Who was Genevieve Sullivan Markert?

Irish Immigrant Roots

Genevieve Sullivan Markert is my mother. She was the granddaughter of Irish immigrants. Her grandfather, Owen Sullivan, immigrated to New York from the Lakes of Killarney County, Kerry, Ireland, in the 1840s. He was a poet and ballad singer and came to America during what was called “the second wave of Irish immigrants,” those who emigrated from Ireland because of the economic depression caused by the potato famine of 1845. Initially, he took whatever work he could. Eventually, he owned a livery stable, a trade he learned in Galway, Ireland. Soon after the Civil War, Owen Sullivan left New York with his young bride, Mary O’Neil, a school teacher, who was born in 1824 in Kerry county Ireland. They were married in Windsor, Ontario, Canada. They traveled west in a covered wagon and built a log cabin on the edge of a wooded area near St. Paul, Minnesota, where Owen worked in a lumber camp. Owen and Mary Sullivan gave birth to nine children, including our grandfather Jeremiah and his twin brother Alexander, who were the second youngest of the children. Owen and Mary Sullivan moved several times, each time improving their economic status. Eventually, they were able to procure their own farm through the Homestead Act, which was passed in 1862 to encourage settlers who were penetrating the wilderness to establish farms and create a sturdy social and economic base for communities. The Sullivans were part of the western movement of the 19th century. Farms were easy to acquire. Government land after 1820 could be bought for $1.25 for a half hectare. After the Homestead Act, could be claimed by merely occupying and improving it. In addition, tools for working the land were easily available. Living conditions were difficult on the prairies of Minnesota, however. There were no railroads or highways and the covered wagons followed the Indian trails. Mom’s grandmother, Mary Sullivan, was a strong, independent and visionary woman. Among her few material possessions was a box of books which, as a teacher, she used to teach her children to read and enjoy. Tragically, Owen died when the twins were only seven years old. At that point, Mary moved the family back to St. Paul and enrolled the children in the Jesuit school. Many years later they returned to the prairie, which was developing rapidly.

Mom's Parents Meet and Start a Family

The railroads were now crisscrossing the west and with them came throngs of easterners seeking adventure and a new life. Among them were a young Irish immigrant couple, Roderick and Mary McConnell Beaton, and their only child, Mary. Mary McConnell had left her white-washed cottage in County Monahan, Ireland, to come to America with her brothers at the age of sixteen to earn a living. Through her brothers she met Roderick, a farmer from Nova Scotia, who left country life for a job in the city of Belmont, Massachusetts. Roderick and Mary soon married and gave birth to their daughter, Mary Beaton. Since earning a living was difficult in the city, the Beatons pioneered west and took a homestead next to a railroad station in St. Paul. In 1896 Mary Beaton, at age 16, married Jeremiah Sullivan in Brewster, Minnesota. They took a new homestead which they farmed so successfully that Jeremiah was eventually able purchase a bank in Heron Lake and move the family into town. The farm then became a summer residence. The town home was large and had its own private tennis court. Mom became an accomplished tennis player and violinist. However, when the Stock Market crashed on October 29, 1929, Jeremiah lost his bank and moved the family back to the farm.

Jeremiah and Mary Beaton Sullivan had eleven Children: Mary, who remained single and worked a long career as a secretary with the railroad; Geraldine, who married William DeMuth, an express agent in Mankato, and with him had four children: Robert, Mary Francis, Leo and Janie; Dorothy, who married Peter Reuter, an electrical engineer in Newton Center, Massachusetts, and with him had three daughter: Ann, Dorothy Jane and Jacqueline; Roderick, an immigration service agent, who married Hanahan and lived in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and had two children: James and Sharon; Genevieve Elizabeth, our mother; Eleanor Louise, who remained single and became a bank vice-president in Anchorage, Alaska; Sylvester, who married Delphine Lurchin and remained farming the family farm in Heron Lake, Minnesota, having one daughter, Nancy; John, who became a Captain in the army and married Lucille Rostomeny and had three children: Michael, Jeremiah and Thomas; Katherine, who married Russell Schmidt, a radio researcher in Newark, New Jersey, and had three children: Mary Margaret, Katherine and Johnny; and Helen, the youngest, who married John Pappas, an accountant in Anchorage, Alaska, and had two sons, Nick and Chris.

Childhood, Adolescence and Youg Adulthood

Mom grew up on the farm until she was eight years old. She told stories of her early days on the farm when the Indians would come and go through the farm fields, which were probably ancient hunting paths for them, and clothes would disappear from the line and her mom’s apple pies would disappear from the window sills where she was cooling them off. When a cloud of dust was seen in the horizon, things had to be secured down. Though the Indians never hurt anyone, her father and brothers were always ready with their rifles. After the Indians passed by on their trips back from buffalo hunting, the pies and clothes were put back out!

When mom was eight the family moved to town so that she and her brothers and sisters could go to school. Her father worked as a banker and as postmaster in the post office. Mom eventually graduated from Heron Lake High School where she was the valedictorian of her class. She attended Saint Teresa’s College in Winona, Minnesota, for a brief period, and then transferred to Loretta Heights College in Denver, Colorado, where she studied nursing. After a year of study at Loretta Heights, she returned home because she was diagnosed with a weak heart and the staff thought the high altitude was unsafe for her. She taught school in Heron Lake for a year with the Sisters of Saint Francis before transferring to the University of Minnesota where she lived and worked at the Settlement House while continuing her studies in the teacher training program. During this period she sustained her high level of academic achievement while becoming accomplished at both tennis and the violin. She was also writing poems, many of which she entered into her college composition book along with her class notes and essays or typed on small pieces of paper.

Mom Meets Dad

When mom was about to graduate as a teacher from the University of Minnesota, she went on a blind date arranged by her classmate, who happened to be a friend of a gentleman named Julius Markert. Either mom’s friend did not want to go alone or dad’s friend asked her if she knew someone whom his friend Julius could take as a date so they cold go as a group. The arrangements were made and dad purchased and sent mom tickets to the opera in Saint Paul. They were to meet at the coffee shop next to the opera theater. Dad and his friend were late, however, so mom and her friend, being independent and wanting to be on time for the show, went on in, telling the ticket man that two men would soon be coming and showing him their tickets. After the show, dad was so impressed with mom that he asked her to go on a canoe ride the next day, which was a Sunday. They canoed down a local river to a picnic area, with dad being the “total gentleman,” holding her hand and helping her in and out of the canoe. Mom later told us, at her 85th birthday, I think, that they “had a wonderful time” and there was a definite “spark” between them, though she did think dad was a bit on the bold side to ask her out again so quickly. There was urgency to the moment, however, for dad had a job offer in Boston to work as a social worker and had to leave within a few days. During the Depression Years, a job of that stature was a major accomplishment. He wrote to mom from Boston at least once a week, and often more frequently. They corresponded for about a year when, on opening his letter one day, mom was surprised and elated to read dad’s proposal for marriage. He wanted to come out to Minnesota for the wedding then bring her back to Boston to raise a family.

On June 16, 1930, mom and dad were married at Sacred Heart Church in Heron Lake, Minnesota. This was not a marriage blessed by Irish eyes, however. In those days the Irish were not fond of the Germans and vise versa. None of dad’s family attended the wedding. Dad stayed in the upstairs bedroom and mom downstairs. It was just as well they started a new life out of Minnesota. They drove on their honeymoon to Boston, stopping along the way at many resorts in the Appalachian Mountains. When they reached the east coast, they settled down in a small white house in Marblehead, Massachusetts, just a block from the beach. Dad was working as a Social Worker with the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children in the North Shore district of Boston. They lived in that small white house for a year, then moved to a cozy little house in Beverly, also near a beach, to make room for the birth of their first child, Mary, in 1931.

Over the course of the next fifteen years, mom went on to have the rest of us—nine in all! Mary’s autobiography written in 1946 at age 15 gives a moving account of these years. Mom and dad moved many times around the Boston area, always keeping us close to the sea and conveying their values about God, nature, education, work and the family to us. In 1941 they moved to Newport, Rhode Island, when dad took on a new position as director of the USO. They continued to maintain their focus on us, always modeling the highest standards of integrity and maintaining their commitment to our development through their self-sacrifice, hard work and unfaltering love for us and for one another. During this time, too, mom wrote poems, this time not typed or in a student notebook but usually scratched hastily on scrapes of paper and between chores, then tucked away quietly away, saved and hidden over the years--- maybe unseen by anyone, even dad and us, until now perhaps, or upon her death, when we began sorting through her very few possessions. She had a pioneer spirit to the end, like her mother and grandmother, being always ready to pick up stakes and move on, never getting overly attached to material things. To her, “things are just things,” to be taken care of, but dispensable and replaceable.

Louis F. Markert, Ph.D.
Fifth Son, Eighth Born

November 19, 2006