The Storyline
Real families. Real discoveries. Real stories.
St. Gabriel’s Church : Parish of New Lots
In the working-class streets of East New York, St. Gabriel's Church served as the spiritual anchor for the O'Brien family of Brooklyn. From James H. O'Brien's 1902 wedding to his brother's 1930 requiem Mass, three generations of sacraments were celebrated within these walls at 749 Linwood Street—a parish that still stands today, celebrating its centennial in 2024-2025.
Part of the Storyline Genealogy series: Sacred Places
St. Aloysius Church: Mother Church of West Essex
For over a century, St. Aloysius Church has stood at the corner of Bloomfield Avenue in Caldwell, New Jersey—the only Catholic church in America located next door to a presidential birthplace. Within these French Gothic walls, four generations of the O'Brien and Robertson families celebrated life's sacred moments: from Mary Agnes Robertson's requiem Mass in 1924 to the weddings of all three O'Brien daughters in the 1950s, to the golden jubilee Mass where Miles and Lillian renewed their vows surrounded by 17 grandchildren and a great-granddaughter.
Part of the Storyline Genealogy series: Sacred Places
County Clare in the Famine Years: Hidden Bonds Companion Piece
No record names the parish Terrence O’Brien came from, but his family’s Y-DNA points to the O’Briens of Ennis, County Clare. This companion piece walks through Clare in 1845–1850: the evictions, the workhouses, and the old kingdom of Thomond in its worst years.
Part of the Storyline Genealogy series: Documentary Biographies From Research to Story
Hidden Bonds Epilogue: What the DNA Shows
One sworn line, a Kentucky family traced from 1870 to 1913, and a group of DNA matches that agree with the records. The epilogue sets out what the evidence shows about the uncle in Newport, why it isn’t yet proof, and what is still being worked out.
Part of the Storyline Genealogy series: Documentary Biographies From Research to Story
Hidden Bonds Prologue
A thousand years before Terrence O’Brien kept a hotel in Queens, his name belonged to the High Kings of Thomond. This prologue traces the O’Briens from Brian Boru through the Penal Laws and the Great Famine. It also shows how Y-DNA places one family among the Catholic O’Briens of Ennis, County Clare: the cousins who stayed.
Part of the Storyline Genealogy series: Documentary Biographies From Research to Story
When Newspapers Tell the Whole Story
Terrence O’Brien left no birth record, no marriage record and no death certificate. A fire report, a liquor license, a federal charge, an obituary and a story of bonds above a kitchen ceiling turned a name on a census page into a whole life. Here’s how, with research lessons you can use.
Part of the Storyline Genealogy series: Methodology From Research to Story
Hidden Bonds: A Colorful Life and a Secret Untold
The Union Hotel years brought a basement fire, a federal distillery charge, a liberty pole topped with a racehorse, and two wives lost. Then, on his deathbed in November 1874, Terrence told a priest he had valuables for his children. He died before the priest came back.
Part of the Storyline Genealogy series: Documentary Biographies Research to Story
Scattered Stones: The Orphan’s Journey
Scattered Stones: Episode 8
In January 1924, eighteen-year-old Lillian Robertson lost both parents within twelve days. Her father Joseph died of a cerebral hemorrhage; her mother Mary Agnes followed him, claimed by tuberculosis. The orphaned daughter of a stone cutter's son and a mat maker's daughter faced an uncertain future.
But Lillian didn't just survive—she built. She married a Brooklyn carpenter, returned to the New Jersey town where she was orphaned, and raised six children. She lost her only sister to tuberculosis in 1942, and her daughter Helen Grace at age eight in 1948. Yet by 1978, she celebrated her golden anniversary surrounded by seventeen of her nineteen grandchildren.
This is the story of resilience across six generations—from a Scottish stone cutter in Blairgowrie to a grandmother in Caldwell, New Jersey.
Part of the Storyline Genealogy series: Documentary Biographies
Hidden Bonds: Uncle Patrick
A sworn petition in 1875 placed an orphaned boy “in Newport Kentucky with his uncle Patrick O’Brien.” The records point to Patrick O’Bryan, an Irish railroad man who raised ten children there and died on November 21, 1913, thirty-nine years to the day after Terrence.
Part of the Storyline Genealogy series: Documentary Biographies From Research to Story
Hidden Bonds: The Irish Boy Who Built an Empire
He came to America as a boy and started in another man’s stables. By 1859 he was keeping a hotel of his own. Terrence O’Brien’s rise in Jamaica, Queens, is told from his 1854 declaration, his naturalization, the 1860 census and the Civil War records.
Part of the Storyline Genealogy series: Documentary Biographies From Research to Story
Hidden Bonds: Orphan, Scale Maker, and Father of Ten
He lost his mother at thirteen months and his father at nineteen months, and grew up with his Bedell grandparents in Flushing. As a man, Miles worked as a scale maker for the half-brother he had been parted from. He raised ten children in Brooklyn, and his descendants’ DNA would later point the way to the Kentucky branch.
Part of the Storyline Genealogy series: Documentary Biographies From Research to Story
Hidden Bonds: The Carpenter Who Built with Double Vision
Miles Murtha O'Brien fell from a scaffold in an elevator shaft. The family believes it was during construction of the Chrysler Building—the timing fits, and the story has been passed down for nearly a century. He survived with only bruises—and permanent double vision. He never worked on a crew again. Instead, he spent the next fifty years as a solo carpenter, building medical offices, renovating kitchens, and raising six children with his wife Lillian. This is the story of a man who lost his mother at two, fell from a scaffold at twenty-five, and kept working until the end.
Part of the Storyline Genealogy series: Documentary Biographies From Research to Story
Hidden Bonds: Orphan, Engineer, and Congressman
At fourteen he was living with an uncle in Kentucky when his father died in Queens. James Henry O’Brien became a mechanical engineer, founded a Brooklyn scale company and went to Congress. He never lost touch with the half-brother he had been separated from as a baby.
Part of the Storyline Genealogy series: Documentary Biographies
From Research to Story
Hidden Bonds: Sisters, Widows, and Companions
Orphaned as girls and raised by their mother’s brother, Mary Ann and Elizabeth O’Brien married late, lost their husbands, and spent their last decades together in Brooklyn. A generation later, Mary Ann’s son married into the Higgins family, and the two families now share a gravestone in Queens.
Part of the Storyline Genealogy series: Documentary Biographies From Research to Story
The Mystery of the Formal Portraits
When three generations share the same name, how do you know which Miles you're looking at? I had three unlabeled formal portraits from the early 1900s and two men named "Miles M. O'Brien" living in Brooklyn during the same era—a grandfather and his son. The only clue was a severely degraded photo with faint handwriting: "Dad's Father - Died 1930."
This is the story of how I identified Miles Murtha Lawrence O'Brien through fashion dating, WWI draft card records, and the convergence of nine independent lines of evidence. It's also the story of a Brooklyn Irish-American family that rose from immigrant roots to prominence—one man a US Congressman, another a skilled scale maker working for his half-brother's business.
When photographs outlive memory, detective work brings our ancestors back. Join me as I solve a 95-year-old mystery, one clue at a time.
Part of the Storyline Genealogy Series-Uncovering Your Family Story and Preserving Your Legacy
The Irish Immigrant’s Hidden Fortune
He rose from chief stableman to keeper of the Union Hotel, raised a 148-foot liberty pole topped with a racehorse, and faced a federal distillery charge. When Terrence O’Brien died in 1874, his four children were scattered among relatives. Thirteen months later, $11,000 in bonds was found hidden above the kitchen ceiling of his old hotel.
Part of the Storyline Genealogy series: Uncovering the extraordinary stories hidden in ordinary family histories, one ancestor at a time.
Legacy Letter: The Hotel Keeper’s Secret
A letter from Terrence O'Brien to his descendants — written in his voice, sharing what he wants them to know about ambition, loss, and the legacy he left hidden in the walls. Part of the Hidden Bonds documentary biography series.
Part of the Storyline Genealogy series: Legacy Keepsakes From Research to Story
“Cutting Straight”- A Commemorative Poem
He fell from a scaffold and saw two of everything after. But a carpenter learns to cut straight anyway—to trust the hand when the eye betrays. A commemorative poem for Miles Murtha O'Brien (1904–1984).
Part of the Storyline Genealogy series: When resilience becomes poetry.
A Granddaughter’s Reflection
I have my grandfather's silver. It still sits in the purple Woodruff Jewelers bag. But what I really have is his story—and the lessons of a man who saw double but never lost his way.
Part of the Storyline Genealogy series: When what we remember becomes what we inherit.
Legacy Letter: The Orphan’s Promise
A letter from Lillian Josephine Robertson O'Brien to her descendants — written in her voice, sharing what she wants them to know about surviving tragedy, building from loss, and the promise she made in January 1924 that she kept for sixty-seven years.
Part of the Storyline Genealogy series: Legacy Keepsakes From Research to Story