NEWSPAPER: Nancy McCormick interview; Canandaigua, Ontario co., NY Submitted by Nila Repard (nrepard atfrontiernet.net) ************************************************ Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.org/copyright.htm http://www.usgwarchives.org/ny/nyfiles.htm *********************************************** Sunday,August 1, 1915 Rochester Democrat & Chronicle Interview with Nancy McCormick on her ninetieth birthday Bore Thirteen Children and Ran a Business Thirty-three Years; Active on Her Ninetieth Birthday Although the span of her years is four score and ten, Mrs. Nancey McCormack who lives with her son William J. McCormack, at 457 Main Street West, has few of the infermeties that come with advanced age. Mrs. McCormack is today celebrating her ninetieth birthday and she said yesterday that she expected enjoy the occasion fully as much as do her sons and daughters and the friends who are expected to drop in. There has been not a little action in Mrs. McCormack's life. She was born in Middlebury, Vt. on August 1, 1825 and a few years later her parents removed to Franklin Co. in this state. She was married to Francis McCormack at Sackett's Harbour in 1840, when she was but more than 14 years old. Mrs. McCormack and her parents, Mr. and Mrs McAdam, started from Franklin county for Rochester on a lake boat but her mother was so badly upset by the rough weather encountered that the captain of the boat refused to take the party farther than Sackett's Harbour. Mrs. McCormack's husband died in Canandaigua in 1868. Some years before his death he had established an ice business in that town, and Mrs. McCormack continued the business , conducting it for thirty-three years. She was the first Businesswoman in Canandaigua and is well known in that place. When help was scarce she frequently did a mans work in the cutting and harvesting of ice. Some years ago the town of Canandaigua built a pier into the lake, and Mrs. McCormack was made piermistress, or toll collector, a fee being exacted from all vehicles that drove on the pier and from the boats that landed there. It was the duty of Mrs. McCormack to collect these fees, and it is a matter of record that she did her work well. Mrs. McCormack had thirteen children, six of whom are living. Besides her son William J. McCormack, with whom she has made her home for eight years, she has two children in Rochester, Mrs. Owen Doyle and Mrs. Laura Koons. Her other living children, John McCormack, Mrs. Sarah Meath and Mrs. David Gentner, are in Canandaigua. Her oldest son, now dead, enlisted in the Civil war when he was 17 years old. Except for difficulty in walking due to rheumatism, Mrs. McCormack is exeptionally active for a person who has attained her years. She is able to read without glasses and also to do tatting her favorite occupation. She says the counting necessary to tatting keeps her from thinking. She has an unusually retentive memory for things that happened long ago and is able to recite verses she learned as a child. v Mrs. McCormack has done considerable traveling. She visits Canandaigua a year ago and hopes to go again. She has a vivid recollection of the Civil war and says that the present European conflict impresses her as being a more horrifying struggle.