A lot of Catholic families have been Catholic families for generations and generations. Irish, Italian, Polish immigrants came to the United States already part of the Faith tradition. Churches in cities like Columbus built parishes that catered to those ethnicities. Some were blocks from each other. Look at Sacred Heart and St. John’s in the Short North.
My own family heritage was different. The Silcott family started in Northern Virginia. They were Quakers and Baptists. As a young man, my great-great-grandfather, Thomas Silcott, fought for the South as a member of Mosby’s Raiders. After the Civil War, he moved north to Baltimore and opened a stockyard. His son, James Silcott, also went into the business, and for a time, my grandfather, Thomas Silcott also worked there. (Do you see a pattern in names?!)
It was the original James Silcott who, despite many flaws which have been recounted in family lore, did one thing right. He married an Irish woman, Mary Hannon, who insisted that their children be raised Catholic. They went on to have five daughters and one son, my grandfather, who also married a good Catholic woman as did my own father.
In Baltimore, Maryland where I was raised, the only Silcotts who lived there were directly related to us. When we moved to Ohio, there were many Silcotts. I have often been asked if I was related to George Silcott, who had the train museum in Worthington. We found out that the answer was kind of a yes.
For it seemed that way back when, one of my ancestors living in Virginia had seven children. His wife died. He remarried, moved to Ohio and had seven more!
My Dad became very interested in exploring these half-relatives and when I was in high school, he took all of us kids to a Silcott reunion somewhere in Southern Ohio. 90% of them were Baptist farmers. We had little in common with them but our name!
I really love history, especially the what-ifs that change the course of events both monumental and familial. What if Fidel Castro would have made the baseball team when he tried out for the New York Yankees? What if President Kennedy had not been killed in Dallas? In my own family, my daughter, Lauren, went abroad to study in Australia her junior year for a semester. She almost stayed for the year but decided to come back to the College of Charleston instead. She got a job in a restaurant called Joe Pasts, met her future husband who was bartending there, and ended up living in Australia for nine years because of his job.
Because of the previous James Silcott and his love for a pretty Irish gal, I am considered a cradle Catholic. Had they not met, had they not married, my grandfather would not have been Catholic and may not have married my Catholic grandmother, and so on. I would not have spent my career working in Catholic schools. I might have still been a teacher or principal, but as a Baptist, I would not have gotten my first teaching job at Bishop Watterson.
If we believe that God has a plan for each of us (and I do hold to that notion), then God knew way back when, that James Silcott and Mary Hannon would have to get married, and that Mary would have to persuade James to raise her children in the Catholic faith. I think that’s pretty darn amazing.
One last bit of what-ifs. The stockyard that my family owned was on prime real estate in downtown Baltimore. Had they not sold it back in the early fifties and held on to that valuable property…
Jim Silcott