Person:Mary Courtney (10)

Our mother, Mary Courtney Culligan, was born on June 12, 1861 in Garryowen, Iowa, the daughter of Dennis and Bridget Courtney. She came with her father to Lemars, Iowa in 1883. She kept house for him and her brothers, occupying her leisure time in learning dressmaking and doing fine art work. Friends who knew her at the time said she had an out-going disposition and self-confidence.

After her marriage to my father on April 9, 1890 she went with him to Iowa City, Iowa, where they secured a furnished apartment. My mother not only kept up this apartment but also took music lessons so she could accompany my father, who played the violin.

The following year, my mother stayed in Maurice with parents and father returned to Iowa City to complete Course. At the end of the year she and her year old daughter went to the commencement exercises at Iowa City.

As was previously stated, we moved to Yankton, South Dakota, in the fall of 1892 and remained there until 1898, when we moved to Sioux City, Iowa. In the summer of 1901, Mother's cousin, Hannah Curran, and her niece, Kate O'Connor, (later Sister Nary Clarus) came to pay us a visit. In 1937, Sister Clarus wrote me a letter recounting this visit. She said in part, "You can always look back with gratitude that your childhood days were passed in an ideally happy home that was truly 'a little bit of heaven'. Your mother used to say that if the heavens opened up and dropped down a man he could not be more made to order than her Johnnie."

The next year she was faced with the sudden death of her husband and the responsibility for the care of his parents and four small children.

She was crushed, but she carried on and within a year had sold our large home and bought a smaller one. She kept the farms we owned in Yankton, South Dakota, and Sioux County, Iowa. She rented them "on shares" and we lived on this income.

In 1907, mother sent Emmett and John to St. Thomas Military Academy in St. Paul. Our grandparents passed away in 1906 and 1908. In 1909 I finished High School and mother decided to move to St. Paul so I could enter the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis and Leo could join his brothers at St. Thomas Academy. We lived not far from the Academy until mother's death on December 31, 1928.

It was mother's constant prayer that she would not be called from this life until her four children were self-supporting and capable of facing lifes problems. She always said an education is a priceless heritage; that if she gave us a good education, she owed us nothing for no one could take it from us. When the end was near, she seemed to realize that her work in this world was almost completed. She said, "I am ready now to go home to Johnnie." She was buried in the family lot at Calvary Cemetery, Sioux City, Iowa. (Anna Verda Culligan)