrated our 50th year last year.
• 37:10
  Maureen Taylor: So we've been around for a while.
• 37:12
  Maureen Taylor: Um, we have programs about Rhode Island genealogy.
• 37:16
  Maureen Taylor: We have a recognized journal.
• 37:18
  Maureen Taylor: Uh, we're always looking for articles for the journal, by the way.
• 37:20
  Maureen Taylor: If you have Rhode Island Ancestry, uh contact us.
• 37:25
  Maureen Taylor: And we have a meeting coming up this week, actually.
• 37:28
  Maureen Taylor: So we do four or five meetings and an annual meeting, which is an all-day meeting.
• 37:33
  Crista Cowan: So it sounds like a pretty active group.
• 37:35
  Maureen Taylor: Yeah, we're active.
• 37:36
  Maureen Taylor: We've got a lot of members all over the country.
• 37:38
  Maureen Taylor: So about 75% of our members don't live in the state.
• 37:43
  Crista Cowan: Which is also kind of an interesting thing to think about.
• 37:45
  Crista Cowan: As we've been doing this series for America 250 of focusing on a different state every week, it's always interesting to think about.
• 37:52
  Crista Cowan: Like, there are some people who identify so strongly with something about their state.
• 37:57
  Crista Cowan: Like every once in a while, I'll get messages from people who are like, you told this story about my state, and that doesn't represent what I think about my state.
• 38:04
  Crista Cowan: And I'm always just like, you know what?
• 38:06
  Crista Cowan: That's the beauty of places and places as characters in our family stories, is that our experience is going to inform how we view that place.
• 38:16
  Crista Cowan: And for some people, I suspect their families were maybe brought over from England to work in the mills and only lived there for a generation or two before they moved on to somewhere else.
• 38:25
  Maureen Taylor: Right.
• 38:25
  Maureen Taylor: So the English came here, worked in the mills.
• 38:29
  Maureen Taylor: The um the Irish came here and worked in the mills.
• 38:33
  Maureen Taylor: And then the later, you know, the later immigrants, the French Canadians, the Italians, and there were all kinds of different industries.
• 38:42
  Maureen Taylor: You know, there's some famous Lewis Hine photographs of children making cigars in the Italian section of Providence in a house.
• 38:51
  Maureen Taylor: So there were household industries, there were small factories, and then there were the big factories that had everything from train service to water power to housing, you know, just like other places in New England.
• 39:07
  Crista Cowan: Yeah.
• 39:08
  Crista Cowan: Wow.
• 39:08
  Crista Cowan: And so, yeah, you've got those people who pass through, and then you've got families like yours who stay for generations, right?
• 39:15
  Maureen Taylor: Right.
• 39:15
  Maureen Taylor: Um the bonds of family are strong.
• 39:19
  Maureen Taylor: Not so much on my dad's side of the family, but my mom's side of the family, that those French-Canadian bonds are strong.
• 39:27
  Maureen Taylor: I'm still in touch with all of my cousins.
• 39:30
  Maureen Taylor: On my dad's side, I have a second cousin.
• 39:34
  Maureen Taylor: Um, his grandfather and my grandfather were brothers.
• 39:38
  Maureen Taylor: And he is also a genealogist, which is interesting.
• 39:43
  Maureen Taylor: Lucky.
• 39:44
  Maureen Taylor: And then uh I am in touch with there's a a cousin.
• 39:51
  Maureen Taylor: Not quite, I never get that sort of level of cousins thing, but she's a cousin.
• 39:56
  Maureen Taylor: Uh, but her mother and my grandmother were sisters.
• 40:02
  Crista Cowan: Okay.
• 40:03
  Maureen Taylor: And she's a genealogist.
• 40:05
  Crista Cowan: That that is really rare in a family to have that many people that interested, I think.
• 40:11
  Crista Cowan: Yeah.
• 40:11
  Crista Cowan: That's what a gift.
• 40:13
  Crista Cowan: Yeah.
• 40:14
  Maureen Taylor: You'd think we could solve all the mysteries, Crista, but we can't.
• 40:16
  Crista Cowan: Yeah.
• 40:16
  Crista Cowan: Well, Maureen, we all if if they were easy to solve, I think we wouldn't care about it as much.
• 40:22
  Crista Cowan: It's, I think the effort, something about that gets us really pulled into their lives and their stories and their pictures and and makes us more interested than we might be otherwise if it was just easy.
• 40:33
  Maureen Taylor: Yeah, family is great.
• 40:35
  Maureen Taylor: Family is important.
• 40:36
  Crista Cowan: It is.
• 40:37
  Crista Cowan: Well, as you think about your connection to Rhode Island, right?
• 40:40
  Crista Cowan: We're getting ready to celebrate America 250, Rhode Island, of course, you know, part of the original founding of this country.
• 40:47
  Crista Cowan: Like, how would you sum up like your feelings about your state?
• 40:53
  Maureen Taylor: Oh, well, I've lived here most of my life.
• 40:57
  Maureen Taylor: And when I didn't live here, I wish I lived here.
• 41:00
  Maureen Taylor: And then my husband is not from here, but now he loves it here.
• 41:06
  Maureen Taylor: And our children spent their lives, most of their lives, in Massachusetts.
• 41:10
  Maureen Taylor: But when we moved here, they moved here, and now they love it and don't want to go anywhere else.
• 41:17
  Maureen Taylor: But Rhode Island has a long history, as I mentioned, of independence.
• 41:21
  Maureen Taylor: And a lot of people are not aware of the burning of the Gaspi, which was one of the first acts towards revolution.
• 41:29
  Maureen Taylor: And so there are a lot of 250 events here, like there are in all the 13 colonies.
• 41:35
  Maureen Taylor: Wow.
• 41:36
  Maureen Taylor: It seems to me like the Secretary of State is out every day and every night.
• 41:40
  Maureen Taylor: I follow him on Facebook and I'm like, oh my goodness, you're so busy.
• 41:46
  Crista Cowan: Well, but how wonderful that this state is taking the time and the effort to commemorate those events that were such a critical part of the founding of our country.
• 41:54
  Crista Cowan: I think that's amazing that the effort and time is being put into that.
• 41:58
  Maureen Taylor: Crista, I want to thank you for doing this series on each and every one of the states.
• 42:02
  Crista Cowan: Yeah, thank you.
• 42:03
  Crista Cowan: Studio sponsored by Ancestry.