An Irish-Catholic Tale

Before she became Scary Nana with Black Cats, she was a simple girl with a very Irish-Catholic name: Mary Agnes. Born in 1861, it wasn't until she was 40 and owned her own dress shop that she met and married the handsome Clarence Turner R., also known as CT, her junior by 7 years. The following photograph was taken around 1900. They eventually had two children, but they'll come up later in the tale.


With a name like Mary Agnes, it's not a stretch to understand that she was raised as a devout Catholic. Devout. When CT married her, I don't think he had any idea how important it was to her that he become just as devout as she was.

From an email by Aunt Mary Ann:

Mary Agnes was an old-school strict and pious Catholic, and Clarence Turner R. was never baptized, though he came from a Protestant background, probably Presbyterian. Let's just say he was something of a heathen by Nana's standards.

He was born in Grass Valley, CA and roamed about California and other parts of the country looking for adventure and business opportunities. He owned the lots of land that are now the Miracle Mile section of Wilshire Blvd. (Los Angeles) back in the early 20's, when they were mostly bean fields, but he sold the land and put the money in the stock market, which then proceeded to crash in 1929. He had a cigar store in the historic Bradbury building in L.A., complete with wooden Indian out in front, and he got into the business of selling, renting, and repairing slot machines in the thirties and forties, along with other enterprises. We used to have some old art deco-style slots in our garage while I was growing up. He was all excited in the early forties about a new substance called "plastic."

He was a native of California, but Mary Agnes was from Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, where, as an unmarried woman of forty, C.T. first met her. He married her and brought her to L.A. We always wondered what a swashbuckling adventurer like him saw in a sour puss, pious spinster, seven years his senior. Maybe he thought she had money. Maybe he loved her. We never found out, but we know he couldn't take living with her on a steady basis, which is why he took the gig as sheriff of Tonopah for a few years while the family stayed in L.A. He'd come home for periods of time, and then he'd be off on business somewhere.

Nana was determined to convert him to the Catholic faith, so she would secretly sew scapulars and various religious medals into his clothing, hoping it would do the trick, (sound a little witchy? like spells and voodoo) and of course she made novenas and prayed the rosary and went to daily mass, always praying for his conversion. Well, he actually asked for a priest and baptism on his deathbed in Virginia. You'd think she'd be insanely happy that he was getting into heaven, even if by the back door, but she was actually ticked off that he got away with living as he pleased for all those years and made it in at the last minute on a kind of hail Mary pass.


C.T.R. as sheriff in Tonopah, Nevada, around 1911. Photographic evidence that Himself has relatives who actually sat a horse.



Mary Agnes and CT raised their children in Venice, California, but CT didn't spend a lot of time at home with his family. While in Nevada, he became a member of the Goldfield Elks Lodge. It was at an Elks Lodge in Bedford, Virgina that CT breathed his last at the age of 82.

It's stories like these that make me so thankful when Himself walks through our door every day!



As stated, CT and Mary Agnes had two children. Their daughter, Helen, would become just as devout as her mother. Here's a picture of mother and daughter taken in the 1920's. Helen married quiet Joe H., but they never had children. That didn't mean she wouldn't be busy in the lives of those who did have children, though. She, along with her mother, adored her brother, and Helen kept a careful eye on her nieces and nephews. When two of them had emergency surgeries, Helen would quietly pay the hospital bills. She attended their birthdays, first communions, graduations, and special days. Aunt Mary Ann recalls that while a week with Helen did not include trips to the beach or other fun places, it did include visits to her favorite churches and charities.

After Helen married Joe in 1942, Mary Agnes moved in with them and remained there ten years until her death at age 91. Aunt Mary Ann remembers her only as "an elderly woman" who seemed to be a "solemnly pious lady in chronically frail health and with little appetite."

CT and Mary Agnes's only son was given the moniker Chester Cornelius R. Here's a photo of him, also in the 1920's, taken when he was driving a bus in California.
When he wasn't driving a bus or being adored by his mother and sister, he liked to pal around with a guy named Matt U.

*Please note: All information is taken from conversations over the years. Information is also taken from emails and background biographies from Aunt Mary Ann. Any errors are mine alone! :-)