Ambrose Patrick Dee

1890s–1900s

Born 17 May 1893 in Syracuse, New York, to Patrick J. Dee and Julia Hogan, and grew up on East Center Street. Graduated from Salina Grammar School in 1907 and from business school around 1909.

1910s

Rose from stenographer to station master with the Syracuse streetcar lines, then clerked for the New York Central Railroad. Married Mary Alice Farrell on 12 October 1915; son Ambrose Jr. was born in 1918.

1920s–1930s

Moved to Pittsburgh around 1921 as a salesman for the Will & Baumer Candle Company. Daughter Mary Alice was born in 1921 and son Bob in 1931, and from about 1924 the family lived at 45 Florence Avenue in Mount Lebanon.

1940s–1950s

Still selling candles, working out of his home, into the 1950s. Died at home in Mount Lebanon on 21 April 1957 and was buried in Syracuse.

A Syracuse Boyhood

Ambrose Patrick Dee was born on May 17, 1893, in Syracuse, New York, the son of Patrick J. Dee and Julia Hogan. He grew up at 404 East Center Street with his brothers Will and Bernard and his sisters Kathryn and Mary; another brother, Gregory, died in 1900 at about three. In January 1907 Ambrose graduated from Salina Grammar School in a ceremony with a Lincoln theme, and around 1909 he finished a course at the Central City Business School on South Salina Street.

His first jobs were at Spalding's sporting-goods store, as a stenographer for a pool-table dealer, and with the Oneida Railroad. In 1911 he went to work for the Syracuse Rapid Transit Railroad, the city's streetcar company (later part of New York State Railways), and over seven years he rose from stenographer to chief clerk, inspector, and, by 1918, station master. His 1917 draft card describes him as tall and slim, with blue eyes and brown hair. He went to the dances of Syracuse's young crowd, and at one of them, at Colvin Hall in April 1913, so was Alice Farrell.

Marriage and the Move to Pittsburgh

On October 12, 1915, Ambrose married Mary Alice Farrell at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Syracuse, and they spent a month's honeymoon in Philadelphia and Atlantic City. Their son Ambrose Jr. was born in 1918 and their daughter, Mary Alice, in 1921. After a year as a clerk for the New York Central Railroad, Ambrose became a salesman, and by October 1921 the family had moved to Pittsburgh. He sold candles for the Will & Baumer Candle Company for the rest of his life, nearly forty years. By 1940 he was working about sixty hours a week for $3,500 a year, and from at least 1942 he ran his territory out of his home.

From about 1924 the Dees lived at 45 Florence Avenue in Mount Lebanon, a house valued in 1930 at $11,000, radio included; their younger son, Bob, was born in 1931. Ambrose belonged to St. Bernard's parish, its Ushers' Club, and the Holy Name Society. In the mid-1920s he was a member of the Knights of Columbus' Pittsburgh Council, where he helped organize a dance and card party honoring the Notre Dame and Carnegie Tech football players in 1924, a card and dance party aboard the steamer Homer Smith on the Monongahela in 1925, and the dancing for the council's twenty-eighth anniversary in 1928.

Syracuse Ties and Later Years

The family kept close ties to Syracuse. In the summer of 1932 they spent five weeks there with Alice's mother, and in 1934 they went to a Farrell family reunion at Three Rivers. In January 1945, with his son Ambrose home from the war, Ambrose went back for his sister Mary's wedding, and in 1950 Ambrose, Alice, and their sons returned for the wedding of Alice's niece and a visit with her sister Florence on Fitch Street.

Ambrose had kidney trouble in his last years and spent eight months ill with lung cancer. He died at home in Mount Lebanon on April 21, 1957, at sixty-three, and was brought home to Syracuse for burial at St. Agnes Cemetery.