Legacy Letter: The Orphan’s Promise
The Orphan's Promise
A Letter to Lillian's Descendants
❦
What your grandmother wants you to know
From Brooklyn to Caldwell — and back again
Dear ones who carry my name, my blood, and my story forward,
I want to tell you about a promise I made when I was eighteen years old. Not a promise spoken aloud — not something written down or witnessed. Just a promise I made to myself, standing in a house that had been my home for only three months, suddenly responsible for everything.
It was January 1924. And in twelve days, I lost both my parents.
This is the story of how I kept that promise for sixty-seven years. And why keeping it is the most important thing I ever did.
The Little Misses Robertson
Before I tell you about the darkness, let me tell you about the light.
I was born on July 9, 1905, at 125 Ryerson Street in Brooklyn. My sister Helen came two years later. We were the "little Misses Robertson" — that's what the family called us when we went on summer vacations to Saugerties, New York, to visit Aunt Marie MacKinney. We posed for photographs in our Sunday best, matching dresses and ribbons, two little girls who had no idea what was coming.
Our father, Joseph Robertson, worked his way up to Manager of the Marine Department at Frank Baldwin & Son. Our mother, Mary Agnes Kenny, was the daughter of a Brooklyn hatter who died before she was six. She knew something about loss, my mother. She had been raised by her Aunt Maime after both her parents were gone. But she never let that shadow fall on us. She gave us Cape Elizabeth summers and matching dresses and a baby brother, Joseph Jay, who arrived in 1920 when I was fifteen.
In October 1923, we moved to a new house in North Caldwell, New Jersey — 18 Elm Road. Suburban. Respectable. A fresh start.
That's the first thing I want you to know: Before the tragedy, there was joy. We were loved. We were happy. Remember that, because everything that came after was built on the foundation of that love.
Twelve Days in January
On January 14, 1924, my father died of a cerebral hemorrhage. He was thirty-nine years old. The same kind of stroke that had killed his mother twenty-two years earlier. He died in our new house — the one we'd lived in for only three months.
My mother was already dying. Tuberculosis. She'd been fighting it for a year, but I think she was fighting to stay alive for us. When my father died, something in her let go.
Twelve days later — January 26, 1924 — my mother followed him. She was forty years old.
In less than two weeks, I went from being a daughter to being an orphan. I was eighteen. Helen was sixteen. Joseph Jay was four.
The Women Who Saved Us
I didn't keep that promise alone. No one does.
Aunt Maime — Mary F. MacKinney — was the woman who had raised my mother after her parents died. She was in her sixties by 1924, dealing with her own heart problems, but she was there. She had taken in two orphaned girls in 1888 when she had nothing; now she helped guide me through taking care of my own orphaned siblings. She knew what it meant to sacrifice your own life for someone else's children. She had done it for forty-seven years.
Aunt Lillian — Elizabeth Kenny Corbett, my mother's sister — was there too. She had been orphaned alongside my mother back in 1888. She had served as a Navy Yeoman during the Great War. She never had children of her own, but she became a second mother to us.
These women — unmarried, childless by choice or circumstance — became the safety net that held us together. They taught me that family isn't just about the people who give you life. It's about the people who help you survive it.
That's the second thing I want you to know: You are never alone. Even when it feels like everything has been taken from you, look around. The women who love you will find a way to hold you up.
The Little Brother Who Wasn't Always Thrilled
Joseph Jay was four years old when our parents died. Too young to care for himself, he was passed between his sisters' households as we established our own lives. He spent time with me and Miles after I married; he spent time with Helen and her husband Leslie.
Word has it he wasn't always thrilled about staying with the O'Briens. Uncle Miles, it seems, was "a bit strict."
But we kept him. Helen and I both kept him close, even when it was hard, even when we were barely adults ourselves. Because that was the promise: This family will not fall apart.
Joseph Jay grew up to serve in the United States Navy, writing letters home to his sisters throughout his service. He married Ellen Marie Hansen in 1947 and had a daughter, Judith Ann. He kept in touch with us for sixty-seven years — until August 22, 1991, when he died.
Three weeks later, I followed him. Just like our parents — within weeks of each other. The three orphans of January 1924 left this world the way we came into it: together.
Finding Miles
By 1927, I was living in an apartment at 610 Bloomfield Avenue in Verona, New Jersey, working as a clerk. I was twenty-two years old, still carrying the weight of everything that had happened, still learning how to be both myself and a parent to my siblings.
And then Aunt Betty Mulholland introduced me to a carpenter named Miles Murtha O'Brien.
Her brother-in-law Danny Mulholland was friends with Miles, and somehow the connection was made. The orphaned daughter of a stone cutter's son met the Brooklyn-born son of Irish immigrants. He was building new homes during the construction boom. I was trying to build a new life from the wreckage of the old one.
We married on January 28, 1928, at St. Gabriel's Roman Catholic Church in Brooklyn. It was Miles's twenty-fourth birthday. I was twenty-two. The witnesses were his brother James and my sister Helen — the sister who had stood beside me through everything, who had been orphaned with me, who understood.
The marriage certificate listed both my parents as deceased. A reminder, even on my wedding day, of the journey that had brought me there.
Losing Helen — Twice
In 1940, I gave birth to my fourth child. I named her Helen Grace.
The choice was deliberate. Helen Gladys Robertson — my sister, my companion through tragedy, my witness at my wedding — deserved to have her name carried forward. She had helped me raise Joseph Jay. She had stood beside me when I had nothing. She was the other "little Miss Robertson," the one who understood everything without my having to explain.
But tragedy, it seemed, followed the name Helen in our family.
On July 21, 1942, my sister Helen died. Tuberculosis — the same disease that had killed our mother eighteen years earlier. She was thirty-five years old. She left behind her husband Leslie and two children.
I was thirty-seven. I had lost my parents at eighteen; now I lost the sister who had shared that orphan's journey with me. The "little Misses Robertson" who had once posed together in matching dresses were separated forever.
Six years later, in 1948, tragedy struck again. My daughter Helen Grace — the child I had named for my sister — died at eight years old.
I had now lost both parents before I was nineteen, my only sister at thirty-seven, and my own daughter before I was fifty.
And I kept going. Because that was the promise. The family will not fall apart. Not while I'm standing.
Return to Caldwell
In 1938, Miles and I made a decision that might seem strange to anyone who didn't understand what I was trying to do.
We moved back to Caldwell, New Jersey.
The same community where I had been orphaned fourteen years earlier. The same place where my childhood ended in twelve terrible days. The same streets I had walked as a grieving eighteen-year-old, suddenly responsible for a sixteen-year-old sister and a four-year-old brother.
Why would I go back there?
Because I refused to let that place be defined by loss. I refused to let January 1924 be the only story Caldwell told about my family. I was going to build something new there — a family, a home, a legacy — and I was going to transform the site of my greatest tragedy into the foundation of my greatest triumph.
We settled at 38 Central Avenue, then moved to 58 Central Avenue. We raised our children there. We worshipped at St. Aloysius Church. We became part of the community.
The Golden Anniversary
On January 28, 1978 — Miles's seventy-fourth birthday — we celebrated our golden anniversary.
Fifty years. Fifty years since I stood at the altar of St. Gabriel's Church, a twenty-two-year-old orphan with nothing but hope and my sister beside me. Fifty years since I married a carpenter who knew how to build things.
The photograph from that day shows Miles and me surrounded by seventeen of our nineteen grandchildren.
Nineteen grandchildren. From a girl who had nothing in January 1924 — no parents, no certainty, no clear path forward — had come nineteen grandchildren gathered around their grandmother on her golden anniversary.
That photograph is the promise kept. That photograph is what "this family will not fall apart" looks like when you hold onto it for fifty-four years.
The Keeper of Stories
There's something else I want you to know — something I did quietly, for decades, that I never talked about much.
I saved everything.
Death certificates dating back to 1870. Aunt Maime's portrait. Newspaper clippings and obituaries. Cemetery records. Photographs. Every piece of paper that told our family's story.
And for more than forty years — from at least the 1950s until I died in 1991 — I paid for perpetual care of the family graves at Holy Cross Cemetery. I maintained the graves of people who died before I was born. George MacKinney, who died in 1870. Margaret McKenny Kenny, who died in 1884. Aunt Maime, who died in 1935.
I paid to maintain their graves because they were family. Because someone needed to remember. Because the promise wasn't just about keeping the living together — it was about honoring the dead who made us possible.
My daughter Lillian Marie continued this work after me, spending her college weekends visiting cemeteries, copying records by hand. She paid for perpetual care until her own death in 1995. Then my granddaughter Barbara kept the archive safe until 2018, when she passed it to her daughter Mary.
Four generations of women, preserving evidence, maintaining graves, keeping the stories alive.
That's the fourth thing I want you to know: Someone has to remember. Someone has to save the documents, tend the graves, tell the stories. Be that someone. The dead are counting on you.
What I Want You to Know
I was the orphan of January 1924. But I refused to let that be the end of the story.
I raised my siblings. I married a carpenter. I built a family. I lost my sister and my daughter and kept going. I went back to the place that broke me and made it the place that healed me. I saved everything so that someday, someone would be able to tell the whole story.
And now you know.
You know about the "little Misses Robertson" in their matching dresses. You know about the twelve days in January. You know about Aunt Maime and Aunt Lillian and the women who saved us. You know about Miles and the houses we built and the children we raised and the daughter named Helen who died too young.
You know about the return to Caldwell. You know about the golden anniversary with seventeen grandchildren gathered around. You know about the graves I tended and the documents I saved and the promise I made when I was eighteen years old.
This family will not fall apart. Not while I'm standing.
I'm not standing anymore. But you are. And that means the promise is yours now.
To the Newest Lillian
On November 29, 2025, a new Lillian entered this family — Lillian Moyer Campbell, my great-great-granddaughter.
Little one, you carry a name that has meant resilience for over a century. You carry the name of an orphan who refused to let her family fall apart, who built something lasting from ashes, who kept her promise for sixty-seven years.
Wear it well. The women who came before you are watching. And we are so proud.
With all the love I built from loss,
Lillian Josephine Robertson O'Brien
Your grandmother, your great-grandmother, your great-great-grandmother, your ancestor
The orphan who kept her promise
P.S. — To Mary Hamall Morales, my granddaughter, who spent years piecing together our story from the documents I saved: This is why I kept everything. This is why the graves had to be tended and the papers had to be preserved. I knew someone would come along who would understand. I knew someone would tell the story. Thank you for being that someone. The "little Misses Robertson" are finally getting their due.
Every Ancestor Has a Story Worth Telling
Legacy letters like this one transform research into something your family can treasure for generations.
