James J. Joyce, Son of a Ship Caulker, Timothy Joyce

Josephine Bernadette's father, James J. Joyce, was born in Savannah, Georgia on October 31, 1857 and died on April 25, 1916 (according to his grave marker). He was the son of Timothy Joyce and Mary Keenan, both born in Ireland.

In 1860, James Joyce was 3 years old. The census of that year (posted at the Census Records page), reported that James' father, Timothy, worked as a ship caulker. According to an interesting educational website by the Maryland Historical Society,

Caulking is the process by which wooden ships are made watertight. To seal the cracks between the ship's wooden planks, caulkers use a caulking iron and mallet to stuff them with oakum (pieces of old rope) soaked in pitch (a dark, sticky substance like tar). When the wood gets wet, it swells, narrowing the cracks between the planks. The oakum also swells, ensuring that absolutely no water can leak through the cracks. Caulking requires a great degree of skill and experience to be done properly. 

Below is an image of workers caulking a ship.

Taken from Alamy.com

Below is a photo of a tool box and caulker's kit from Massachusetts whaling ship days. You can see the caulkers (depicted in the above image) sitting on similar boxes while doing their work. If you're interested in learning about the trade in more detail, go to the Whaling Museum website; there's a full description there.

Taken from New Bedford Whaling Museum site

 Leather seat with wood sides and bottom. Contains one caulking mallet, five caulking irons, one seam raker made from a race knife, one instrument (seam raker), and one spare mallet handle.

This was an important trade in the shipbuilding industry, as you can imagine. The Maryland history website talks about racial tensions that were developing in the early 1800s in Baltimore between black and white ship caulkers. According to the website, white caulkers resented the power black caulkers (some of whom were enslaved) seemed to possess. One result of this tension was that shipbuilders in the city began to hire more white caulkers, particularly immigrants. Perhaps Savannah was going through some of the same changes that resulted in immigrants such as Timothy Joyce, James Joyce's father, taking up the caulking trade.

The Irish Ancestors: Josephine Bernadette Joyce

Since today is St. Patrick's Day, I thought it would be fitting to continue research into the Sternberg family tree with their Irish lineage, starting with Eric's great-grandmother, Josephine Bernadette Joyce, the wife of William R. Ozburn Jr.

Josephine Bernadette was born December 22, 1900. According to the Savannah Vital Records, she was delivered by Dr. W.W. Owens, who at the time was on the staff of the Savannah Hospital-Huntington, now known as the Candler Hospital. Below is a photo of the building as it looked in 1900:

taken from the Georgia State Archives

Josephine (sometimes called Bernadette) was the daughter of James J. Joyce and Ellen Cecilia Murphy, both born in Savannah. She was the youngest of eight children born to the couple; three died in childhood.

In 1910, according to the census of that year, Josephine was 9 years old. Her father was 51 years old and the owner of a meat market in Savannah. Also listed in the family were her mother, Ellen, and siblings Timothy Keenan, Katherine, (Joseph) Reed, and Marie. Timothy (age 23) was working at his father's store as a clerk that year. Also living with them is a boarder, Mary McGraw. Below is a segment of the census showing the family (highlighted in green). Bernadette (Josephine) is highlighted in yellow (spelled Burnette here). They lived at 297 Abercorn St in Savannah. That residence is gone now, but it looks to be a very nice neighborhood, and I'm guessing it was then, too.

You can also see from this census record showing the family, starting on line 68, that Ellen (Ella here) Joyce is 46, has been married 27 years and has given birth to seven children, with five still living. That's actually a mistake; in 1900 she also was shown as having had seven children, before Josephine was born, with four living. So in 1910 she would have had eight total children, with five living. Those three children are buried in the family plot at the Catholic (Cathedral) Cemetery in Savannah. Below is a photo, taken from Find-a-Grave, of the grave stone that shows their names and dates of birth and death.

You can see that the two girls died within a few weeks of each other. I found the record of their burial and learned that the baby, Eleanor, died of convulsions and the six-year old, Angela, died of diphtheria. I can only imagine how devastating that must have been for Josephine's family, especially only six years after losing their first born, James G., at four years old. At the end of 1894, the couple had only two of their five children left. A rough decade for that family, to be sure!