Sometimes I go off on a tangent on this blog, and this post is a perfect example. Before dawn on October 29 Hurricane Zeta came through Pelham, and we awoke to a lack of power. By noon, being hungry and such, we decided to head to the nearby Cracker Barrel for a brunch.
We happened to be seated near the wall bearing the certificate below. Anyone who's been to a Cracker Barrel has seen the antique items that decorate their walls. I've often wondered whether these items were authentic, and indeed they are. According to the Cracker Barrel website, no reproductions are used in the stores. More than 700,000 items decorate their locations, and another 90,000 are held in a warehouse.
Well, so the certificate is genuine. I immediately wondered who Florence Anne Flinn was and what happened to her. After a bit of research on Ancestry.com I think I've found an answer.
Assuming I have the right person, the certificate Flinn was born on February 23, 1889, in Pittsburgh according to Pennsylvania Death Certificates. Florence turns up in the 1908 Sharon City Directory as a student living at 22 Lorain Street. Sharon is a town 75 miles northwest of Pittsburgh.
By 1911 she was enrolled in the day course for secretarial work at the Margaret Morrison Carnegie School. the women's college of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. The school first accepted students in 1906 and closed in 1973. Florence graduated on June 6, 1911.
In the 1911 and 1913 city directories Flinn is still listed at the Lorain Street address. By the 1920 U.S. census her situation becomes clear. She is working as a stenographer in a bank and living in her father's house with her five siblings, one brother and four sisters. The father, James A. Flinn (1859-1927), a native of Ireland, is widowed and working as a roller in a steel mill. The family is living at 467 Lorain Street, so house numbers must have changed at some time previously.
The 1954 Sharon city directory lists Florence as an assistant cashier at the McDowell National Bank. We learn a final batch of details from her death certificate. Flinn died on December 13, 1964, at home in the Lorain Street house. She was a retired bank cashier who never married; cause of death was cerebral arterioslcerosis. The "informant" listed was Miss Agnes Flinn, one of Florence's younger sisters, who lived at the same address. Like her father, she was buried in St. Mary's Cemetery in Mercer County.
So now I think we know the answer to our question....
But wait, there's another question--who was Margaret Morrison??
