LEVINE:

[March]...16 TH , 1998, and I'm here with Bridget Ann Colgan Kauffman. Mrs. Kauffman was born in the ah, little village of Meigh which is where she now lives in Northern Ireland. And she immigrated to the United States at the age of 17 in 1930. She returned 41 years later, in 1971, and is here now today at that age of 85, the time of this interview. And with us today is Mr. James Davidson of the North of Ireland Family History Society. We're delighted to be here.

KAUFFMAN:

Glad to have you.

LEVINE:

Thank you. And why don't we start at the beginning. If you would give your birthdate, and again, maybe you could situate Meigh in Northern Ireland for the tape.

KAUFFMAN:

Well, my name at birth was Bridget Ann Colgan and I'm, my parents were Michael and Mary Ann Colgan, both of whom were born in the village of Meigh. I was born on the farm, the Colgan farm, a quarter of a mile from where I now live in the village of Meigh proper and our property is on the property, we have our cemetery and our church, as part of the Colgan property and it's been there for as many years as I can remember. Not the church. The church has been there since the 17's, and the cemetery has been there since 1950, in the '50's. The last, my brother gave a field which was turned into a cemetery. I immigrated to America at the age of 17 and on the 9 th of February, 1930. I had, had to wait until I was 17 due to the fact that I was underage. Prior to my departure, I had to have a certificate from my aunts in America saying they'd be willing to keep me until I became of age which was 18. I sailed from Belfast on the S.S. Albertic. Went out from the har-, from the port to, by little tender, and we arrived in Nova Scotia, Halifax, Nova Scotia, on the, ten days later on a Sunday morning. We had, we got awake to see the ice bergs. We were told we'd see the ice bergs, which we did. Everybody was up on deck lookin' out for the iceberg. And then we um, got in early in the morning, and we had approximately twelve hours in port. And I don't remember too many passengers getting off the boat, but we did unload a lot of cargo and take on a lot of cargo.

LEVINE:

What kind of cargo was it?

KAUFFMAN:

Well, I wouldn't know. Haven't the slightest idea what it was. At that particular time I probably didn't even know what cargo was. (they all laugh) Wasn't to interested in cargo. And ah, a group of us got up, off the boat, we were allowed off and we walked about two blocks to a church where we attended Mass. We did not realize there was so much snow, and was so freezing cold. We came back, we had just had regular shoes on. I said, we weren't prepared for the cold weather at all. We came back and we were almost frost bitten. When I arrived in America, I had frostbites on my legs and up no my lips. When we came back we were allowed to get back on board. Then we sailed that evening from Halifax for New York, and we arrived on Wednesday morning, the following Wednesday morning, in the harbor, in the harbor, New York. And there, my family were, my aunts, were to meet me. But I must tell you one thing. Ah, before I left, I was so young, ah, that the White Star Line, Cunard White Star Line, sent an application to my parents that they had to sign, that the White Star Line would not be responsible for me, anything happened to me on board, while I was on board on the trip, during the trip. And the priest, our local priest wouldn't sign it, but my parents did sign it. And then, I had a cousin, a lawyer in the town of Newry, and he got it signed for me so that way I was allowed to sail. Then, after we left Halifax I was called into an office. And this was very degrading to me because I was called in and sitting behind a desk was the captain and I guess the two immigration officers. I imagine that's who they were, I don't know now who they were. But I think after all these years, I figure that's who they were. And they would ask me the stu-, most stupid questions. Gave me little ahm, games to put together, like you would give a little kindergarten child today. Made me do some adding and subtracting and reading and writing. And I thought it was because I'd been in high school for three years, and I thought I was pretty good. But they made me feel like a child. But they were making sure that I would, that I was able, I guess, to read and write or I couldn't get into the states. However, that worked all right. Then I lived, I went to school in New York. I arrived in January and I started school in March.

LEVINE:

Let's talk first about this side of the Atlantic before you left. I'll ask you a few more questions to fill it in.

KAUFFMAN:

Ah certainly, you just do that. You take it in. Yeah.

LEVINE:

Your childhood then, you were 17, so you had, you had already completed three years of high school?

KAUFFMAN:

I had, yes. Sacred Heart School in Newry. I attended our local grammar school here, which was then a national school. Public elementary school. And that was right down the, it's still in existence, but the house, the school was sold to a family who now live in it as a home, and they built the new school down the road here now, which is very modern. But ours was a one classroom. And at one section of the room, the first and second, the infants, the first, and then the first and second. And there was a divider. Just a, a space. Not a, not a partition or anything.

LEVINE:

Not a wall.

KAUFFMAN:

And there was one fireplace in the whole school. And we walked to school, which was over a mile, rain and shine. And we were walkin', but it didn't make any difference. And all the heat we had in that room was that open fireplace. And that's how, when we went to school we had eight grades there.

LEVINE:

In one room.

KAUFFMAN:

Yes, in the one room. Yes. Two teachers but eight grades. We had a teacher for the infants and then a teacher for the senior kid-, youngsters. And that's how, and when I left there after the eighth grade, I went to the Sacred Heart School in Newry. And I boarded in town. We didn't have public transportation. And I would board in town from Sunday night until the following Saturday, with a neighbor. A friend from the country here that lived beside us who had moved into town and married a town, a townsman, and had a room to put up her sister who also went to school with me and we shared a room for, during the winter months. Then eventually, I got a bicycle, and I rode the bicycle in the spring and summer. But in the winter then again, we'd stay in town with this lady. 'Cause you couldn't ride a bicycle home in dark. Evenings it was dark at three o'clock. And rain, etc. And um, after that I, that's when I went to [Merrick]. I went to school on Friday. I was doing an exam. And I went to school on Friday and I had Saturday off, and Saturday evening, afternoon and we went by bus to Belfast to be there overnight to get the boat in the morning which was leaving at nine o'clock.

LEVINE:

Well, how about your religious life? How would you describe your family as far as their religious activities or...?

KAUFFMAN:

Oh, we were very, we were all Catholic. And um, it was a Catholic home, we just went to church, to mass, etc., that you had to do where you made your first communion, confirmation, etc. But everything was just normal. There's no problems here. This area's all Catholic anyhow. There was only one protestant family in the entire family, and that's the Bell family that live in the castle. And then there was another family up in the Drummondy area, and their name was Chambers and that's the people that own this whole mountain which has now been turned into a park, historical, a historical area. Sure. You've been up there have you?

DAVIDSON:

Yes. On the way past here.

KAUFFMAN:

So that's a very historical area. Around here is very historical. There are a lot of ancient ruins in this particular area. And this road, the road across the mountain, you can walk to the top of this mountain here, behind me, Slieve Gullion, and there's a lake on top of that mountain.

LEVINE:

Oh.

KAUFFMAN:

Unusual thing isn't it? A lake on top of there. And there's a cave. I understand at one time, eem, the druids, etc. when all the people that invaded Ireland, they had a cave and it went from the top of the mountain and it came up, all the historical churches up the road. Have you ever heard of them? They were built in 432. And they're beautiful ruins. They're only about a half a mile from here.

DAVIDSON:

We saw the signs.

KAUFFMAN:

Killeavy, the old churches. There are two churches and they, there, the walls are all still standing, but the roofs are gone because at that time they were all thatched roofs and they were bombed out several times. And then after, then the school, what we used as a school was also a church at that particular time and it they have a sign on when it was built. It's still on. Where I went to school, and they had church there until they built this local church here in Meigh. That was built in the early '17's.

LEVINE:

You mean the same school was used as a church on Sunday.

KAUFFMAN:

Mm, hm. It was a church then too. Well, a lot of them still do that here. There are several of them here that still have to do that. We have our own parish that we live in now, it is extended, and they've [incorporated], they've taken in a new area, there was so many homes built. So it was too much for the four churches so they put up the fifth church. Well, the fifth church ah, there's Mass every Sunday and all the devotions in the school. In the gym of the school. That's very popular here yet in certain areas.

DAVIDSON:

They use the hall for the mother's union and whatever else, that sort of thing.

KAUFFMAN:

Etc. Meetings, etc. it's all down there.

LEVINE:

Now, how about what you did, when you think back of your childhood growing up here, what are the kinds of things that you remember.

KAUFFMAN:

Well you remember we didn't have, there was no television. There was no radio, we didn't even have a radio. The first time we got a big gramophone with a big horn, his master's voice, and I remember getting that. And what we would do on a Sunday evening, take it out into the field beside the house and play it and all the neighbors came around to listen to the music. And then our aunts sent us some records from America. You got more from America than you did 'round here. You didn't have the money to buy them. I was the second oldest in a family of seven children.

LEVINE:

I was going to ask you that. Who were the other children, and what was the order?

KAUFFMAN:

I had a brother older, and I had five sisters younger, and my youngest brother, I only had the two brothers, but my younger brother was only two years old when I went to America and I hadn't seen him 'til I came back. He was a grown man. He was then eighteen years of age when I saw him. And my older brother's dead then, and I have a sister dead and there are three girls still alive and one boy. I have a sister in Chicago and the three girls here. Three girls here and one in Chicago. And one here. So the four girls and a boy alive. And a girl and a boy dead.

LEVINE:

And what was your father doing?

KAUFFMAN:

My father was a farmer.

LEVINE:

A farmer.

KAUFFMAN:

My father was a farmer and this was a farming area. This was all farming. These houses weren't built here when I was a youngster. The only house here that I can remember was the Publican House, Murphy's house on the corner, and the grocery store on the other corner, and that house, and then there was a little house in between which was the post office. Now the post office is in the Public House, as part of the Public House. But at that particular time when I was a youngster, it was a little house on its own, and then I had an uncle that lived -- as you go out here and turn down, you go out here and turn down to the main road -- that big house, big white house was always there and that, my uncle lived there, my grandfather's brother and his grandson lives there today. And the rest of these houses were, was all farming land.

LEVINE:

What kind of farming?

KAUFFMAN:

Em, well, just, they grow potatoes and hay and, and straw and wheat and vegetables. And ah, they raise cattle. And they, we had a milkin' heard. And ah you sold your butter. My mother, we'd churn, made our own butter, country butter, and then raised chickens and turkeys and those were sold too, at various times of the year.

LEVINE:

Did you have any duties around the farm when you were growing up?

KAUFFMAN:

Well, I didn't have too much, my father, my father did all the farm, it was only a small farm and then my brother was older than I and he was able to help. And the only thing I ever did was mind the children or something and if my mother had to do, and I had to make bread. You'd have to, you had little chores. And you had to scrub the potatoes before you went to school every morning, you scrubbed the potatoes for the dinner that day. And then you, after we're feeding the pigs they had to get the potatoes ready for the pigs, and the scraps, they washed those too. They had a big chomper thing and they washed those. They had to be washed. They didn't feed the pigs dirt even though the pigs ate the dirt afterwards when they got out in the field they would eat it, but when they fed them, the, em, I never had to milk cows or anything like that. And em, we'd work the potatoes and drop potatoes in the springtime, and then you gather potatoes after they dug them in the wintertime, in the Fall, in October which was a tough cold job because we usually dug those, spade them. We didn't have, it was horse and cart then. When I was a youngster when they were working on the farm, we didn't have any mechanical machinery at all.

DAVIDSON:

The bread was made on a griddle.

KAUFFMAN:

The bread was made on a griddle, it was an open fire. And the bread was made on a griddle. And if they were baking a pan, it was made in a pan, an the cake was put on a pan with a hook on it, hung over a crane and the coals put on top of that to bake it. They put the coals on top of the, the iron pot lid and that's how they made their fruit cakes, etceteras. And then on Christmas Eve they always made the plum puddings and they boiled those. That was the last thing that did it on Christmas Eve that I can remember. And after the house got the final cleaning up, the kitchen was usually the place where we all lived. And, a big country kitchen. And the cooking and the eatin' was done in the same place. But em, ah, after that, everything was done, the pudding was made and that was left to boil and steam nearly all night, you see, slowly over the fire. And we had wind bellows. If you have any idea what a wind bellow was. The bellows, yeah. The bellows, and we, that's how you got your fire going in a hurry. And then later on, when I came back that was all gone. When I came back in 19ah, '46. to visit. all that was gone. Eh, there was a stove there, they call them American stove and the fan bellows was gone and they had the oven. And they heated it by solid fuel, coal. But em, the boiled and the cooked. They had boiling water, they had em, a container along side the stove and then there was boiling water in that for your dishes at all times. And em, you made your bread-, you fed the, no, you fed it really, by coal, plenty of coal. And em, they'd open the grate then to let the heat out into the kitchen after the cooking was done.

KAUFFMAN:

I remember that.

DAVIDSON:

Original fire was turf fires.

KAUFFMAN:

No. We never had turf here. No. This wasn't a turf burning area.

DAVIDSON:

Yeah.

KAUFFMAN:

No. I don't know why. They say, there is a turf mountain over on the south side, here. Over [Kantagorah] way, but that wasn't within our reach. But there was no turf in this particular area at all. This was all good farm land. There was no bogs around here. Coal and wood, we'd burn. Mostly oil, and then one time we had a coal strike, and they cut down all the shrubbery from the hedges etc. they could. The wind bushes and everything and burned those. And then Mr. Bell, who owns the plantation up here, the Bell's Castle, Killeavy Castle, he gave the farmers in the area permission to go in and cut out, trees out of the, ah, thin it out, and they did that and two farmers would go and to work together and cut up a, the ah logs and then cart them home for both houses. And ah, how they shared for the plowing, how it worked, with a team. My father had a horse and the next door neighbor had a horse and they formed a team with the horses and they'd plow my father's fields this day. The next day they'd plow the other man's fields. The same thing with reaping the harvest. You know, taking in the harvest. The same thing was done. They did it on a team basis.

DAVIDSON:

Do you remember when you were cooking on the griddle?

KAUFFMAN:

Yes, I do.

DAVIDSON:

And they used a goose wing? Feather?

KAUFFMAN:

Em, yes. The goose feather to sweep off the crumbs.

DAVIDSON:

[ ].

KAUFFMAN:

Yeah. You see, they didn't use grease on the griddle. The griddle was very flat and it was quite large, about this side. Black.

DAVIDSON:

Cast iron.

KAUFFMAN:

And it had a hook at, at the top here, these two side hooks joined into a hook in the center that went over the hook at the top, formed a little -- what would you call 'em?

DAVIDSON:

Little eye?

KAUFFMAN:

Six or eight...

DAVIDSON:

A figure eight hook.

KAUFFMAN:

Figure eight hook. That's what I wanted to say. And they fit into a little bracket hanging from the crane.

DAVIDSON:

They'd swing it over.

KAUFFMAN:

And they'd swing it over. But then after the, they didn't use grease, and it was buttermilk bread, soda bread and no shortening in it whatsoever. And they put it on this, the griddle, which was, put flour on the griddle first to keep it from sticking. And then when they turned it over and were, they turned it over to cook it on the other side and then they usually put the four (frogs) up so they could get air and dry out on all four sides. Well, there were only three sides. And then, after that, when they went to put it in, they would take a big goose feather and they'd sweep all those burnt bits of flour off into the fire below.

DAVIDSON:

That's right.

KAUFFMAN:

You remember that.

DAVIDSON:

Well, I remember an old aunt of mine doing it, many years ago.

KAUFFMAN:

Uh, huh. But that was all gone when I came back to live here. When I came back in '46, there was nothing like that. They had modernized quite a lot.

DAVIDSON:

Yes. Yes.

KAUFFMAN:

There was a lot of, the majority of the houses had running water in them at that particular time.

DAVIDSON:

And the electricity.

KAUFFMAN:

No. Some of them did and some of them didn't. But in our house, they never had it. They still had the gas electric things.

DAVIDSON:

Gas mantles.

KAUFFMAN:

Gas mantles. And they are still down there in the house.

DAVIDSON:

Are they?

KAUFFMAN:

Yes. They never, the house hasn't been lived in though, since 1971. Because my brother that was living in it, came up here to live with us and he died here. Yes. So he, the house is still there like it was and the old gas mantles still in there. And the water's outside, but not in the house.

DAVIDSON:

He had to fetch in the water.

KAUFFMAN:

He had to, you had to carry the water for the tea, you had to carry the water to wash, you had to carry the water for the outside, from wells, for the scrubbing, with a scrub out the dairy, where the dairy was and where they cleaned out after the animals. That all had to be scrubbed out. And the water was carried for all of that. And they usually had two wells. They had a well that they used for em, we had a pump. Em, in the yard. But then we had a well in the back, also. And em, that well would get dry in the summertime, but in the winter they used that water to wash out, em, the ah, the outhouses. But they didn't use it for drinking purposes. They went to the spring for the drinking water and for the water for the tea.

DAVIDSON:

Yes. Yes. Yes.

LEVINE:

And how did they transport that?

KAUFFMAN:

By cans. Carried it.

DAVIDSON:

Buckets.

KAUFFMAN:

Buckets and cans. Buckets and cans. They usually had white enamel buckets and regular buckets. I remember both of them.

LEVINE:

And by cart.

KAUFFMAN:

Oh, no. You carried it. You only walked to your field for it. One in each hand. I have some of the movies of me walkin' through it, carrying it. When we were home in '46.

DAVIDSON:

It's on the television.

KAUFFMAN:

Yeah. So em, that's how they lived then. And it was, we had a great life. We had em, we went to school every day. You had your chores to do before you went to school. You had your chores to do when you came back. And me being the oldest, in the, girl in the family, I had a little more responsibility than, than the others. They were all younger. We were all two and a half years apart. And two and a half years makes a big difference in a, eleven year child and a nine year child, or a thirteen and eleven. And then you had to take your, the younger ones to school and you were responsible for them. And ah, you probably had to help dre-, help dress the younger ones going to school, because the mother'd be busy getting' the meals ready and gettin' everything ready for us. And getting' us cleaned and washed. And then the cleaning and the washing they had to do for us. And we went to school, we took off our dresses when we came home from school and put on our work, our playclothes. Kept the clothes that you wear to school. They were on you every morning, whatever you had to wear and then were off in the evening when you came home. They were hung up, and eh, you had to put on your playschool clothes for to go outside to play, or whatever you had to do.

LEVINE:

And what would you do for playing?

KAUFFMAN:

Oh, what, well, we'd play jacks. Skip rope. Em, skipping was a great thing. I don't know. You just were looking for things to do. And you'd read a lot. We read a lot. And we did sing. We, my father was a great singer, and we sang a lot. We always had a lot of entertainment within our own house, 'cause we all loved to dance and sing. And my father taught us all to dance. And he took, he used to take the, remember the broom they had with the, eh, straw broom with the long head?

DAVIDSON:

Yes.

KAUFFMAN:

And that's what he took around on the floor to teach us how to dance. And then he would whistle. To whistle the em, for the four handed reel or whatever he was teaching us.

DAVIDSON:

Nobody played a musical instrument.

KAUFFMAN:

Oh, yes. But if there wasn't an of them, the next door neighbors, we'd go to their house, and we'd, we mixed along. We went to, it was a great, I, the nice thing at that particular time, it has of course vanished now, completely, celidh-ing (kay-lee-ing). You went to your, the children didn't do it, but my father would celidh (kay-lee) next door. And ah, they'd come to ceilidh us. Now the ladies would celidh in the afternoon. But the, the mothers would celidh in the afternoon, come with their small children to your house or you'd go over to their house. Never at nighttime because the children were home and the mother'd be home with them. But in the evenings, my father would go next door. It was only about from here to the cross roads, not that far away. And the men would talk and have a cup of tea and smoke the pipe. And they'd come home and the same thing. Spent a lot of time doing that. And then we had dances, and we had, we were very involved in the choir at church, so with the, during May and October we would have devotions and we'd be, in the choir singing. And there was always something to do. You never had to go looking for it. Like they were all, there were children, we had seven in our house. The next door neighbors had fourteen. So we were, we made a play yard in our own house. Our own yards. We didn't have to go five miles away looking for five pounds, well, you'd never get it. Never saw five pounds, much look for it. Five pounds to go, for the, like these discos, they have to get in tonight, five and seven pounds to get into discos. We never had that. Then on a Sunday night there was a dance in the local hall. And ah, if you were fourteen ah, years of age or fifteen, you were allowed to go to that. And a whole group of us would go together. Maybe six girls walking down the road and then my father would, if it was, em, my father or mother or some of them would come to meet you coming home with the hurricane lamp, it was wintertime, you'd see them coming, looking for you. You know. That's how we did.

LEVINE:

Killying is that...?

KAUFFMAN:

Celidhing.

LEVINE:

How do you spell it?

KAUFFMAN:

C-A-...

DAVIDSON:

C-E-L-I-D-H.

KAUFFMAN:

Yeah. Yeah. Celidh. That's the proper way to spell it. They don't always spell it properly. But he give you the word for it. He's spelling it the proper way.

DAVIDSON:

That's the Irish...

KAUFFMAN:

That's the Gaelic. The Irish language.

LEVINE:

Now is that socializing?

KAUFFMAN:

Socializing. It's exactly socializing. Only em, now when you socialize here, you more or less go and you have a cocktail or a drink or something. It's like changed, the social. It's more like American. When you socialize in America, you know, you got for a cocktail party. If you're going for dinner, you usually go early and you have a drink or so before dinner. That's something similar. Only this way, you wouldn't have a meal, but they'd always make a cup of tea. And there was always a cup of tea available, or a piece of bread and butter available for the people that walked up and down past your house.

DAVIDSON:

[ ].

KAUFFMAN:

Going to church. Eh, we lived right, the church as I said was built on our property and then the people that lived miles away, and my mother would see some so and so coming up the road and she'd say, put on the kettle, there come poor Maggie or somebody like that. And Maggie would come in and have a cup of tea. That was what they called being social. Which was need at that particular time. But that has vanished. I don't say it's not here, it's just vanished. It's out.

DAVIDSON:

Yes. Yes. Yes. Just among the older people, still, you will get that attitude of having a cup of tea, rather than having any alcohol.

KAUFFMAN:

Oh, you'd never have alcohol.

DAVIDSON:

I would never have had alcohol in those days.

KAUFFMAN:

Oh, no, no. The only time you might get an alcohol, would be at ah, my grandmother at Christmastime.

DAVIDSON:

Christmas.

KAUFFMAN:

My grandmother would be my mother's mother. And maybe she, they would have port, a little bit of port. And maybe your father would get a bottle of beer. Not that I can remember him ever having a bottle of beer in the house. But they would. Some of the people would have it. And they would have a bottle of stout as they called it. But that's all, there was nothing like alcohol in the houses then or anything. Oh, they were lucky to have food in the houses then. Like we were very lucky we were on a farm and my father was a great farmer and we raised all our own vegetables. We had our own chickens. Eh, we had our own pigs. But they never slaughtered the pigs for home consumption. They were always slaughtered for the market, and sold in the market and you bought your pork and bacon back. Not back from your own pork, you know. But ah, you would never slaughter it for yourself. It was always slaughtered. And the turkeys were raised for money. Turkeys were very hard to raise, and they were sold usually the second Thursday in December. And fact is, I remember December the 12 th , 1929 is when I went to port. It was Turkey Thursday and I went, that's the day I went to Belfast for my physical examination to eh, go to America. I had to wait a year. I signed when I was fifteen. After fifteen, and then when I was sixteen I got notice that I could go for my physical the 12 th of December, 1929. And then I had to wait after that until after I was 17 before I could sail. I had to be 17.

LEVINE:

So it was the turkeys and the pigs were the two things...

KAUFFMAN:

Turkeys, pigs, now your chi-, ooh, your milk. We didn't sell our milk. We churned. We sold our butter. You sold, my mother, maybe we churned three times a week, when the cows were in milking, big bulk of milk.

DAVIDSON:

[ ].

KAUFFMAN:

And um, the buttermilk was used, they fed the buttermilk to the animals then. The pigs were fed the buttermilk with potatoes, mashed potatoes, with potatoes. They were well fed. I can tell you. And the animals would get the milk. And then you used that, that's what we used for making our bread. The buttermilk. But the butter, we never sold milk until years later. It was after I left. When I got back home in 1946 all the milk went to the dairy then. You did your own milking but it went to the dairy. But when I was a kid you milked it and put it in churns in the milkhouse. And they had big crocks. And they had, em, they would fill them up and they, they did stupid things then when you looked back at it. Because they churned the whole bulk milk instead of skimming it, instead of taking the cream off. But they churned the whole thing. And you'd be sit-, churning. We had a machine went up and down, sat on the top of the box machine and a hammer, you went punctured that like this. And you were pumping all this old stupid buttermilk. But you think of it! It wasn't a smart way of doing it. But then when I came back they had a separator in between and they then, then in 1946 it all went to the dairy. We, we didn't have any. You had to buy your own butter. But then we had our own butter you see. We had our own milk. We had our own chickens. We had all our own vegetables. From potatoes, carrots, all the vegetables. My father grew all the winter vegetables. He would have beets, carrots, turnips, which was a good standby. And by the way, the sell, the smell, the sned of the turnips, they called them snedding, and the snedded the turnips on the machine, and they fed those to the animals in the wintertime. They mashed those, they used to boil those and fed them to the animals. And em, every vegetable. Cauliflower and cabbage. We had cabbage the year round. And you always had parsnips and carrots the year round. The summer vegetables you'd have would be peas.

LEVINE:

Mm, hm.

KAUFFMAN:

And then we didn't have runner beans like we do have, we never, I never saw a bean until I went to America and I didn't know what it was. You know, when I got to America, I remember what we have the first day I landed. My aunt had a leg of lamb, and a big party. And there were runner beans and I didn't know what they were. You see, and that was in America. That's traditional to serve green beans with leg of lamb. You know that yourself. That's very New York style. END SIDE A, TAPE ONE BEGIN SIDE B, TAPE ONE

LEVINE:

How about your clothing, do you remember anything about that?

KAUFFMAN:

Oh, we had regular clothes. We didn't have the galoshes, and we didn't have eh, heavy boots like they have here, now. And you certainly didn't have any rain gear. There was no such thing as rain gear. You just had a regular co-, you had, later on we all got uniforms. You had to wear a uniform to school then, which made it very nice. But the uniforms weren't in the primary school when I was there, but when I went to the Sacred Heart School, I wore a uniform. But up until that I didn't. Now, all the schools, primary schools from you start school, you have all uniforms here. Which it, makes it nice because they're all dress alike and there's not one child dressed better than the other. And we had, my mother was a great housem-, housekeeper, and a great seamstress. And then I would always get the first clothes and they'd be handed down, you see. Remodeled or handed down. Bein' the oldest in the family in the girls -- I had five sis-, four sisters after me so there was a good chance there was something there for all of them. See, so everything was handed down. But you always got new clothes for Easter and ah, for spring. You always got a spring co-, outfit for that. I remember, those things you got new clothes. But my mother would go in to town and get a piece of material. She had a niece that worked in Newer's in Newry and when there was a good buy on cloth, she would put it aside and my mother would get it at a discount and she'd make all our clothes. She made all our clothes.

LEVINE:

Can you describe an Easter from your childhood?

KAUFFMAN:

Well, on Easter, it wasn't any different. Eh, it wasn't any different from anything else, except Easter Sunday, we always went up on the mountain, Sleive Gullion mountain. In the afternoon, we have our -- and here the main meal on Sunday is always in the middle of the day in the farmhouses. Still is in a lot of houses. And eh, we'd have our dinner, and after dinner we'd go up to the holy well, and from the holy well -- it was up on the mountain -- cross the holy well. Carry all our stuff with us -- our tea, buttered bread, but you'd butter it and take it with you. But you'd have your tea and your sugar and a kettle. And you'd get water and make a fire up there. And you'd get your eggs and a pot and boil your eggs up on top of the mountain. And that was the idea. That was the big thing. Takin' a dozen of eggs up on the mountain and boiling them and eatin' them up there. And everybody had their own stuff with 'em. Every family that went had their own stuff. Usually a couple of families went together. Couple of children in the area.

DAVIDSON:

Did you roll your eggs?

KAUFFMAN:

We'd roll the eggs, yeah. Naturally. That was we rolled them down the mountain.

DAVIDSON:

That's right.

KAUFFMAN:

Rolled them down the mountain 'til they stopped, and then you went after them and ate them. (laughs heartily)

DAVIDSON:

And you'd boil them in a pot?

KAUFFMAN:

On top of the mountain.

DAVIDSON:

Blossoms off the wind bush?

KAUFFMAN:

Anything we could get. Well, you had to. There was no, you went, you had to gather the firewood when you got up onto the mountain. You must remember there wasn't, there was no built fireplace there. You had to go and make a little spot and make stones around it and then put a little ring of stones where you could put your pot on. And then put your ashes, etc., in there and then make your... You had to do the gathering of the wood first. I have some of there, in the movies you'll see us carrying our stuff up the mountain -- which was 1946! We went up to just relive that!

DAVIDSON:

That's right.

LEVINE:

Did you ah, dye your eggs?

KAUFFMAN:

No. We never dyed eggs as a ch-, when I was a child. That was something I learned to do in America. I never had dyed, we never had dyed eggs here as children.

LEVINE:

How about Christmas. Can you describe Christmas?

KAUFFMAN:

Well, Christmas was em, was very tradition, religious time. The big holiday here was eh, All Souls and All Saints day in November, the first and second in November. Those two days.

LEVINE:

And what did you do on those days?

KAUFFMAN:

Those were very, very religious days. And em, All Souls Day, there, you would go to mass early in the morning and you usually had -- this was years, now, I'm talking about my childhood, which is 85 years ago (she laughs) , 80 years ago (laughing). I'm going back 80 years now to tell you this. But em, we lived up, as I say, on the church ground. Ah, the church was built on our property, let's say, and em, we were always at mass. My father would take the oldest members of the family with him, and you'd go up to six o'clock mass in the morning. It was dark, you see, it was lovely walking up to mass in the dark, but your father was with you so you had no fear. And em, then maybe there'd be three of us, be able to go with him. And we'd go there, you could have two masses there, you see, back to back mass. And we'd come back home and then we'd have our breakfast. And it was lovely. You'd still be eating your breakfast with the candlelight. Now we didn't have electricity, you must remember that. We had one, these [ hiarpin ] oil lamps and they were pinned, they were in brackets on the wall. And they had a little em, aluminum foil plate behind them that threw out the light. Like a mirror, it formed, it threw the heat, the light out into the room. And I, I loved that day. I really did. And then em, Christmas, as I told you, we went to mass and come, came home. Now we didn't have ah, maybe you'd get a few Christmas cards. Christmas cards weren't the in-thing then. You would, we didn't have a Christmas tree, I can tell you. But you had, we could get holly. We had plenty of holly. And decorate the fireplace and the ah, the um, the um cupboards where the, the ah, old dressers. They call them dressers, where they hung up the cups and saucers. And you'd dre-, put the holly in there. And em, we'd get the jam jars and put fancy cards, the Christmas cards that we got, put them in a lid, form of decoration. In an empty jam jars, upside down. Stupid things. But it made for decoration.

LEVINE:

Mm, hm. Mm, hm.

KAUFFMAN:

And then you had your big dinner in the middle of the day as usual. And what, you hang up your stockin' and socks. Your socks you took off you, probably. And they were hung on, em, the fireplaces had a brass ri-, brass em, em...

LEVINE:

Edging?

KAUFFMAN:

No. No. No.

DAVIDSON:

Rail? Brass Rail?

KAUFFMAN:

Brass rail, and em, eh, you know the curtain things that you have here, just hooks?

DAVIDSON:

Hooks. Curtain hooks.

KAUFFMAN:

Just hooks. Uh, huh. Where you, and you would hang up, hung up your stocking there. And you would get, we'd all get an orange or an apple and maybe a few sweets. And what we did, we didn't all eat the apple and the orange at the one time. You would take turns and we'd eat one orange up, break one orange open and eat that and divide it. And then to each, that's how we did it. Then we still had an orange for the second or third day, you see. We did, we did that with all the stuff. Shared. And then ah, we visited my grandmother, or my grandmother visited us. Usually we would go up to visit my grandmother. And that was Christmas where you went to mass. That was all. There was no fuss.

LEVINE:

Was there anything about your grandmother and her generation of customs that you can recall?

KAUFFMAN:

Em, she did something that we didn't do? What did she, when grandma did that was different? Of course I guess we didn't think it was different then at the particular time. Em, except that she sat by the fireplace and read her papers every evening and did her sewing. With the light over her shoulder from ma-, a hanging light. She had, she was very ritzy. She had a hang-, a light that hung down over her shoulder. (chuckling) We were very poor. We didn't have that. (laughs heartily) When her children were all gone, em, so that's what she did. And em, that's the only thing. She would tell us stories. And she would lo-, oh yes. (exclaims) On Christmas Day, which are, we knew we could go to my grandmas and she'd let us make taffy. You see, because we wouldn't be allowed to make that at home because we couldn't afford (she laughs) the sugar. That much sugar. But my grandmother always let us do that. And we'd make the taffy with butter and brown sugar and buttermilk and then take it out into the cold air to let it set, and then take it in and set it and cut it in pieces and eat it. And that was a big treat. You see, we couldn't do that at home. But she would allow us to do that.

DAVIDSON:

Did you make taffy apples?

KAUFFMAN:

No. No. We did dunk, did, did, did dip the...

DAVIDSON:

Dippin' for apples.

KAUFFMAN:

Dunkin' for apples on Halloween.

DAVIDSON:

Yes, yes.

KAUFFMAN:

But you see, the supply of those apples and things wasn't the in-thing then.

DAVIDSON:

No. No.

KAUFFMAN:

There were only em, they were a novelty if you got an apple.

DAVIDSON:

Unless you had apple trees on your land.

KAUFFMAN:

No, we didn't have. No we had, what we had land we had, we had to produce enough to live out of. Live on it. Eh, see there was absolutely no money then. There wasn't any money when I went to America. It 'twas in the height of Depression. It was, eh, it was, the Depression was in 1929, and I went in '30. On that, so the, there was more poverty in New York than there was in Ireland, I can tell you, when I went there. I can remember seein', I was walkin' up to school, I went up Westchester Avenue to where I went to school, and maybe about six blocks from where I lived, and you would see, all lined up at the Salvation Army, to go in and get their soup.

LEVINE:

Mm, hm.

KAUFFMAN:

And then you would see the young men and women, hangin'-, sittin' and walkin' or standin' on the pavement selling pens and paper. Pens and pencils and apples for a livin'. Would have caps out. Depression was terrible then. You see here you had, we didn't know Depression because it was the way we were raised. We had farm land and we had always plenty to eat. There was never a surplus of money.

DAVIDSON:

Mm, hm.

KAUFFMAN:

There were never, you had to wait until something was sold on the farm when there were shoes needed for the children or things like that. You had to wait until something was sold. Now the turkey money was the big money. That was, as I said, eh, took in big money at Christmas time. That paid for all the ah, stuff that we needed for Christmas and both, whatever, winter clothes the children needed. You see. That was what that was used for. And then when the pigs were sold, that, that was, that bought the supplies to, to keep the farm going. And the milk and butter, the butter, it was never milk, but the butter then was sold and that kept us in weekly stuff. Bought your tea and sugar.

DAVIDSON:

Eggs. Eggs.

KAUFFMAN:

And we had our own eggs. And we'd sell eggs, yeah. And sell live chickens then. The poultry man would come around every two weeks and buy the chickens. And then that bought the groceries. The tea and sugar and stuff that you needed to live on. So the butter, not the butter, soap and all the things that people lived it. But we had, we weren't poor. But the nice thing about it, em, we were everybody was alike. There wasn't a rich person and a poor person. And we were all alike. We were all in the same boat. When we were raised. There was no such -- we didn't know poverty. We didn't know what poverty was. But I certainly learned it when I went to America.

DAVIDSON:

Yes.

LEVINE:

Well, tell me why you left for America when you did?

KAUFFMAN:

Well, I started off in secondary school hoping that somewhere along the line, I'd be able, I wanted to be a teacher. And somewhere along the line that maybe I could get where, we didn't have scholarships, a free education, then. It cost me money to go to secondary school.

LEVINE:

Tuition money?

KAUFFMAN:

Oh, yes. There was no free schooling until the fi-, 'long the '50's wasn't it?

DAVIDSON:

'40's, after '48.

KAUFFMAN:

After '48. It was '52 I think when it came in proper. Save us social services. And eh, there was no money. My mother sent me to school, I don't know how she afforded to send us to secondary school and keep me in town, but she did. And then the next girl came along, she did the same. However, that's getting away from the question you asked me. I wanted to be a teacher and there was no way you could get into college. Unless your father was a teacher, your mother was a teacher, you stood a chance. Now, the girl across the street, her father was a teacher and we were at school together. She was able to get in. But she was about a year younger than I am. She's a year younger than I am, by little, maybe two. But she came into the secondary school when I was still there. And then I decided well, I'm going to go to America. And I was takin' em, college courses and then I changed to commercial. In my last year, I changed commercial. And I took commercial courses then, took shorthand, typewriting and bookkeeping. And then I eh, decided there and then I was go-, my aunt, my mother I guess had said that I'd go to America. And that's why I want to go. Went to America. I always wanted to go to America though. Cause I always loved um, the style they had. And my aunt used to send home boxes of clothes to us children for my mother to make over for us. Like this, here sisters were very good to her. And I thought they were lovely, and I just wanted America. I thought it was wonderful, you heard so much about the New World. So I never regretted (laughs) it, I tell you. I'd do it all over again. So then, em, I went to school there in New York, and when I graduated from New York, couldn't get a job. There weren't any jobs.

LEVINE:

So you finished high school in New York?

KAUFFMAN:

I went to finish, went to business college in New York.

LEVINE:

Commercial. Uh, huh.

KAUFFMAN:

Business, Boyd's Business Institute.

LEVINE:

And that, so in other words, did you know this aunt that you went to?

KAUFFMAN:

Oh, yes. She.. Oh, yes. She was my mother's sister. My mother had three sisters and two brothers there.

LEVINE:

And when did, when had that aunt gone to New York?

KAUFFMAN:

Oh, she went to New York in about 1911. But she was home in 1928, and that's when I guess I got the bug to go to America.

LEVINE:

Oh, so she was actually in America before you were born.

KAUFFMAN:

Oh, she was in America before I was born.

LEVINE:

So when you first met her, that was the first time...

KAUFFMAN:

No, I met here, she was home in between. When I was a young girl about ten, she was home. And then she came back home in 1928. And at that particular time I was 15 you see. And em, I was interested in America there. And that's how I guess she told me I could, she would take me to America. Which she did. And she took care of me then. And she sent me to school then. I had to go to school for a year and a half then.

LEVINE:

Was she, were you traveling along?

KAUFFMAN:

I was. Yes. That's why I was grilled by the immigration authorities to see if I could read or write, which was very degrading to me because I thought I was on top of the world you know. Could speak French and all this, but it didn't make a bit of difference to me when I got on board the boat. And em, I went, then I went, that's what I'm saying. I never saw so much Depression in my life. And all these, and a lot of the young people that went to America with me from this part of the country, came back home again because they couldn't get a job. So when I got out of school, I couldn't get a job in New York. Em, we didn't have any experience. In '32 and all that they were all looking for people with experience. That was prior to the war starting you see, so after the war started anybody could get a job. But then I went to Baltimore to visit my other two aunts. My father's family. And I got a job there and stayed. And I never went back to New York again. Except to visit. I went back quit often to visit. But I worked. I got a job there. And my first job was twelve dollars a week. In an office. And I learned enough of that to do me the rest of my life. I had handled everything. Got great experience.

LEVINE:

Do you remember when you first arrived in New York?

KAUFFMAN:

I do, indeed. Very well.

LEVINE:

What were your first impressions?

KAUFFMAN:

Well, the first time I arrived in New York, I hadn't seen this aunt. She went to America in '26 and I had, she was comin' to meet me. This is not the one that I went, took me to America. This is my mother's younger sister. But my aunt that took me to America was pregnant at the time. I didn't know it, but she was. And she was expecting a baby, her first baby, so I eh, she couldn't come down to meet me. So my other aunt came to meet me. And I knew it was, my other aunt was coming to meet me, and I hadn't seen her from 1926. And she was a lovely young girl then, with beautiful red hair. And I was wonderin' first of all, would I know her? And would she know me? Of course she'd recognize me right away, and I recognized her. And then her brother, my uncle came with her. And after we got out of customs, eh, immigration, we went up on an elevator. And I had never been on an elevator in my life. And it was great, big em, square elevator run, at that particular time you had to have an elevator operator, weren't self propelled or they, you didn't operate them yourself. So em, I thought, oh my now, I thought I was goin' through the roof. I thought I was on my way to heaven. (they chuckle) And then when we got off, eh, when we got off, they were selling grapefruit and oranges along the curb, you know, people were sitting with baskets sellin'. That's how poor things were now. You probably wouldn't hardly believe this. Then, they were selling these grapefruit and I had never seen such a big orange in my life. And I said to my aunts, oh, what a big orange. She said, oh, dear child. Those are not oranges, those are grapefruit. And then, em, I had never seen a colored person. And I couldn't get over these colored people you see. And I thought, oh, my, we had all thought we had seen the end of the earth. And I said, oh, what kind of people are they? And my aunt said, those are what we call colored people. And you find a lot of them here. You didn't see any in Meigh, I assure you. I said, no. And I guess those were the two big -- and then the esca-, elevators and the El.

LEVINE:

The Third Avenue subway.

KAUFFMAN:

Yes. The Third Avenue El, because my aunt lived not far off the Third Avenue El. She lived out on Eagle Avenue in the Bronx, and we had to ride the Third Avenue El to get to it. And then when I went to school, I walked the Third Avenue El down Winchester, Westchester Avenue to go to school at 149 Street and Third Avenue. And I went there until I finished. But New York at that, then, we went, they had lovely dance halls. And dance halls were very popular then and we'd go every Sunday night. I had older cousins then, would take me on Sunday night to the dances. And we had a great time at that. And then I went to school. Of course I went to school right away. I got there in February and went to school right sometime in March when the season, Spring, em, session started. Was in March which it still does in America? Isn't that more or less Mark? Cause I remember my kids always had a spring break from college in March. And em, they eh, I kind of kind of finished there, as I say, couldn't' get a job. And then my aunts took me to Baltimore on a holiday. Paid my way. Took me to Baltimore and I got a job there and never went back to it. And I worked there until I was married in 1945 and I worked in Baltimore all my working days.

LEVINE:

Well, when you were in New York did your aunt live in...

KAUFFMAN:

An apartment.

LEVINE:

... an Irish neighborhood?

KAUFFMAN:

An Irish neighborhood, it was all Irish, particularly people from this particular locale. There were mostly all people in this area. Her neighbors were girls that she went to school with. You see and they all lived in the same area. They all went to the same church and went to the same parks pushing their children, you know. They'd push the children out every afternoon to the parks and come home and have their lunch and push them back out again the afternoon for the, in the good weather. And ah, they lived in the same area. One lived on Jerome Avenue. Another lived, I had an aunt lived on St. Anne's Avenue, and Alice, that I lived with, she lived on Eagle Avenue, and then I had the aunt that married, the, that came to meet me, she lived in downtown Manhattan. She worked in an office down there and she has a bachelor apartment. We call them bachelor apartments, you know. Just a bed setter really.

LEVINE:

Uh, huh. So when you went to Baltimore then, you were already working when you met your husband?

KAUFFMAN:

Oh, I went to Baltimore in 1932 and I didn't meet my husband 'til 1944.

LEVINE:

Oh.

KAUFFMAN:

So I was very well working (laughs) there. I met him through business. It was durin' the war and he was in the steel business. And I at that particular time was treasurer for a steel company, bookkeeper and treasurer for a steel company and he came in on bus-, we were having some problem, problem we were in the steel business too, and we were having some problems with our flux -- that's the coating on welding rods and he was called in as an advisor from Pittsburgh, and our metallurgist, who went to school with him, introduced us. And that's how we met.

LEVINE:

Uh, huh. And what was his name?

KAUFFMAN:

William, Bill. William Henry Kauffman. And so...

LEVINE:

What did you like about him?

KAUFFMAN:

Oh, he was a very nice gentleman. I didn't give him much chance, he just didn't take no for an answer (laughs). He wa-, he just, that was it, period. But very nice, wonderful man.

LEVINE:

Now was he born in America?

KAUFFMAN:

Oh, yes. His people were in America before the Civil War. His sisters were all Daughters of the American Revolution. The fact is, his father fought the Indians, out in Sutton, Nebraska.

LEVINE:

He was from...

KAUFFMAN:

No. No. He's from Pennsylvania. But his mother was born in Sutton, Nebraska, and his father had traveled out to, his father was one of these young men from Pennsylvania who decided to see the world. And he set out, he got as a settlement from his farm, or something, estate, and he took his money and highjacked it out to the the, ah, the ah Nevada area, Sutton Nebraska and the Dakotas. And there he met Bill's mother. And then they go married and she moved East. She moved back to Pennsylvania. And then all the children were born in Pennsylvania. Now, grandma was born, her parents came over from Russia. Immigrated, they left Germany because they didn't believe in military conscription. Then they moved into, a whole clan of them moved into Russia. And they lived there, but then when Catherine the Great came in, and they couldn't stand her ruling at all, so the whole family put all their money together, about four different genera-, different relatives, and they came to America and went as far west as the railroad was at that particular time. Which happened to be Fargo, North Dakota or Sutton Nebraska. Grandma, em, they went as far as Sutton, Nebraska, and the men got their homes there, and they went out and worked on farming and ranches. And then they bought their own land. And they formed their own community. They had their own church and their own school out there. And grandma herself was born in a sod hu-, a sod hut. That is the hut where the home is dirt, a dungeon built out of the ground. And their windows were made from this, the sod that they cut. That's what the windows, and that was taken out every morning and put back at night.

LEVINE:

Ah.

KAUFFMAN:

Now, that was what I call, eh, eh, emmigrating to America.

LEVINE:

Yes.

KAUFFMAN:

And that's what Bill's mother, and then she was, and her parents spoke German and she didn't speak a word Ger-, English until she was 11 years of age. And then she sent to English speaking school. They had a new law, they all had to go to English speaking school. And she spoke fluent English and couldn't speak a word of German when she died, and she lived to be 97. She told some stories. Wonderful woman. And then she had ah, four sons and two boys, two. And bill is the older of the two boys. They're all dead now. This last sister died last year. They're all gone.

LEVINE:

Well, what happened to you as far as your religion? Did you stay as strongly a Catholic?

KAUFFMAN:

Oh, yes. I have never changed. My husband wasn't Catholic. That made no difference.

LEVINE:

He wasn't.

KAUFFMAN:

No. No. No. He bel-, he was an elder in the Presbyterian church in Pittsburgh. Very religious man, and didn't interfere with our religion. He went to my church and I went to his church. And when he was an elder in his own church, I went and did all the duties that his wife should have been doing there.

LEVINE:

Mm, hm.

KAUFFMAN:

He had his job, was when they were, em, taking in young kids into Catechism class, and the confirmation, etc. And bein' an elder he had jobs to do, and I went along and did that. And he did the same for me. We made, we built a new church in our parish and we made donuts the two of us, every Sunday morning for the last ten years. And we made up three hundred pounds of donuts every, once a month and sold them at the church. We did that ourselves.

LEVINE:

Wow. Did you have in mind to marry an Irish catholic? Was that what you would have thought?

KAUFFMAN:

Well, I would hate to tell you what I said at one time. (laughs heartily) And I married all three in the one. I'd never marry a German. I'd never marry a non-Catholic, and I 'd never marry a man that was married before, and my husband was a widower with three kids when I married him. With three little girls. And I married all three in one.

LEVINE:

Uh, huh. (they laugh)

KAUFFMAN:

And I was told about that, there was a lady that worked with me in the office and I, she was a very good friend of mine, and she al-, up to the day she died, she said to me, you'd never marry the three and you married all three at the one time! (laughing)

LEVINE:

Was that a bother to your family at all?

KAUFFMAN:

Not at t'all. My mother, my mother and father wrote back, you're marrying and not us. No. And his family never objected to me. And I never changed his three girls, the three girls em, are all em, er, raised in their own religion. My son, we had a son, he was religion, in my religion. He's the only one of mine that didn't marry Catholic. He marries a Presbyterian. The girls all marry Catholics. (laughs heartily) That's never discussed.

DAVIDSON:

No. No.

KAUFFMAN:

And then my grandson, he was rai-, Michael's son was raised Protestant and he married a Catholic a couple years ago. So it's just in and out. But that's never discussed.

DAVIDSON:

That's right.

KAUFFMAN:

We never could, like, I did a lot of the church work. I always was involved in voluntary work, and I did an awful lot of church work at our own church when it was established and I did all the bookkeeping and all the envelopes and did all that. And em, we, I had a group, we had a post them, if you can imagine, there were 35 families in the one parish. Now with 35 families and each child in the family had an envelope. They were all posted separately. And I had, I took care of posting crews. We had a different crew to post every week after the, posted on Monday night, eh, after the collections were counted. And ah, em, all the group that were working in my group. There were two Catholics. There, eight of them were pro-, were married to, two were married to Catholics. Now the other eight were married to Protestants. And I remember we were downstairs one night discussing it, and Father Haber was upstairs and I said, well, my husband isn't a Catholic, isn't a Catholic. And he shouts down, but he's the best man of the whole group!, he said. (laughing) I often think, but that was never discussed like it is here. No. And it isn't too much discussed in my area. There's no reason because they're all Catholic here. Eh, ha, as I said, there's one fam-, one lady still. But my husband was Protestant and it never both-, nothing every interfered here with us. He's bur-, believe it or not, he's the first man bur-, in our entire family to be buried on our property. He's buried in our cemetery. And he's the first person in our entire family to be buried in our property here. It's our own family property here, but it belongs to the church. And he's the first one and he wasn't a Catholic. He never turned Catholic. I went, he said he would turn Catholic if that's why I wouldn't marry him. I wouldn't marry him if he turned Catholic.

LEVINE:

Mm, hm. Mm, hm.

KAUFFMAN:

I wouldn't. Really, I wouldn't. I'm very strong that way. I think everybody has a right to believe what they believe. And don't force it on anybody else. We never discuss religion in our house. On Saturday night, em, we had two other little boys we raised on top of that. And they were Protestant little boys. And, and, there were six children in the house, three boys and three girls. I was the mother to one and I raised them all. And raised them well, I can tell. They're the best children in the world. In fact they're better to me than the one I raised really. You know, that way. Financially and everything. They're much better. But em, eh, em, every Saturday night, after supper, the first thing we organized. The envelopes were put on Bill's desks, and whatever he gave his church for everybody, the same thing went to the Catholic church for me. Em, mm, hm. And I didn't work. We never worked after we got married then, you see. It wasn't the thing to work. You were workin', you were too busy. How could you work? You had, I had a big house and five children before I had my own.

LEVINE:

Did you continue as an association with an Irish community in Baltimore?

KAUFFMAN:

Oh, no. I never associated with any Irish community at all. No. I wasn't involved. We, communities weren't strong like that then. They more or less formed in recent years. After the war, a lot of that came along. But eh, because there were, more people came in there. There wasn't a great Irish population in Baltimore, Maryland. The settlers were Irish. The Carls of Carleton County. The first settlers were Irish that went into Maryland. But they were down on the Eastern Shore. And they came back into, finally got up into Baltimore. Of course Baltimore is a big harbor town, you see. And they came in to Baltimore. But eh, we didn't belong, I never went to a club in my life in Baltimore. Never, wouldn't even have been inside of one. Weren't dance clubs in it, like there were in New York either.

LEVINE:

No.

KAUFFMAN:

No. There weren't any dance clubs. It was more of em, what kind of town would you say it? It was more family, more of a family town. People eh, associated a lot with their families and their friends, and em, I never went to a club in my life. Never, ever.

LEVINE:

What do you think of the immigration experience? Do you think it changed you in some way, the fact that you were there for um, what, 41 years. I mean, did it bring out certain qualities in you that might not have developed had you stayed here?

KAUFFMAN:

Well, em, I think probably I would still be doing a lot of volunteer work. I'm very involved in voluntary work here you see. I should be working my center today, than working here with you! But somebody else is taking over. I told them. And I got my stuff for the tea and sent it over to them. Eh, but em, there's a lot of voluntary work here. Like you did it in America, but at that particular time it wasn't known as voluntary work. It was just helping out. And it's only in the last fifteen years it became known as voluntary work here. Fact is, I was doin' voluntary work here long before the volunteer bureaus were ever set up.

LEVINE:

Do you think your personality changed in any way there?

KAUFFMAN:

What did I think...? Probably I got more outgoing. You could speak. Got more of an opportunity. I couldn't say that because my family are all pretty well. I was the only one in my family that went to America. My other sister got workin', and she was [ ] are nurses. So em, we weren't a backward family in other words. My mother was a great one for pushing us. We were all going to get as much education as we possibly could get or that she could afford to give us. Which we did. She was very, they were very good. She sacrificed a lot to give us what we had. And we all had a secondary education. And my brother then was sent, Ned stay-, the older brother, he stayed home and did the farming with my father. Then my younger brother was sent to body building shop, and he has a big body building shop in town here. He's retired now, at 60 years of age and his two sons operate it now. So he's pretty well off. Then I have a sister, who's, her son's have real big oil business up the Dublin Road. So I mean we weren't, I wouldn't say, em, what did I? I probably, what advantages did I have going to America, is that what you mean?

LEVINE:

Let me just say we're at the end of the tape here, so we're going to stop right here and I can put in another tape. END SIDE B, TAPE ONE BEGINS SIDE A, TAPE TWO

LEVINE:

This is tape two, and I'm speaking with Biddy Kauffman, who was born Bridget Ann Colgan. Okay, we were talking, well, we were talking about a few things, but ah, talk about ah, you did not come in the steerage or third class and did not go to Ellis Island. But what do you remember about the people who were in the third class on the ship? The Albertic?

KAUFFMAN:

All right. What I remember very much, when we'd be walking on our way, eh, to the dining room for our meals, we could look down into, eh, floor below you and you'd see these eh, continentals. The big Croatians, Bohemians, em, other nationalities, walking around in circles. There'd be a lot of ladies. And they were dressed with long flowered dresses and hats to match. And the men always wore their hats. I remember that. And then, em, you would see them walking around. They never joined with us. You never saw them at t'all. I never came face to face with 'em. Until we got off the boat. And ah, some of them were still on the boat and they were met by people. They'd identification tags on 'em and they went into a line and there was somebody there to greet them. Somebody that they were goin' to work for. A lot of them, I think, went out west as far as I remember. And the gentlemen, the same way. And what I remember most about the gentlemen, the gentlemen wore a kind of a hard hat. Not a bowler, but a hat like that. And they were all in dark clothes. And they wore very heavily, heavy clothing. Much heavier clothing than we had. Except the ladies all had, what appeared to me to be gingham or cotton dresses. And all I ever saw them do was walk around in circles and talk. We never got to meet them.

LEVINE:

Well, you were on an upper deck.

KAUFFMAN:

An upper, upper deck. And I shared, shared my room with a lady from Belfast who was a nurse. She'd been going out to work in Canada. And she got off in ah, Halifax. And she was very nice to me. She taught me a lot of things, you know, about the boat that I didn't know because she had been over and back several times. And she was, I forget her name, I probably didn't even remember it after I got off, but that's the only person I knew and there were, there were about five from our immediate area that went at the same time. We were all travelling on the same deck. But none of us in the same rooms. And I, then was a lady going out with us, who's husband was in America and she was on her way out to meet him. She was a local girl, from here, and she was up, she was traveling em, higher st-, class than we were, but she was sick all the time on our way out and we used to go up to the room to visit her. And ah, she was, would be delighted to see us. She couldn't even take, I don't think she ate or drank the whole time she was on, she stayed in bed the whole time, she never got out. But we had a marvelous time on board ship. We had dancing every night. Eh, it was a very rough passage, and you'd be thrown up against the, the wall if you were out dancing didn't make any difference, and you'd be sitting in the dining room and the dishes would come down into your lap. And you poured to the end of the table. All the dishes would be down around around here. The waiters'd be walking with the food and they'd be falling (laughs). It was very, very rough, but I guess the nice thing about it, we did get to see the icebergs. Saw them, we would never have seen them nor pointed out. They just look like big houses, big high-, just look like a high-rise tower building of ice. With the sun shining on it.

LEVINE:

Did you know about the Titanic sinking? Was that something that was in your awareness when you were leaving?

KAUFFMAN:

Oh, yes. Oh, yes. We talked, oh yes, and I remember all the fuss about it, and I had an aunt was visiting, was seeing some friend off on the Titanic who never made it to America, but then my, the same aunt went to America the year after, 1913. And ah, she is the oldest member of my mother's family. Went there. She had two brothers and two sisters went after that. And she married a man from Galway. And they lived in the Bronx with the rest of the Irish. The same vicinity. All went to the same church etc.

LEVINE:

Did you encounter different kinds of attitudes that people had in America than you had here?

KAUFFMAN:

No. They all, they called us the greenhorns. We were always called greenhorns. You little greenhorn. But ah, they were, the Americans were very, very kind and ah, to the Irish people. Very, very nice to them. And if you were Irish you could get anywhere. Really you could. You could break in anywhere. They were very kind to them. Were well received. And they mostly all, eh, got jobs. They didn't have high payin' jobs. Maybe they got a job as a janitor in a hotel and finally worked up to a doorman or something like that. Eh, the men, women all went doin' housework or babysitting or babyminding. None of them went into professional jobs unless they were nurses. A lot of the girls were nurses and they got jobs. They didn't have any difficulty. And like myself, I wasn't fit for anything. I hadn't any qualifications except to try and get qualifications. Nobody would hire a 17 year old immigrant I'm sure. I was lucky I didn't have to go to work.

LEVINE:

Why did you decide to come back when you did?

KAUFFMAN:

I didn't decide to come back when I came, when decided. It was decided for me. Eh, my husband retired in '67, and we moved to Florida in '68. No, we moved in '67 and we came back home on a holiday for seven months to Ireland. Bill hadn't been back to Ireland since 1946. Now, after the war, I, Bill and the baby and I came back in '46. I stayed, he stayed two weeks and I stayed six weeks. Then in 1952, my son and I came back alone. And then we, when we retired, when Bill retired we moved to Florida, but we only, but with the understanding that we were coming back to Ireland on a holiday. Eh, we sailed from Ft. Lauderdale in May, this May, 1968 and we came on a cruise ship from Miami to Southampton. Beautiful, beautiful cruise. Lovely cruise. And em, we had, took us ten days. And then we, em, I had a sister in England. And we, em, and cousins in the RAF, there. No, American air force is stationed in the air-, RAF. And they came to meet us. And my sister got us hotel accommodations in London and we stayed around London, and toured London, did everything we wanted to do in London for two weeks. Then we went up em, to em, the em, with the cousins, and we bought a second hand car. At an army base out there. Air force base. We bought a second hand car. And then we toured all of England, Scotland, Wales, for a month. And came back to England aga-, London again, and stayed another week. And then ferried across to Ireland. We stayed in Ireland, toured all of Ireland, for seven months. And we took in everything we went, wanted to, did everything we wanted to do. Then we went, we sold the car, and we went back to America, and when we got back to America, we decided we'd come back the next year. We were going to just come back for a month. We weren't going to do any big running around. So we stayed in Florida, decided we'd come back and we did. So when we were back the next time, Bill said, why don't we come back here to live? I love it here. And we can go to America every year for a holiday. I said, it suits me fine. So then we made eh, reservations and tried to get a house. We did rent an apart-, we got a house to rent when we came home. Oh, I'm getting' ahead of it. And we went back then, we stayed here for just a month and we went back and made reservations to come back to Ireland. Gave all our, sent all our good belongings, antiques and everything to our children. And em, got rid of everything we had. And sold our car and then em, came back to Ireland in 1971. Stayed with my sister eh, until we got, we had this house signed for, this house here. We were told by the parents that we could have this house, and we got this house. My brother came to live with us then. And em, we moved in here in August, 1971. My brother moved in and then em, we went back to America every summer after that. And eh, it was really, I didn't decide it at all. Bill decided that he wanted to come back here to live. And he did and he's buried here. He died and he's buried here. So it was his wish. And I, didn't want to think, the children to think that I took their father away from his country, you see. That's what I didn't want the children to think, you know, you took my dad away, you know, you took dad away. No. It was Bill's doing the whole thing. And it suited me fine, and I would, I would eh, I would gladly go back to America. I mean, I wouldn't now, but I would have gone back to live but now I would never go back now, because Bill's here. Bill's buried here, so naturally I would never dream of going back. But I go back every year, twice a year.

LEVINE:

And how is it for you living here now?

KAUFFMAN:

I love it here. I bought my house and I love it. Very happy here. But I do voluntary work all the time. See, there isn't a day in the week when I'm not doin' voluntary work. I'm very involved in all kinds of voluntary work. Not just community work, but I do a lot of work for road safety and all kinds of programs. So that keeps me goin'. I'm, I wouldn't want to be living here, just looking at the four walls of the house and doing nothing. I couldn't live it. No. I just couldn't do it. Because I've been too busy all my life. I couldn't settle down to do that. I've done voluntary work all my life. From I can't remember. From I went to America. Did a lot of it in church work, and when the kids were in school, did a lot of scout work and I did a lot of money raising projects. And all of my life I've done it. Since then Bill died, I got more involved. Now while he was here, I wai-, I wasn't as much involved because we played bridge about four nights a week. We golfed. We eh, went fishin' about three days a week. We did everything. We traveled. We did everything. So I didn't have the time. I didn't, I was only involved in one project at that particular time. Now, I'm involved, he, I've devoted my entire life now to community work since then. And I don't mind it. I love it.

LEVINE:

Okay.

KAUFFMAN:

I'm very involved in a lot of things. Keeps me goin'. Like em, they, people when they get old here, they have a tendency, em, you've probably even noticed it. You wouldn't notice, you're not here, you're only visiting. But they, when the children get married and they move away, they just become old. And they sit around and want to be hampered. You sit and watch that box, would drive me bugs. And they would, eh, I don't mind watching the news and certain programs. I like quiz programs, things like that, something worthwhile. Eh, they're sittin', and they don't know what's goin' on half the time because they're not even interested in it. It's just something to do. And they're waitin' for their kids to come in and help them or somebody to come in and help them. And I keep tellin' 'em, go out and do it. I got them goin' . Started a community, the center. I have, we meet every day for a social. We have a luncheon club. We go on day trips. We go away on week trips. They've never been away before. One time, a couple of years, the year of 19-, you remember the year of solidarity between the generations?

DAVIDSON:

Mm, hm.

KAUFFMAN:

Well, I got 52 people. We chartered a bus here in Meigh. We took 19 children and the rest adults and senior citizens. We went to Dublin by coach. We flew from Dublin to Shannon. We were met in Shannon by [Bus Eres]. They took us on a tour of all that part of the country. Had a meal there. Did Blarney, Bunratty Castle and all the rest. Then we went to Limerick by bus and we came from Limerick to Dublin by train. And we came from Dublin back home to Meigh, all in one day. All in one day. Three modes of transportation. And there wasn't a soul tired when we hit Meigh at twelve o'clock that night. There wasn't a one said, oh, Biddy, I'm tired, I'm so exhausted. All I could here was, will we go and do this again? They some of them had never been to Dublin airport. See? But they sit around and want their children to do everything for them. Which I think is very wrong. They get old too fast.

DAVIDSON:

They do.

KAUFFMAN:

Yes. They get old too fast.

LEVINE:

Right. Well, is there anything else you can think of about your immigration experience that maybe we haven't really talked about enough? Or is there anything you'd like to say in closing?

KAUFFMAN:

In closing? Well, about my immigration experience, as I said, I didn't have to go through Ellis Island. Oh, I think getting' used to a lot of things in the United States was different, people were different. And there were so many nationalities, here all you knew was an Irish person next to you. You never saw another person. There you got in, I went to school. What, oh, I must tell you. This is the first thing I remember. When I went to Burrs Business Institute, you were Miss Colgan. You were never addressed by your first name. You never addressed a fellow student. Only by Mr. or Miss. And up to the day we graduated we never did that. When you got out of scho-, and when I worked, you're all Miss Colgan, you would never be called by your first name.

LEVINE:

And what was it like...?

KAUFFMAN:

Now you see, that, that has relaxed. Cause I have a daughter lawyer in New York, and her, they're more friendly, eh, like years ago a lawyer was somebody, you know, you just didn't bother with them unless you had to have them. But now I notice, her life style is very different. You know, because they're very, very relaxed. Everybody is em, Bill and John and Lilly and everything else. Years ago when I was in train-, training, that, you didn't do that.

LEVINE:

What was the effect on you, or how did it affect you, all these different kinds of people from different places?

KAUFFMAN:

Well, I, I, had no difficulty with 'em. Maybe they had more difficulty with me. I spoke very fast, as you notice I probably do. I work fast too, so that's just my, my way of life. Em, they would always say, slow down, slow down. That, I remember that very much. Slow down. And em, going in for, at that time when you were looking for a job in America, I don't know how it is now, but you had employment agencies. That has all changed, I imagine, hasn't it?

LEVINE:

No. There still are.

KAUFFMAN:

And they're located in, say somebody called up and needed a Kelly girl, I'm just making that, wanted a Kelly girl, for the day or something, or they wanted a full time employee. And what you did, they placed you and if you were successful, then you had two weeks to pay them back. You had to pay them a full weeks salary. And you were given two weeks. And if it was circumstances that you couldn't afford it in two weeks, they would extend it to three weeks and charge you a little interest on it. And em, what did I ever borrow-, oh, yes, I borrowed money one time from em, legitimized agency. And ah, what I often thing about, the first thing when you went in to make your payment, say you borrowed ten pounds. This was something, you know, (laughs) you couldn't imagine this. The first thing they took, they took the interest first, that was paid before they paid anything on the principal. And I worked part time one time in one of those offices. And I remember what, it was during, I was doing substitute work when you didn't get a full time you could get substitute work in the summer. You, when you got out of school, it was a little hard to get full time job. So you got substitute work in the summer time when people had holidays then. It's not like now. They did, say for instance, when I was working, then, I would get somebody in to do my work. They had a floater for the summer. And eh, they would, you didn't have to come back and do your own work over, there was somebody that came in and do, did your work while you were gone. And that's what you would call a Kelly, Kelly girl or a floater. And I often wondered, just thought of that, the first thing, the ten pounds I guess I borrowed for something I don't remember. Ten dollars, I'm sure it wasn't much. But the first thing they took of me was the twenty five percent interest (laughs heartily). I paid five pounds, five twenty five. And then I got a job, as I said, doing one of those offices. And I worked from seven at night, seven to nine. You know, just substituting, doing that kind of work. Well, I will tell you an experience I had. Em, this was in, right after I finished school and I went down to Baltimore, I got this job for two weeks. And it was a man, he was a, supposed to be a scriptwriter for, eh, the movies. And I was over and I typed letters. He dictated and I typed for hours after hours. And it was all done and eh, where this way of doing now, no capital letters. All small letters. Which was the in-thing now. You can see it now, quite a lot. But it was the coming on, and I was supposed to have thirty letter, and he didn't have any stamps. So on my way to work the next day -- this is one experience I never will forget -- on my way to work the next day, I worked for him for two weeks, from nine in the morning 'til nine at night and on Saturdays 'til six. And I was picking up the stamps for the letters, I put my ten pounds out, which is, that's what I borrowed the ten pounds for, borrowed ten dollars for stamps. I wondered why I would borrow ten dollars. I borrowed ten dollars on the way over to get the stamps and I signed for it. With the understanding that I thought I was gonna get paid that day. Because I em, I hadn't any money. I guess I didn't have ten dollars, I'm sure I didn't. But I borrowed it on the way over from this place. That's exactly where I borrowed it. Isn't it funny how things come back to you? And I haven't thought of this every since. When I got to his place, he had flown the coop. And he'd owed me, two, eh, three weeks work and the ten pounds, ten dollars for the stamps. And I went down to the travel, to the employment agency that sent me there and I gave her my sad story. Well, I didn't have a penny. I was relying on my relatives to keep me, and they were very good to me. But I went down the employment agency. And she said, well, I won't charge you anything for the work. I said, you can't because I got nothing. I lost that money. And that was my first money makin' project. That's the way I was treated.

LEVINE:

That was in New York or Baltimore?

KAUFFMAN:

That was in Baltimore, Maryland. On North Avenue, Baltimore, Maryland. He had flown the coop. Not a word about him. Not a sign. Gone completely.

DAVIDSON:

Do you remember his name?

KAUFFMAN:

Oh, I'd forgotten it then. But I didn't have money to trace him anyhow. But his name was turned into the travel agency so he could never get, they would pass, they had their own way of communicating with other travel agencies.

LEVINE:

The employment agencies.

KAUFFMAN:

The employment agency, oh, I meant to say employment agency. They had ways of communicating so he could never get a Kelly girl again. Never, that was my first, and I was, there was so much I was going to do with that money. It wasn't a fortune. What it was, at that particular time it was only about fifteen dollars a week, the pay. And then I started to work at fifteen dollars a week. And then Roosevelt raised it. That was during the Hoover administration. Then Roosevelt came in, in 1932, and god bless him. He said, all white collar workers had to be paid eighteen dollars a week. And we thought we were in heaven when we got eighteen dollars a week in the offices. We all had to have eighteen. And we could only work, we were working sixty hours and we couldn't work any longer than forty then. Cut our working hours to forty, and we had to get eighteen dollars a week. Well, I thought I was in heaven, eighteen dollars a week, you know. Today it's nothing.

LEVINE:

Can you think of any other things that came about in the news or, um, that affected you?

KAUFFMAN:

Oh, ah, one thing, well, of course the war and all, that that affected everybody. But that isn't it. But the time Roosevelt died, I remember, everybody was upset when Roosevelt died. And em, but another thing that I must say, when Lindbergh reached, flew across the ah, ocean. Isn't it strange, the things. We were down at the European map. The maps were, this is in primary school now, this is in '27. And the maps were all on the walls. And I remember our teachers taking us down and showing us where he landed. You know, where he landed in France. You know, where he came down in the Spirit of St. Louis. And I can remember that so well. That's one thing I remember. And then, during the Troubles here, this is going back to primary school though, during the Troubles here, in the early '20's, ah, we were out from, ah, they bombed this railroad over here and they ah, thought they were getting' troops, ah, the IRA of course, was, and they thought they were getting' troops and it was horses that got.... And all the men were in there country were conscripted and had to big, dig trenches for the horses. There were over four hundred horses killed. Derailed over here. That's just half a mile from here. But that's all going back, those are things that you can remember. See, I remember that very well. And Roosevelt. And what, Roosevelt dying and things in America. A lot of things you know. Oh, I think of course when Kennedy died, the world dropped dead. Ah, when Kennedy died, I don't think there's a soul today in America that doesn't know exactly what they were doing. My mother-in-law lived with us, Bill's mother. And eh, she, I was, she, she was in, em, she was in the TV room, and I sent her in, I wanted, she had the first bedroom on the first floor, and I said to her, Grandma, I put on your television in your room. You go in and watch television, I'll do the TV room. And I was outside shakin' the mop and she run out and she says, Bee! -- she always called me Bee -- B! Come quick, I think the president was shot. And she says, I think he's dead. I said, oh Grandma, you're only make believin'. She says, oh no, Bee. Come in quick. And I went in. The mop was still sittin' there (laughs) that night at seven o'clock. Everybody remembers what happened that day. That was the greatest thing, tragedy, I think, that ever happened in our time. Now or less, it's more or less expected that something.

DAVIDSON:

Oh, yeah.

KAUFFMAN:

Yes. It would be taken, it wouldn't be so surprised any longer. But then, Martin Luther King and all that, and then Bobby Kennedy and everything. All those things happened.

LEVINE:

Did you, do you think being an immigrant from Ireland ah, that having a President be Irish and Catholic...

KAUFFMAN:

I have to tell you the god's truth, I didn't vote for him. No. For the one reason I didn't vote for him, due to the fact when Al Smith ran before in '28, and Al was defeated just because he was a Catholic, definitely he was turned down. And I said I would never vote for 'em because I wouldn't want them to be degraded or turned down. And I just, I did not, and I never went to see Kennedy and he was in the Armory ah, ah, em,

LEVINE:

Baltimore.

KAUFFMAN:

...Baltimore and I never went near him. No. No. I did not vote for him. No. I'm a registered Democrat but I didn't vote for him. You see you can register any way, rum pickle voting as you know, you can vote either way. When you get into the booth you can do as you please. Ah, but I did not vote for him so that you are. I was, naturally everybody was shocked. It wouldn't make any difference who he was. You'd still be shocked. It didn't have to be Irish. Anything like that at all I think would be a real shock. It was such an awful thing to happen.

DAVIDSON:

[ ].

KAUFFMAN:

Something that should never have happened. [ ] really. The more stories you hear about it, you just wonder more about it. If you just thought about it. Any other (laughs) funny stories? We had lots of good times. I was a great baseball town. That was my, I loved baseball. I'd go anywhere for a baseball game. Loved baseball, never missed a game. I'd go from the office. I'd leave the office and go straight. If we had a double header in Baltimore I went to the double header. Right from the office. Go on my own. Wouldn't have to have anybody. Then go every evening. We had evening games. And remember our stadium broke, was burned to the ground and of course, we didn't work on the Fourth of July and it was a double header that day and I was so disappointed. It was an awful day that Fourth of July (laughs). Didn't go to the game. Then if there weren't, if our team wasn't playin' I'd go to Washington DC, to see the game in Washington, to go to the Dodgers or go to Philly. Traveled around yeah. Even to the Red Sox, I'd go to Boston. Just loved the game. Still do. Love sports anyhow. Any kind of sports.

LEVINE:

Just so we have it on the tape, the mountain that you...

KAUFFMAN:

Slieve Gullion.

LEVINE:

How do you spell that?

KAUFFMAN:

S-L-I-E-V-E G-U-L-L-I-O-N. Gullion. And it ah, there's a lake at the top of it. Eh, very, it was, it's a very nice lake. It's lovely. I have some pictures there on the video, you can take it along, look at a few if you like, if you want to do it.

LEVINE:

Okay.

KAUFFMAN:

If you want. I said, I have it a video tape. These, we had, we took [ ] camera pictures when we were here in '46 and then '52. And I converted them both, had them both converted and put on video.

LEVINE:

Wonderful.

KAUFFMAN:

So if you want to borrow them and take them along and look at them if you have an opportunity, I don't mind you taking them along.

LEVINE:

Oh, okay. Thank you.

KAUFFMAN:

Yes. Because ah, I had it started there in case you wanted to see some of them today, I had it started there which I thought would be of interest. I didn't think you'd be interested in family stuff happened, you know, leavin' America and all that.

LEVINE:

Oh, well. That's of great interest.

KAUFFMAN:

So, I'll get, I'll roll it back and you can take it and use and send it back to me, or get it back to me.

DAVIDSON:

I'll post it back to you, yeah.

KAUFFMAN:

Yes. Uh, huh.

LEVINE:

Okay. Well, I think...

KAUFFMAN:

I'll roll it, I'll just reverse it and take it out and then if you want to do that. I just got it ready in case you wanted to see it. It's too bright anyhow.

LEVINE:

Great. Okay. Well, let me just say that I'm signing off here and I've been speaking with Bridget Ann Colgan Kauffman who ah, went on the SS Albertic in 1930 to New York, but did not go through Ellis Island and returned in 1971...

KAUFFMAN:

To live.

LEVINE:

To live and today is March 16, 1998, and this is Janet Levine for the Ellis Island Immigration Museum signing off. END OF INTERVIEW