Who are the descendants or heirs of a writer named Marjorie
O'Shaughnessy, who lived in Manhattan in the 1940s? Here is what I
know already:

She attended the Arts Students League in the 1930s.
Her parents names were Meg and Will O'Shaughnessy. At one time she and
her parents and brother-in-law John Clarke (married to Marjorie's
sister only known as "Duggy") all lived in an apartment on East 84th
St. "Duggy" taught dental administration during the war.

Marjorie O'Shaughnessy wrote for the soap opera "Guiding Light" during the 1960s.

She owned a bookstore in East 86th Street in the early 1940s.

She lived at 30 Gates Avenue, Montclair, NJ at some point after the war.

She wrote letters to a friend in the army named Irv van  der Poel.

She was an air warden in Manhattan.

Her niece, John Clarke's daughter, was named Margaret but don't know
her married name. She had at least one daughter who was a teenager in
the early 1970s.

Irv Van der Poel last lived in Santa Fe, NM in the early 1970s.

Marjorie's mother's sister, Janet Ten Eyck, worked for the City of New
York and had a son named Rob who earned a master's at Columbia after
the war. He also spent the Korean War in Japan. In the early 1970s he
was living somewhere on Long Island and had three children.

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Request for Question Clarification by pafalafa-ga on 24 May 2005 17:21 PDT

Hello Robin,

I've been looking into your question and I've managed to turn up some
information on Marjorie O'Shaughnessy.  However, the information I
have poses a bit of a mystery, and I'm not sure what to make of it. 
Perhaps you can shed some light on the situation.

The 1930 Census contains a record of an O'Shaughnessy family in the
Bronx, NY which is almost certainly the family you asked about.  The
family members are listed as:


William O'Shaughnessy, father

Margaret A O'Shaughnessy, mother

Also in the house are two daughters, Dorothy and Marjorie, and one
Francis J. Clark, listed as the brother-in-law.


So far, things seem to fit the information you have already.  The
parents are Meg (Margaret) and Will(iam).  Sister 'Duggy' is Dorothy
and Francis J. Clark is the 'John Clarke' of your family history.


The Census also has other information, such as occupations, place of
parents' birth, marital status, age, etc.

And it's this other information that throws in a bit of a monkeywrench.

First off, are the ages given:  Will - 45, Margaret - 43, Dorothy -
23, and Marjorie - 2.  According to the Census, Marjorie was only two
years old in 1930, which makes it unlikely that she "attended the Arts
Students League" just a few years later, or ran a bookstore in the
early 1940's.  There's also quite a gap between Marjorie's and
Dorothy's ages, which cry out for some sort of explanation.

Also, Francis J. is listed as a brother-in-law (rather than a
son-in-law) and is also listed as single, as is Dorothy.  He's also
considerably older than Dorothy, as his age is given as 58 (perhaps
Francis J. has a son, John, who comes into the family picture later
on).


I also checked the rather grimly-named Social Security Death Index
that shows the following record:

==========
Name:    Marjorie Oshaughnessy 
SSN:    120-18-2868  
Last Residence:    07042  Montclair, Essex, New Jersey, United States of America 
Born:    7 Feb 1909 
Last Benefit:    07042  Montclair, Essex, New Jersey, United States of America 
Died:    Oct 1979 
State (Year) SSN issued:    New York (Before 1951 ) 
==========


This also appears to be your Marjorie O'Shaughnessy, especially given
the Montclair, NJ connection for her residence, and the fact that her
SS number was issued in NY.

But note the birth date!  February 7, 1909, which would make her about
20 years older than the Marjorie O'Shaughnessy identified from the
Census records (much closer to Dorothy's age, in fact).



There's no obvious explanation of this (although one possibility is
that the Census records made a simple error, and got the age wrong).


I just wanted to run by what I've found thus far, and get your feedback.

What do you think?


pafalafa-ga


P.S.  Google Answers cannot provide personal information on private,
living individuals.  Even if I could track down current descendants of
Marjorie, I don't think I'd be able to post the information here. 
Please keep this limitation in mind.

---

Clarification of Question by robinlark-ga on 25 May 2005 07:01 PDT

Thanks, I think it's absolutely a typo on part of Census and it meant
to say "21" which would work in terms of if she was born in 1909, she
would have been 21 in 1930. That said, I'm concerned about your final
statement--if you do find her descendants/heirs, you can't give me
their contact info. . ..is it permitted for you to get in touch with
someone and tell them I'm trying to locate them and would like to hear
from them? The whole reason I'm trying to find them is that I'm a book
developer in possession of a nonfiction manuscript written by Marjorie
and I would like to get it published. So I need to either prove that
there are no heirs or that they have agreed to the publication.

Thanks again!

---

Request for Question Clarification by pafalafa-ga on 31 May 2005 20:11 PDT

Hello again,

I wrote a note to Dover Publications -- Marjorie edited a book
published by Dover -- for more information, but I haven't heard back. 
Just wanted to let you know...if anything more turns up, I'll be sure
to post it here.

paf