Ayers Sisters interview, part 2

Ayers Sisters interview, part 2

The Ayers sisters Doris, Agnes, Eleanor, Catherine, and Margaret grew up in the 1930s and 1940s in a large household in "Little Dublin". The family members at 39 Madison Street included the five girls, their brother Robert Jr., their parents, New Jersey born Agnes Cooney Ayers and Robert Jackson Ayers, their maternal grandfather New Jersey born Michael Cooney, and his son, their uncle Thomas. Their father was a driver and later a mail carrier, and grandfather Michael worked as a bricklayer. Their maternal grandmother, Mary Wallen and their great-grandparents were born in Ireland. The Church of the Assumption played a large part in their lives. They spent their childhoods near their close-knit community attending school at Bayley-Ellard and playing games such as kick-the-can and hide-and-seek and sometimes venturing uptown with the local nuns. During the summers they swam at a pool at Lidgerwood Park and on special occasions they went to see movies at the Park Theater. On Halloween, they trick-or-treated on some of the more affluent streets not for better candy, but so that they could see the insides of some of the more spacious homes. They did not recall anti-Catholic discrimination from their childhoods. The sisters lived at home until they married. Their older brother Robert died in 2001 and Doris died in 2013.

NJ/DE Digital Collective

http://cdm16100.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/ref/collection/p16100coll12/id/36

Irish American; Neighborhoods; Oral histories