Three Generations at 291 Lionel Road
Every record in the Three Thomas Hamalls case, in the order the events happened: a cottage bought in 1911, a lawsuit that ran four years, a draft card corrected in 1940, a tax roll in 1949, and the son who carried the memory of Saturday visits for seventy years. Where a record was found, and when, is marked in the last section.
Thomas Henry Hamall
The son of Owen Hamall and Kate Griffith, who built the cottage and kept it.
Birth in Chicago
Thomas Henry Hamall is born in Chicago, the first child of Owen Hamall, an Irish-born iron molder, and Catherine (Kate) Griffith. He is baptized on 16 May 1880.
Of Kate’s six children, he and his sister Mary were the only two to reach adulthood. The family’s story is told in Part I.
Source Baptismal register, 1880; 1880 U.S. census, Chicago · The Owen Hamall Mystery
Marriage to Emma Gilbert
Thomas Henry, 24, and Emma Gilbert, 21, are licensed on 30 January and married the next day in Chicago. Their son, Thomas Eugene, is born on 23 November 1904.
Source Cook County marriage license, 1904; Hamall v. Petru (1928)
Divorce
A decree in Emma’s favour orders Thomas to pay $4 a week for the boy’s support. Thomas Eugene is not yet three. Emma later remarries in Indiana, as Emma E. Hepp.
Source Hamall v. Petru, 331 Ill. 465 (1928) · Gallery, Item 001
The lot on Lionel Road
Thomas buys a lot in Riverside for $300. The cottage, one room, twenty-four feet square, is built with $400 borrowed from his mother, Kate, and $250 from others, $950 in all, and finished in August 1911.
The only record of the purchase, the price and Kate’s loan is the 1928 opinion; the county property records for these years are incomplete.
Source Hamall v. Petru (1928) · Gallery, Item 001
A deed in trust for his son
Thomas pays Emma $25 and she releases what is due under the decree. He deeds the cottage to Frank J. Petru in trust for Thomas Eugene, keeping a life estate for himself.
The court later found that the consideration for this arrangement had failed.
Source Hamall v. Petru (1928)
WWI draft registration
Thomas Henry Hamall, 38, gives his address as 291 Lionel Road, Riverside.
Seven years after the purchase, he is living at the cottage, not only owning it.
Source WWI Draft Registration Cards, 1917–1918, Cook County; NARA M1509 · Gallery, Item 002
Death of Kate Hamall
Thomas’s mother, who lent him the money to build, dies at Chicago State Hospital.
Source Death certificate, 1919 · Owen Hamall methodology
“Thomas Hepp”
Thomas Eugene, 15, is enumerated as Thomas Hepp, under his stepfather’s surname, in his mother’s household in Chicago.
Source 1920 U.S. census, Chicago · Gallery, Item 006
Second marriage
Thomas Henry marries Margaret A. Hamall, a widow. Two photographs from the early 1920s show father and son, each on his own, at the same Olmsted bridge in Riverside.
The prints place both men at the bridge. They do not show them together or on one day, so the son’s presence at the wedding is suggestive, not proved.
Source Hamall v. Petru (1928); family photographs · Gallery, Item 003
Emma’s petition
Emma petitions in the divorce case. The chancellor finds $2,500 due for support, enters judgment and directs Petru to convey the cottage back to Thomas. Thomas then sues to cancel the 1914 deed, and the circuit court finds for him. Emma appeals.
Source Hamall v. Petru (1928)
The Supreme Court affirms
The Supreme Court of Illinois affirms the decree. The cottage was worth no more than $1,000 at any time before 11 October 1922 and was Thomas’s homestead, so the judgment could not reach it.
The court decided the case on the facts found below and declined to rule on the question of law that counsel argued.
Source Hamall v. Petru, No. 18255, 331 Ill. 465, 163 N.E. 338 · The Property War
A permit for alterations
The village of Riverside issues Thomas H. Hamall a permit for “alterations at 291 Lionel road.”
The spring after the decision, he is improving the cottage he had kept.
Source “Building Activity Makes Spurt Here,” Riverside News, 2 May 1929, p. 1; Riverside Public Library digital archive · Gallery, Item 016
With his sister
Widowed in 1936, Thomas Henry lives with his sister, Mary Holland, and her sons Edward and Emmett at 2639 S. Ridgeway, Chicago.
Source Holland household records · The Mystery Man
Death of Thomas Henry Hamall
Thomas Henry dies at 57. No deed or will passing the cottage to his son has been found.
Source Cook County death certificate, 1938
Thomas Eugene Hamall
Raised by his mother, married at the start of the Depression, and at the cottage when his own marriage ended.
Census and marriage
In April Thomas Eugene is living with his mother, Emma, at 4506 N. McVicker Avenue, Chicago. On 4 June 1930 he marries Margaret Katherine Kenny. Four months later the Lake View State Bank, where he is a teller, fails.
Source 1930 U.S. census; Cook County marriage record · Gallery, Item 007
Birth of Thomas Kenny Hamall
Thomas Kenny is born in Evanston, Illinois. His parents’ address is 4869 N. Ashland Avenue, Chicago, the home of Margaret’s parents.
Source Illinois birth certificate, 1932 · Gallery, Item 011
First Communion
On Thomas Kenny’s First Communion keepsake, “Ashland” is crossed out and 33 N. Menard written in.
Source First Communion keepsake, 1939; family collection · Gallery, Item 013
The last census together
Thomas Eugene, Margaret and Thomas Kenny, 7, at 33 N. Menard Avenue, Chicago.
Source 1940 U.S. census, Chicago · Gallery, Item 005
WWII draft registration
Thomas Eugene’s address, 4869 N. Ashland, is struck out and 291 Lionel Road, Riverside, typed over it. His contact is Margaret Catherine Hamall at 4869 N. Ashland.
Within six months of the census, the household has separated, and he has gone to the cottage.
Source WWII Draft Registration Cards, Cook County · Gallery, Item 004
The “Riverside House” photographs
Thomas Eugene in a lawn chair in the cottage yard with a dog. Among Thomas Kenny’s own prints, the same dog in the same chair in the same yard. He would remember Saturday visits to his father there, at eight or nine.
The prints place the dog, the chair and the yard. The son appears in neither; the visits rest on his memory and his father’s 1940 residence.
Source “Riverside House” envelope, family collection · Gallery, Item 009
Divorce, and Miami
The marriage ends in divorce about 1941. In 1942 Margaret takes Thomas Kenny to her parents in Miami. The dog stays behind. Thomas Eugene remains in Illinois.
Source 1945 Florida state census; oral history · Gallery, Items 012, 015
At the U.S. Capitol
Thomas Eugene, 42, and Thomas Kenny, 15 and at seminary, are photographed separately at the same balustrade below the dome. One print is dated 1947. A second photograph shows Thomas Eugene with another man.
The visit is established; the son called it pivotal. His father came from the Chicago area, roughly 700 miles. The best-supported name for the second man is Emmett Holland, his first cousin; Emmett’s brother Edward cannot be ruled out.
Source Family photographs, 1947 · Gallery, Item 010 · The Mystery Man
The cottage on the tax roll
The Riverside assessment roll lists Emma E. Hamall on the west half of Lot 212, Block 1, Riverside Second Division, 40 by 217 feet: land 1191, improvements 1136.
The last record of the cottage in the family’s hands. How it came to Emma after 1938 is not yet documented.
Source Riverside News, 29 September 1949, p. 15; Riverside Public Library digital archive · Gallery, Item 017
To Florida
Thomas Eugene and his mother, Emma, are enumerated in Miami-Dade County, ten minutes from his son. He works as a landscaper, later owns Bow-Arrow Gardens, and in 1963 is president of the Horticultural Spraymen’s Association.
Source 1950 U.S. census; Miami directories and newspapers · The Father Who Tried
His son’s wedding
On his fifty-third birthday, Thomas Eugene attends Thomas Kenny’s wedding to Barbara Ann O’Brien in Caldwell, New Jersey.
Source Family records · The Father Who Tried
Death of Thomas Eugene Hamall
Thomas Eugene dies in Miami at 62. His son keeps his pocket watch, engraved “TEH.”
Source Death record, 1967
Thomas Kenny Hamall
The son who kept the envelope.
In Miami
Thomas Kenny, 12, is living with his mother in Miami.
Source 1945 Florida state census · Gallery, Item 012
Marriage, and a career on the move
Thomas Kenny marries Barbara Ann O’Brien in Caldwell, New Jersey, on 23 November 1957. His work with the American Cancer Society takes the family to New York, Nebraska, New Jersey, Ohio and Georgia. Five daughters are born between 1958 and 1964, and a son in 1972.
Source Family records · Three Generations of Shrinking and Expanding
A new house on the lot
The house that stands at the cottage’s address today is built. The cottage is gone.
Source Current property record, 291 Lionel Road
Back to Riverside
Fifty-six years after he left Illinois, Thomas Kenny returns to Riverside with Barbara to find the place he remembered.
By then the cottage was already gone, and he may never have known the address.
Source Oral history · Gallery, Item 015
Death of Thomas Kenny Hamall
The “Riverside House” envelope passes through Barbara to their daughter, who will find the cottage on paper.
Source Family collection
The Research Journey
The order the records were found, which is not the order they were made.
How each record was weighed, the conflicts between them and what remains open are on the methodology page.
Continue the Case Study
Read how each record was weighed, or see the documents behind each entry.
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