Archive for the ‘Blaney Blog’ Category

A cold October rain was falling as I turned my rented Nissan Sunny down the dirt lane in the village of Portglenone, Northern Ireland. The road was barely wide enough for one vehicle and had patches of grass growing between tire-worn tracks. Up on a hill in the distance to the left, I could make […]


“Girl Revived After Going to Bottom of Lake,” read the headline on the front page of the July 22, 1935 Wakefield Daily Item. “Presence of mind exercised by her male companion,” the story reported, “and prompt work by the Wakefield Police with the inhalator saved the life of Miss Mildred Bickerton, 21, of 881 Huntington […]


I recently paid a visit to the gravesite at Holy Cross Cemetery in Malden, Massachusetts where my gandfather John Blaney and my great-grandmother Alice Blaney are buried. I used to take my mother to this cemetery from time to time. According to family lore and cemetery records, Alice (O’Neill) Blaney purchased this plot on May […]


I hope to post occasional stories here collecting Blaney family stories and lore in the Blaney Blog, but a brief summary of my immediate family’s genealogy may also be in order. In the 1990’s, Richard W. Blaney compiled an excellent Blaney genealogy. He was able to trace our branch of the Blaney family back to […]


The Blaney Blog

12Sep10

The recent death of my aunt, Rosaline (Blaney) McKenzie, at age 92, made me acutely aware of the need to record some of the family stories that I recall hearing over the years. Rosaline was my mother’s older sister and the last surviving sibling (of five) in her family. I remember some of the stories […]


On Saturday, August 28, 2010, we interred the ashes of my aunt, Rosaline (Blaney) McKenzie with her mother Rosetta Blaney and younger sister, Margaret Blaney, in the Blaney plot at New Calvary Cemetery in Boston. Aunt Rosaline died earlier this year, months short of her 90th birthday. She was my mother’s older sister and the […]