Alanson Connelly was never happy as a farm boy, nor with his abusive, drunken father – as he remembered Martin. He ran away from home at 13 or 14, and headed to the Hammond farm, where he lived until age 17, when he enlisted in the United States Army. He served in the Capitol Guard in Washington, D.C., and in Panama, recalling that he delivered food to inmates at Devil’s Island. He also contracted dengue fever and malaria.

He lived for a number of years in Lansing, MI, where he worked for auto companies. On his return from his Army service of about 20 years, his family found him a sick, changed man. He spent much time with his sister Flora, whom he called “Florie.” She kept his footlocker for him for nearly 60 years.

The Connelly family knew the Bucklers, and one Connelly girl, Sallie, had married Bruce Buckler. Charles and Ella Buckler’s youngest daughter, Maude, was a willowy, attractive schoolteacher who had graduated from Eastern Illinois State Teacher’s College in Charleston, IL. Even though Alanson (Lance) had but a fourth-grade education, the two decided to marry and come out to California – he to work in the shipyards, and she to teach in the local schools. Her sister, Grace Watt (divorced), left her teenage son Shelby back east and either came with them, or met them on their arrival in Richmond, CA, in either 1944 or 1945.

Maude and her sister were both teachers and graduates of Eastern Illinois. Their father, Charles, born 25 Feb. 1875, in Douglas, Coles Co., IL, was the son of Allen Buckler of Kentucky and Ellen Elizabeth Cockroft of Indiana. They married in Edgar County in 1873.

Charles was of exceptional good humor and had a charming personality, according to family sources. He was not apparently the least put out to find the girl he was fond of, Ella Coon, had had a child out of wedlock when she was 16 (or 14, depending on which birth year to accept. The 1930 census lists her at 60, meaning she would have been born in 1870, but early censuses give her birth as 1868 or even 1869; she gives her age at marriage in 1898 as 28): Clarence Rardin. The father was Jackson Riley Rardin, who eventually married Lucy Serena Hammond.

Interestingly, Ella was pregnant again when she married Charlie 17 July 1898 in Clark County. Charlie was 23; she gave her age as 28 (probably 30). Bruce Buckler was born less than six months later, 8 Jan. 1899; he was followed by Guy, Grace, and Maude. When I spoke to Clarence’s son, H.P. Rardin of Kansas, IL, in the late 1990s, he reported that both his grandparents were affectionate and attentive, and that apparently no family stigma was attached to the illegitimate birth. (My parents old me that Clarence was the result of a previous marriage – not the case.)

Lance and Maude were married 2 Feb. 1945 at Our Lady of Mercy Catholic Church in Point Richmond. Their reception was at the Hotel Mac. They moved to 3949 Center Ave., Richmond, and their daughter, Mary Josephine, was born 17 Oct. 1945 at Kaiser Hospital in Oakland, where 11 years later her mother would die.

Not long after they moved to a new house on Annapolis Avenue (then Richmond, now San Pablo), Maude was stricken with a cerebral hemorrhage and died on 21 July 1957. In 1961 I went to live with my Aunt Grace, now married to George Slown and living in Dos Palos, CA. My cousin, Eddie, was exactly a month to the day younger than I, having been born 17 Nov. 1945. Lance lived in the Yountville Veterans Home until his death from heart failure 28 Nov. 1978. Both Maude and Lance are buried in St. Joseph’s Catholic Cemetery, San Pablo.

I married Richard Alan Gohlke of Oakland on 6 April 1974, and we lived in Oakland for many years until moving to Stockton with Sally and Daniel in 1993.

Although I managed to stay in touch with two aunts in Illinois – Flora, who had married Carl Nicholson, and Kate (Barbara Catherine), who married O’Kellie Summers and lived in Alton, IL – I had no close ties with the Illinois family. Grandfather Buckler was the only one of my grandparents I met – he came out to visit when I was 2 years old, and we apparently hit it off. I became close in later years with my cousin, Janice Nicholson, and before her death went back in 2000 to attend the Connelly family reunion in Casey.

In the early 1970s I visited Aunt Kate, and we in turn went to meet Serena, Paddy, and Dewey. Eventually, only Serena lived on the property, which finally dwindled down to 45 acres and was sold in the summer of 2005, when she entered a convalescent home. The land became the property of David Schiver, a second cousin who had long helped Serena with the land, and all family documents, photos, and furniture were sold at auction.

When I bemoaned the demise of the family lands to my cousin Bob Connelly, he replied:

“About the land Josiah had: There were a lot of children to share the estate, and the girls, who married Bennetts, Hammonds, Daughhetees, and Gowers, farmed, and still farm, large acreage in the area. The Gowers farm across the road from the Connelly Cemetery, and Ella Shawver owned the land south of the cemetery. I don’t know who owns it now. Of course Aunt Serena just sold the last 45 acres she had, to David Schiver, a cousin. So over 200 years it is easy to see how it would be dispersed.”

He concludes: “Congratulations on your daughter’s marriage, and your trip to Ireland (where Sally Gohlke married Jason Noma in June 2006 on the Aran Islands).

“You might say that the family is coming home.”

Mary Jo Gohlke, October 24, 2005, Stockton CA