1.0The Sourcehttps://the-source.netrich600338<blockquote class="wp-embedded-content" data-secret="UHphEX1pk5"><a href="https://the-source.net/though-she-be-but-little-joan-babcock-is-fierce-and-irish-too/">‘Though she be but little’ – Joan Babcock is fierce – and Irish, too</a></blockquote><iframe sandbox="allow-scripts" security="restricted" src="https://the-source.net/though-she-be-but-little-joan-babcock-is-fierce-and-irish-too/embed/#?secret=UHphEX1pk5" width="600" height="338" title="“‘Though she be but little’ – Joan Babcock is fierce – and Irish, too” — The Source" data-secret="UHphEX1pk5" frameborder="0" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" scrolling="no" class="wp-embedded-content"></iframe><script type="text/javascript"> /*! This file is auto-generated */ !function(c,l){"use strict";var e=!1,o=!1;if(l.querySelector)if(c.addEventListener)e=!0;if(c.wp=c.wp||{},c.wp.receiveEmbedMessage);else if(c.wp.receiveEmbedMessage=function(e){var t=e.data;if(!t);else if(!(t.secret||t.message||t.value));else if(/[^a-zA-Z0-9]/.test(t.secret));else{for(var r,s,a,i=l.querySelectorAll('iframe[data-secret="'+t.secret+'"]'),n=l.querySelectorAll('blockquote[data-secret="'+t.secret+'"]'),o=0;o<n.length;o++)n[o].style.display="none";for(o=0;o<i.length;o++)if(r=i[o],e.source!==r.contentWindow);else{if(r.removeAttribute("style"),"height"===t.message){if(1e3<(s=parseInt(t.value,10)))s=1e3;else if(~~s<200)s=200;r.height=s}if("link"===t.message)if(s=l.createElement("a"),a=l.createElement("a"),s.href=r.getAttribute("src"),a.href=t.value,a.host===s.host)if(l.activeElement===r)c.top.location.href=t.value}}},e)c.addEventListener("message",c.wp.receiveEmbedMessage,!1),l.addEventListener("DOMContentLoaded",t,!1),c.addEventListener("load",t,!1);function t(){if(o);else{o=!0;for(var e,t,r,s=-1!==navigator.appVersion.indexOf("MSIE 10"),a=!!navigator.userAgent.match(/Trident.*rv:11\./),i=l.querySelectorAll("iframe.wp-embedded-content"),n=0;n<i.length;n++){if(!(r=(t=i[n]).getAttribute("data-secret")))r=Math.random().toString(36).substr(2,10),t.src+="#?secret="+r,t.setAttribute("data-secret",r);if(s||a)(e=t.cloneNode(!0)).removeAttribute("security"),t.parentNode.replaceChild(e,t);t.contentWindow.postMessage({message:"ready",secret:r},"*")}}}}(window,document); </script> http://the-source.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/wedding-day-2-14-1964-1.jpg288285By Lynn Colburn At 81, Joan Donnelly Babcock is as spunky as they come, a large part from her Irish heritage and upbringing. She proudly states that she is 100% Irish. Born in 1940 in Manhattan on her mother’s 43rd birthday, Oct. 20, her family moved to Harlem during the second World War and then moved to the South Bronx when she was just five years old. There she lived in a cold water flat until age 16. (Modern building codes make cold water flats illegal, but until the mid-twentieth century, they were common in large cities including Chicago and New York.) “The flats had no hot water and no heat,” says Babcock. “When we finally did get heat and hot water, I had to open the windows because I was so used to the cold.” An Irish family’s history Babcock has colorful Irish ancestry. Her great-great-grandfather was an Irish bare-knuckle champion, Dan Donnelly, who she says was one of 17 children, “My father and his sister, Roseanne, talked a lot about him when I was younger at our kitchen table.” Born in Dublin in the late 1780s, Dan Donnelly was nearly 6-foot tall with a long reach. This was in the early days of prize fights when there were no gloves and almost no rules — more like WWE’s WrestleMania without any scripts. Donnelly, who had a reputation as a successful scrapper in his native Dublin, only fought in three official matches, but reigned as the heavyweight champion of his time, and was a hero to the Irish. Donnelly died of pneumonia at only 31 years old at Donnelly’s Public House, one of the many taverns he owned over the years. A plaque still commemorates the site of his death and a gray obelisk surrounded by an iron fence marks the site of his last fight. Yet, death wasn’t the end of his story. A few nights after he was buried, grave robbers stole Donnelly’s body and sold it to a surgeon who used cadavers for study. Donnelly’s fans tracked the body down and it was returned to its resting place minus one appendage. For 200 plus years, Donnelly’s severed right arm that was kept by the surgeon had been preserved (it was eventually bronzed) and had been displayed in pubs and traveling exhibitions all over the world. Since 2006, the arm came under private ownership; however, the owners still allow it to be displayed periodically. Babcock says the talk was not always so chatty about other parts of her family history, especially about her father, James Joseph Donnelly. Her father was born in Dublin, Ireland, in July 1899, one of 13 children. “There were times when I was little,” she explains, “I would walk into the room and my father and his sister would stop talking. I found out why much later. It turned out that my father had to leave Ireland because of the Black and Tans (British soldiers). They killed two of his friends, they bayonetted them and threw them in the pig pen, and they lay there for three days.” In Irish history, that was the time of the Irish Volunteers, which was formed around 1912 to fight against British rule in Ireland with the aim of establishing an independent Irish Republic. All organizations calling themselves the Irish Republican Army (IRA), as well as the Irish Defense Forces (IDF), have their origins in the Irish Volunteers. Babcock notes, “My dad knew Michael Collins who was also in the Irish Volunteers and later the IRA.” Her dad, too, was an Irish Volunteer. “The soldiers also had his name,” she says, “and came looking for him at his parents’ house, looking under the beds with the bayonets in hand. He barely escaped out the window and was on the run for the rest of his life and could never return to Ireland.” Her father, who had only been about 19 at the time, escaped and made his way across the Irish Sea to a dock in Liverpool, England, where he stayed long enough to sign onboard a ship to work hauling coal into the boiler room. “He worked on different ships and got very musclebound from that,” says Babcock. “He eventually arrived in Nova Scotia, then worked on another ship to Manhattan … [It was around 1918,] but he jumped ship and swam because he was afraid of being caught, sent back and killed.” Years later, her father’s sister, Roseanne, who had moved to the U.S. and had attained her citizenship, told him he should get his. “I called up the FBI in Chicago just to satisfy Dad,” says Babcock. “And they told me to forget about it, that he is a citizen because all those records that were on Ellis Island were burnt during the 1920s, so there was no proof of who was a citizen and who wasn’t, and he wouldn’t be sent back.” Meanwhile, Babcock’s mother, Mary Donaghy, who had been born in County Armagh in Northern Ireland, had come to the U.S. with her family and grown up in Manhattan since she was 5 years old. As a young woman, Babcock’s mother worked for Edward “Daddy” Browning, who was a colorful real estate tycoon in Manhattan. She also worked at the iconic Waldorf Astoria in New York. Recalls Babcock, “My mom knew many people in New York, and she also lived with her aunt in New Jersey next door to Thomas Edison, whose son drank a lot and would end up sleeping on their couch.” It was the 1920s, and she says her mother knew the gangster Dutch Schultz and some other interesting characters of the day in New York. It was also in Manhattan that James Joseph Donnelly and Mary Donaghy met — and in 1921, the couple married at the Church of St. Agnes’s Church on 43rd Street. A Tough Young Irish American Woman Life was tough in the Bronx, so that’s how young Joan Donnelly grew up. This 5-foot dynamo began smoking when she was...