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St. Patrick’s 2021: Provides additional details and photos of the George F. Egan family, including their stature and occupations

George Francis “Frank” Egan, Sr., at an outing at Maple Lake in 1926.
A typical ad for the William H. Wiley Co. where Frank Egan worked for 30 years, showing the leggings and gaiters made by the company. The company was founded in 1876, and had a series of contracts with the army and navy.
Katherine Theresa “Kate” Egan at the beach at Niagara Falls during a trip out east to visit relatives in 1929.
George F. Egan, Jr., and his wife, Emily, at the church for his sister Florence’s wedding in 1924.
Florence Katherine Egan, 1915.
Bernard Aloysius Egan, who died in 1918 at the age of 24 of influenza/pneumonia, as a soldier during World War I.
Florence and Bernard at the Beverly Woods, today’s Dan Ryan Woods, in 1915.
Marie Isabelle Egan at her wedding in 1920 at St. Margaret of Scotland Church in Washington Heights, with her sister Florence as maid of honor, her new husband George Dumais (left), and his cousin Leo Dumais as best man.
Florence as the young adult woman in the center of the picture. The other people are not identified. This picture shows the fashions of the day.
Florence on the far left. This photo shows more of the fashions of the day, the fur coats that the women – and men – wore. The Egans took out ads in the lost-and-found section of the local newspaper in 1925 seeking the return of a badger fur cape that was taken from a Ford sedan on the eve of July 4 at 96th and Wood Streets, no questions asked, liberal reward for information or return. No word on whether the cape was recovered.

The Ridge Historical Society

The Month of March – Part 2 on the George F. Egan Family

By Carol Flynn

An interesting development has occurred since the first post on the George F. Egan family a few days ago. Through Ancestry, we were able to connect with the great-granddaughter of George and Katherine Egan, and she has graciously given us permission to share some pictures and additional information from the family.

George Francis “Frank” and Katherine Theresa “Kate” Murnan Egan and their descendants were a pretty typical Irish American family living on the Ridge one hundred years ago – typical, that is, except for the house they built at 1414 West 95th Street, which received a lot of media attention. As March is National Irish American Heritage Month, National Women’s History Month, and National Craft Month, the story of their house ties all three themes together, and we will get to that in the next post.

Some additional information we have on the family itself is that George Francis Egan always went by “Frank,” and he was a trustee for the Village of Fernwood in the 1880s. Fernwood was a small area to the east of Washington Heights that annexed to the city of Chicago in 1891.

According to the family, Frank and Kate were small in stature. Frank stood only 4 feet eleven inches tall, and Kate was only 4 feet 10 inches.

Frank worked as a tailor with the Singer Sewing Machine Company during World War I, and made puttees, or leggings, for the soldiers. A newspaper article reported that Frank also worked for years before that with the W. H. Wiley and Son Company, based in Connecticut, where he was in charge of the Chicago factory in which over-gaiters and leggings were made. These eventually went out of fashion, and the factory closed. A copy of an ad for this company is attached, showing the products made there.

The U.S. Census records list that Kate and Frank had seven children, but only four lived to adulthood. These four were identified in the first post and are included in the pictures here. Two sons and a daughter died young; one son was only five years old and the other two are assumed to have died as infants. This type of mortality rate was only too prevalent back then.

Pictures of the family are attached, from user submissions on Ancestry. Each picture is explained in its caption.

Next: The house at 1414 West 95th Street.