Kitty Barry Kagan, Peggy Lake Oswald, Peggy Purdue Will interview, part 1

Kitty Barry Kagan, Peggy Lake Oswald, Peggy Purdue Will interview, part 1

2004

Kitty Barry Kagan, Peggy Lake Oswald, and Peggy Purdue Will grew up together in Little Dublin. These three third-generation Irish women describe their childhoods in Morristown in the 1930s and 1940s, and each share stories about their parents, the neighborhood, the church, and the community. All three women describe strict upbringings and how the local Church had a lot of influence in their day-to-day lives. Peggy Purdue Will describes the cottage at the Easley Estate on Loantaka Drive where she and her parents lived before moving to Madison Street. Peggy’s father was employed by the Easleys as a groundskeeper and her mother was their housekeeper. Later her mother, who had six children, worked full time at All Soul’s Hospital to support her family. Kitty talked about the pressure her father experienced at his workplace to vote a certain way. The women recalled a young girl in the neighborhood, the 13 year old daughter of a local prostitute who had an out of wedlock child and was shunned by the families in the neighborhood. They remember Dublin as a close knit working class neighborhood, but not a “tough” place.

NJ/DE Digital Collective

http://cdm16100.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/ref/collection/p16100coll12/id/9

Irish American; Neighborhoods; Oral histories