This Old House Visits Our Old House
/by Bethany Groff Dorau, Executive Director
Kevin O’Connor of This Old House at the Museum of Old Newbury
On February 1, 2022, the producer and director of This Old House called the Museum to ask me some questions that had arisen as the team prepared for work and filming at 44 Oakland Street. That phone call led to a Zoom meeting, then another. The house was a mystery, and the team was curious about what we could find out about the people who lived there. The researchers at the Museum got to work sleuthing out the story behind the house. What we uncovered was a rich and unexpected history of a little-documented life.
Meet Hannah Twomey. I wish I could show you a picture. What I can show you is the first time her name appears on a Newburyport census, in 1880. She is 20 years old, a servant in the household of Caroline Johnson on Federal Street. From the 1900 census we learn that she arrived from Ireland as a 15-year-old.
Hannah Twomey (also spelled Toomey in several sources) spent most of her life living in the homes of her employers, but on August 7, 1889, just shy of her thirtieth birthday, she bought a piece of land from John Casey on Oakland Street. Sources are somewhat hazy about when the house was built, but we know that a house is there by 1892, with directories listing Byron S. Hatch, silversmith, as a tenant at 44 Oakland Street from 1892-1898, joined by his brother George H. Hatch, clerk, in 1898.
Over the next four decades, the house is home to a variety of family configurations and professions, most connected to the industries that had steadily moved west from downtown and were now stretched along the Merrimack River along the bottom of Oakland Street. From 1902-1925, Fred H. Stover, iron moulder, was listed, joined by Ernest Stover, shoe-cutter from 1904-1925 and Bertha T. Stover, stenographer, in 1912. Another moulder, Thomas Bruce, was in residence from 1927-1935, and from 1937-1939, C. Henry Kelleher, chauffer, lived there with his family. We can assume that other tenants came and went, and that the house was sometimes divided between multiple families, as the designation “rear” is sometimes used.
The 1912 directory lists Hannah Twomey at 20 Fruit Street while across town...
four members of the Stover family are living at Hannah's house at 44 Oakland St.
What we know, is that Hannah Twomey did NOT live at 44 Oakland Street during her lifetime. As we followed her through the directories and other records, we found her living and working as a servant at prestigious addresses on Federal, High, and Fruit Streets, as a cook at the “Old Ladies Home”. When not living in service, she helped her sister Nora’s family with their grocery business, and lived with them on Carter Street.
Hannah Twomey was a challenge to research. Her name was common in both Ireland and Newburyport and she lived where she worked rather than in the house she owned. We looked for a record of her death, but came up empty. Intrepid researcher, assistant director Kristen Fehlhaber, was on the case, and after an exhaustive search, she found the estate of Johanna Twomey being settled in 1937. Board member Jane Wild helped to understand the probate records, which split her estate between two siblings in Ireland and two in Newburyport. Searching Newburyport deaths year by year, we eventually found a Johanna Twomey dying in 1934; a quick walk to Newburyport City Hall and$25 gave us her death certificate. She died on April 5, 1934 at her sister's house after a ten day illness.
Hannah Twomey’s July, 1937 probate notice offered the biggest clue, listing her as both Hannah and Johanna
the Probate led to finding her 1934 death certificate, obtained from city hall
In 1939, five years after her death, 44 Oakland Street was sold to Lawrence & Mary Twomey by Hannah Twomey’s siblings. While it is natural to assume that these families were related, no evidence has been found, and the house was sold at roughly market rate. Lawrence “Larry” Twomey worked at Leary’s Package Store and had owned the Park Lunch restaurant on the corner of Kent and Merrimac Street since 1933 or 1934.
This Old House came to the museum to film in mid-March. I was NOT a natural. I could not remember what I had just said when asked to do a take a second time. My neck and my ears went bright red, and I repeatedly referred to host Kevin O'Connor as Kevin Connell. Despite all this, the entire experience was wonderful. Apparently I was not the first nervous civilian to flub her lines on the show, and everyone was extremely patient, including the homeowner, Melissa, who was a seasoned cast member by this point.
This Old House Cameraman Steve D'Onofrio and I ham it up at the wrap party with my husband James Dorau.
It helped a great deal that the head cameraman and I have mutual friends and that I worked with one of the producers years ago at Historic New England. And, of course, Kim Turner, Newburyport’s Manager of Special Projects at City Hall, and a longtime friend, was on two seasons of the show as a landscape designer. It also helps that the dining room of the Cushing House, whatever nonsense is occurring within it, is stunning from every angle.
This Old House host Kevin O’Conner holds the elusive death certificate of Hannah Twomey while I chat with homeowner Melissa during filming.
This Old House came back a month later to film again, and it was a joyous reunion. I think I finally got the hang of it, though much of that visit wound up on the cutting room floor.
Host Kevin, producer and director Adam, and yours truly on the boardwalk on a cold, damp day in April.
In addition to the national visibility that our appearance on the show affords the Museum of Old Newbury, it was personally deeply gratifying for me. My dad and I watched This Old House together for years, back in the days when you had to block off the time and rush to the tv to see Norm and Bob. Upon hearing this at the wrap party in August, Charlie Silva of Silva Brothers' Construction ran out to his car and gave me a shirt for my dad, which he wears, along with his Silva Bros. hat, while he reads This Old House magazine. And Kevin, who sat through multiple retakes and had to shake my clammy hand over and over again, turned out to be just as funny, happy, and kind as he seems on television.
My dad is sporting his new favorite shirt, courtesy of Charlie Silva.
The most gratifying part of the experience for me, however, was talking about (Jo)Hannah Twomey. In a city long associated with Federal Houses, old English families, and the sea, this plucky woman worked hard to make a life for herself here, invested in real estate at just the right time, and helped to support her family in life and in death, even as she disappeared down the back stairs and into the kitchens of the grand houses of Newburyport’s elite. I will never forget her, and it was my great honor to bring her alive, in a small way, to a national audience. I am eternally grateful to This Old House for the opportunity to do her this service.
Last night, the Port Tavern was filled with fans of Newburyport history for a live viewing of This Old House.
