My great-grandmother, Honora Brown, was born in Newark, NJ on November 23, 1872 to Charles Brown and Margaret Fahey. She was christened a few weeks later on December 8, 1872 at St. James Catholic Church in Newark – the same church where she would marry her first husband John J. Costello 25 years later. She was a woman of many names, and most of our family would know her as Eleanor Costello. To avoid confusion, here’s a quick primer.

• She was baptized ‘Honora’ and married under that name at the age of 25.
• In 3 censuses, between age 8 and 28, she was called ‘Lenora’
• When her oldest child was baptized, she was using the name ‘Eleanora’.
• By the time of her second child, she was ‘Eleanor’ and stayed Eleanor for the rest of her life.
• Her surname was ‘Brown’
• When she married at 25, she became ‘Costello’.
• After 14 years a widow, age 47, she remarried and became ‘Wagner’.

Her Childhood

Charles, Honor’s father, was a Danish war refugee. Prussia invaded and retained his part of the Denmark in 1864 and he emigrated shortly after. Margaret, Honor’s mother, was an Irish famine refugee. She was shipped off to New York City, alone, at the age 12, as part of an assisted emigration scheme to clear out the workhouses.

Whatever troubles they left behind, Charles and Margaret made their way to America, found each other, and married on Christmas Day, 1868. We know from the civil record that they were married by Reverend Thomas M. Killeen, who was a priest at St. John’s Catholic Church in Newark, NJ from about 1868 to 1870 and the church record tells us their witnesses were Michael Murray and Catherine Hayne.

Honora had 2 brothers and 4 sisters. Mary Ann, the eldest, was born a year after her parents marriage. John came a year after that. Honora was the third child, followed 2 years later by a brother, Peter, who died at the age of 3. Her younger sister Sarah was born in 1875,  followed 2 years later by Maggie, and 3 years later by Lizzie.

The family moved to Van Buren Street in Newark, NJ in the year that Honora was born, and they lived there at least until 1895. But while they stayed on Van Buren St, they never stayed in any one house for very long. They started out at 101 Van Buren, moved to 93, then 99, then 107, and finally 69 Van Buren.

Honora’s father, who was forty when she was born, passed away when she was only 25 years old in 1897. He is buried in Holy Sepulcher Cemetery, where his son Peter is also buried. Honora married 7 months after her father passed away. Her mother, Margaret, probably passed away on 25 February, 1904.

Marriage and Children

Honora married John J. Costello on April 27, 1898 at St. James Catholic Church in Newark, NJ. He was a 26 year old blacksmith and they moved into his parents home at 80 Jackson St., where they stayed through the birth of their first 3 children.

William, their first son, was born a year after their marriage but died as a young child, certainly before the age of 10, and possibly much sooner. Uncovering William was a surprise to some of our family, so he may have passed before his siblings ever knew anything about him.

John J. Jr. was born in 1901, followed by Margaret 2 years later, and Eleanor 2 years after that.

By June of 1905, the family moved into their own home at 88 Prospect St. but, sadly, after only 8 years of marriage, Honora lost her husband to pneumonia and kidney failure.

Three Sisters on Plum Street

In the aftermath of her husband’s death, Eleanor moved to a house at 23 Plum St and started taking in boarders.

Don’t look for the house now – don’t even look for the street – it’s gone. At the time, it was near the New Jersey Law School and several other colleges – a good location for boarders – but those colleges merged over the years and Plum St. was demolished and absorbed into the Rutgers University campus. It was somewhere near what is now Raymond Ave.

Eleanor’s daughters came with her to Plum St., but her son John J. moved in with his paternal grandparents William & Bridget and his father’s brother Anthony at 69 Vincent St. for at least some part of the time between 1906 and 1920.

Eleanor’s sisters Sarah (called Sadie) and Margaret were her first and longest boarders. Eleanor ran the house, while the sisters worked for ‘C T Co.” – the Clark Thread Company (1866-1949). Clark Thread was built on both sides of the Passaic River in Newark with the larger complex on the east bank, known as East Newark, and bounded by Central, Grant, Passaic, and Johnston Avenues. At its peak, it employed 3,000 people.

Fred Wagner

1920 was a turning point for the family. Son, John J. , was back in the house and sometime between 1918-1920, both of Eleanor’s younger sisters moved out. Her eldest sister, Mary A. Moore, moved in with her 2 daughters – Mildred Keesey and Mrytle Keesey. Their father was Mary Ann’s first husband, Millard Keesey of Pennsylvania, an iron factory worker.

This was also the year that Eleanor married for the second time at the age of 47. Fred Wagner was an auto-factory coverer and one of her boarders. They married on November 9, 1920 at Sacred Heart Cathedral in Newark.

As with her first husband John, Eleanor lost Fred after only about 8 years of marriage and by 1929 she was once again listed as a widow on Plum St in the Newark City directory.

In the End

In 1930, after 23 years on Plum St, Eleanor, now 58, moved in with her grown daughters to 94 Smith St. The younger Eleanor was working as a hospital nurse and Margaret was working as a policy clerk for Prudential. She would marry John P. O’Mullan the following year.

By 1938, age 66, Eleanor was living at 27 John St. in Kearney with a widow and the widow’s daughter, both named Annie McLoughland. Also with them in the house is a man named John Heron. The only connection I can find between Eleanor and the women is that the younger Annie McLoughland was an employee of Clark Thread Co, as were 2 of Eleanor’s sisters and her son John.

She went into the hospital just after Christmas for a problem with her appendix and specialists were called in. While there, she contracted pneumonia and passed away on January 2, 1939. She rests in Holy Sepulchre Cemetery, East Orange, NJ.