Long and Phillips

     Two ordinary names - two extraordinary couples (at least by modern standards) - their lives were composed of  heartbreaking losses and exhilarating triumphs. This beautiful photograph must have commemorated some event, perhaps Alfred and Nellie's wedding, but is not documented. It is solely speculation but I believe that there was a special bond between father and daughter, evidenced only by the rest of her hand on his shoulder, the reach of his arm in her direction and the fact that, in his later years,  he followed her to Grand Rapids from Detroit.

      Jane Hartigan, seated on left, was one of six children born to Irish immigrants in St. John, New Brunswick, Canada, who moved to Massachusetts in 1850. That same year, following the birth of a seventh sibling and shortly thereafter the death of her father, teen aged Jane began working in a textile mill to help support her family. Jane may have met Jeremiah Long through her brother (both were apprenticed to boot-makers).    

     In the photo, Jeremiah appears almost pompous but it may be that he was just very self-confident and fiercely independent, attributes that would serve him well in his later years when he held the 

office of Michigan state representative (photo below - back row - far right).  Letters and original poetry still survive that prove him also to have been  a loving, tender-hearted patriarch. At the end of his life, Jeremiah was a widower and lived with his granddaughter's family; sadly blindness contributed to his death when he misstepped and fell down a basement stairway.

      Jeremiah came to America from Cork, Ireland as a little boy, possibly following a much older brother. When he met Jane he was living with an Irish family named Morrow. In 1861 he enlisted in the Union Army, serving as a rifleman in the militia, and at Fort McHenry he sustained a wound from a rebel sword. When he returned home early in the summer of 1862, he and Jane married immediately. 

      Jane and Jeremiah had nine children but it was a heart-breaking loss when two did not survive infancy and two died as young adults. By 1880 the family had moved more than 700 miles west to Detroit, Michigan (anti-Irish sentiment was rampant in the northeastern cities) and Jeremiah was working in a customs office.  There young Nellie met Alfred Phillips. They stand in the photo, straight-backed, determined and dreamy with plans for the future - Nellie with her delicate features and pert nose, and Alfred so boyishly handsome with dark gentle eyes. Their life together is another story, another post.