Cleaning out and Finding Your Relatives
It’s amazing what you find when you begin cleaning out. In moving from our house to a
one-bedroom apartment, I began to sort all our papers, etc. that I had accumulated over
the years. In doing so, I found information I had about my family that I had not read in
quite a while; among these papers was a book entitled “Grandma Remembers”. My
oldest daughter had sat down with my mother before she passed away and recorded
some of her history in this book.
Among those notes was the fact that my mother was a student at the Sisters of Divine
Providence Academy in East Liberty. She was studying music and being trained to be a
concert pianist. However, her mother passed away during her first year in high school
there and she had to come back home to keep house for her father while her older
sister took over their mother’s poultry stand in the Northside Market. Her father was
homebound as he had been injured when working as a conductor on the Wilmerding
Streetcar Line.
The other very interesting piece of information I found in the book was that my mother’s
father’s brother, Peter Schmitt, had two daughters who were Sisters of Divine
Providence. I remember my mother saying something about them, but I never knew
any specific names. However, my daughter had recorded their names in the book,
Sisters Clarita and Agnita. I decided to ask asked Sister Michele Bisbey if she had any
knowledge of them. She got back to me several days later, and to my surprise, told me
they were buried in the cemetery adjacent to the property for RCE. This week, Jim and I
went in search of their gravestones and found them. How ironic, that we will be living
very close to where these two sisters are buried. How sad that we never got to know
them. I have asked some of the sisters there and they all knew them. I guess when my
mother mentioned them, years ago, I was too busy rearing my children to suggest that
we try to find them and visit them.
Learning this spurred me on to connect my children with relatives they have not met on
my dad’s side.
-Judy Robertson, Founder and future RCE resident, October 15, 2024