Mary Alice Farrell

1890s–1900s

Born 3 March 1892 in Syracuse, New York, to Anthony James Farrell and Anna Hughes Rafferty, and grew up on Tallman Street. Studied music with a neighborhood teacher.

1910s

Worked as a stenographer for the Syracuse Lighting Company and the Central City Trust Company. Married Ambrose Patrick Dee on 12 October 1915; son Ambrose Jr. was born in 1918.

1920s–1930s

Daughter Mary Alice was born in 1921, and the family moved to Pittsburgh, settling in Mount Lebanon. Son Bob was born in 1931. Active in the Catholic Daughters of America and, from 1930, the St. Joseph's Hospital Ladies' Guild.

1940s–1950s

Elected to the Hospital Guild's board in 1944. Widowed in 1957.

1960s–1970s

Moved to Portland, Oregon, near her daughter's family, and died there on 27 September 1975.

A Syracuse Girlhood

Mary Alice Farrell, known as Alice, was born on March 3, 1892, in Syracuse, New York, the daughter of Anthony James Farrell and Anna Hughes Rafferty. She grew up at 235 Tallman Street with her younger sister Helen; she also had a sister named Florence. In July 1908 she played in a recital at the home of her music teacher, Miss Rose Sheils, a few doors down Tallman Street. By 1912 the family had moved to 106 Fitch Street, where Florence would still be living almost forty years later.

Alice completed two years of college and went to work as a stenographer, first for the Syracuse Lighting Company, the city's electric company, from 1911 to 1913, and then for the Central City Trust Company, a bank, until her marriage. The society columns caught her at the Alpha Phi sorority's May dance in 1912, giving a party for a visiting friend that summer, and at an Alpha Sigma dance at Colvin Hall in April 1913, where Ambrose Dee was also on the guest list.

Marriage and Pittsburgh

On October 12, 1915, Alice married Ambrose Patrick Dee at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Syracuse, and they honeymooned for a month in Philadelphia and Atlantic City. Their son Ambrose Jr. was born in 1918. By the fall of 1921 Ambrose had become a candle salesman based in Pittsburgh, though their daughter, Mary Alice, was born in Syracuse that December. From about 1924 the family's home was 45 Florence Avenue in Mount Lebanon, outside Pittsburgh, and their younger son, Bob, was born in 1931.

Alice became a busy organizer of Catholic charity events. In 1929, as a member of the South Hills court of the Catholic Daughters of America, she chaired a card party at McCreery's dining room with tables of bridge, 500, euchre, and Old Maid. From 1930 until at least 1953 she belonged to the Ladies' Guild of St. Joseph's Hospital, helping to run its lawn party with dancing, bingo, and Japanese lanterns, a 1931 luncheon for the hospital's bread line and building fund, card games at its rooftop garden party, and a dance in the nurses' home. In 1944 she was elected to the Guild's board.

Syracuse Summers and Later Years

Alice never lost her ties to Syracuse. In the summer of 1932 she took the family back for five weeks with her mother, and in 1934 they joined a Farrell family reunion at Three Rivers. In 1950 she and Ambrose and their sons went back for her niece Bettie Clarke's wedding and a visit with Florence, and she visited Florence again in 1953.

Ambrose died in 1957. About ten years later Alice moved to Portland, Oregon, where her daughter, Mary Alice Leineweber, was raising her family. She died in Portland on September 27, 1975, at eighty-three, and was buried, like Ambrose, at St. Agnes Cemetery in Syracuse.