Talk:Caroline Brady (philologist)

Personal life section
Largely removed from article due to concerns over use of primary sources:

Caroline Agnes Brady was born in October 1905 in China. Her father was Col. David John Brady, an engineer, and her mother Annie Lucy Maude Brady (née Short). The two were married on 10 May 1904 in Shanghai. On 16 May 1910 the three arrived in San Pedro, California on the steamer Bessie Dollar, and by 1911 they were living in Cranbrook, British Columbia. A sister, Frances Barbara Brady (or Frances Maud Brady), was born on 10 April 1915. In 1917 the family returned to the United States, settling in Los Angeles.

David Brady died in late January, 1953, and his wife, now going as Maud Short Brady, on 23 November 1959. Caroline Brady was referred to as "the late Caroline Brady" in 1983. Frances Brady, by then Frances Brady Ackley, died on 14 December 1993; her obituary mentioned only cousins among her survivors.

Question
, where is your reference in the article for the statement that "Brady began work at Harvard around 1952"? Gatoclass (talk) 18:42, 25 February 2018 (UTC)


 * Good point, I've changed it to "around 1953". In September 1953 she is listed at "19 Garden St., Apt. 38, Cambridge 38, Mass." in the PMLA members list, and a 1955 review of one of her works stated that "Miss Brady has now been working for some time at Harvard". The 1952–53 Talbot fellowship, which followed an apparent gap in teaching positions (assuming she didn't do anything after leaving the Oregon community college in 1949) may imply that she took up her Harvard position in 1952, but there's nothing that definitively says so. --Usernameunique (talk) 19:00, 25 February 2018 (UTC)


 * The reason I asked is because reference 41 states that she was working at the University of California, but I just noticed that this source is from the 1930s yet is being used to support the statement that she was living in California in the 1950s, so this looks like an erroneous cite to me. Gatoclass (talk) 19:15, 25 February 2018 (UTC)


 * , references 40 and 41 work together to support the statement that "in 1952 [Brady] was also listed as living at her parents' California address." 40, from 1952, lists Brady as living at "132 S. Laurel Ave., Los Angeles 48, California". 41, from 1935, is used to show that this address was her parents address ("Miss Brady was accompanied by her sister, Miss Frances M. Brady. They are the daughters of Col. and Mrs. D. J. Brady, of 132 South Laurel avenue, Los Angeles."). --Usernameunique (talk) 19:20, 25 February 2018 (UTC)


 * Okay, thanks for the clarification. I am going to have to continue revamping this article tomorrow, as converting the references has turned out to be a more difficult job than I anticipated. Gatoclass (talk) 19:34, 25 February 2018 (UTC)


 * Thanks for your work, . I think I've finished formatting the references to the extent practical. --Usernameunique (talk) 20:05, 25 February 2018 (UTC)

Date of death
That this article asserts she died "before 1984" is surprising. One would expect anyone who died in the early 1980s to have at least the year, if not the day, recorded of her death; doctors are usually in attendance to provide a time & cause of death. Is there a reason this article states that, such as she was discovered dead weeks, if not months, afterwards? Or is this just an interim workaround until the date of her death can be found? -- llywrch (talk) 04:17, 23 March 2018 (UTC)
 * , an obituary would clear up many of the uncertainties in this article, but so far I haven't been able to find one—what she did after 1955 is also missing. As far as her year of death goes, it's probably 1980. The journal issue in which her 1983 article was published terms her "the late Caroline Brady", while a signed offprint of her 1979 article (offprint may have been issued in 1980) indicates that she was alive in 1979 and maybe 1980. Ancestry.com lists a "Caroline Brady" (3 Oct 1905 – November 1980) in the Social Security Death Index, and a "Caroline A Brady" (abt 1905 – 5 November 1980) in the Washington State Death Index; that's probably her. --Usernameunique (talk) 12:46, 23 March 2018 (UTC)
 * So it's an interim workaround. I understand. But I am a little surprised her death information isn't easily found. I have seen a number of one-page death notices for academics published in periodicals they were frequently published in, so maybe one she published in contains one. (BTW, I did a quick search thru JSTOR between 1979-1983 & found nothing.) Maybe AAUW has the info; I'd cite their database as a source before Ancestry.com, & I remember a dispute some time back about using SS records as a source. (Sigh.) Hope my hints help in finding this bit of info. Good luck. -- llywrch (talk) 17:57, 23 March 2018 (UTC)
 * AAUW is a good thought,, just sent them an email. Washington papers seems to be severely underrepresented on newspapers.com and newspaperarchive.com (don't see anything on ProQuest either), so an obituary may be somewhere that I just haven't found. I think what hinders this is that she seems to have dropped of the face of the academic earth for a good quarter-century, before two articles at the end of her life. It's quite possible she changed careers, and in doing so lost touch with the contacts and organizations that would have noted her death (e.g., her membership in the Modern Language Association of America lapsed in the 1950s). Primary sources were certainly controversial during the DYK nomination, and a published source would be ideal. --Usernameunique (talk) 20:00, 23 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Or she was married & raised a family. Or a family member contracted an illness & needed a care giver. Things like this derail a woman's career to a greater degree than a man's. -- llywrch (talk) 20:03, 23 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Fair point, ; the salient point is that after 1955 or so she started doing something else. I've looked for marriage records to no avail, and the fact that her sister's 1993 obituary only mentions cousins among survivors Brady didn't have children. --Usernameunique (talk) 20:13, 23 March 2018 (UTC)
 * "The salient point is that after 1955 or so she started doing something else." -- also a fair point. IMHO, this is something that should be mentioned in the article -- that she appears to have left academia for some reason. (I can think of several: sexism, burnout, unpleasantness in her personal life, etc.) Exactly what was the reason... well, I think we can agree this might not be revealed soon. Although it definitely makes her more intriguing. (BTW, I thought of another possible angle to pursue: would the alumni organization at UCLA/UC Berkeley have any info about her?) It's beginning to look as if there is a story here that could be sold for publication. If you're interested in writing for pay, that is. -- llywrch (talk) 20:32, 23 March 2018 (UTC)
 * , I agree with you, although words to that effect were removed from the article during the DYK nomination due to concerns (not mine) that they would constitute original research. I'm glad you find her intriguing. There are a lot of aspects about her life that call out for more detail: her birth in China (to a military father—couldn't find his records, but may not have searched hard enough), her parents Shanghai wedding, her childhood abroad, her different academic positions, especially her months at a random community college and subsequent resignation due to "ill health" (as convincing an excuse as "personal reasons"), her many moves, and her ultimate disappearance and reappearance. You're almost certainly right that she dealt with sexism, and Kemp Malone's two(!) cutting reviews of her dissertation may be one such indication. Good suggestions re: UCLA/Berkeley. Sent both of them emails. Suppose I should do the same with Penn/Harvard, maybe their libraries could be of help. --Usernameunique (talk) 21:31, 23 March 2018 (UTC)


 * On the gap in her teaching and publishing, don't discount the death years of her parents. Her father died in 1953, and her mother in 1959. She may well have been caring for her mother during the later 50s. Whatever the story though, it doesn't belong in this article unless some secondary source writes about her life and mentions what she did in the gap. Yngvadottir (talk) 16:26, 19 April 2018 (UTC)
 * &, just found mention of Brady's birth date, 3 October 1905, in a 1941 edition of Who's Who in California. Though it doesn't help establish what she did after 1955, it does mean that she is almost certainly the person who died in Bellevue, Washington, on 5 November 1980. --Usernameunique (talk) 06:02, 14 March 2019 (UTC)
 * Yes, that seems likely. Someone in the area could search physical copies of the local paper in the library—likely just the Seattle Times?—for a death notice. But without something published and actually tying the death date to her career, or giving her full name, we can't state that as her death date in the article. Yngvadottir (talk) 15:36, 14 March 2019 (UTC)
 * Good idea, just asked here. --Usernameunique (talk) 16:15, 14 March 2019 (UTC)

Dissertation
Noting since it doesn't seem to have been looked for before that the University of California has her dissertation: http://oskicat.berkeley.edu/record=b15406130~S53. That establishes it as having been accepted in September 1935. (She may well have attended a graduation ceremony in 1936.) It also attests to the von Egmont part of her name. It is possible that she had already married by that time, but it would be unusual in the US for her to adopt her husband's name as the first part of a double-barreled surname, and a double-barreled surname would be unusual in that period in any case. It's more likely that was her full birth name; universities have generally required the entire legal name on a dissertation. She was probably eager to drop the German-sounding bit in the late '30s and after. Yngvadottir (talk) 16:14, 19 April 2018 (UTC)


 * Good idea,, just sent them an email asking them to check; I'll try to ILL it if they can't. I think "Brady, Caroline Agnes von Egmont, 1905-" may just be copied from WorldCat (the 1943 publication of her dissertation is listed similarly, but from looking at a physical copy, her name is actually given as "Caroline Agnes Brady"), but you're right that the actual dissertation is more likely to have her full name than most sources.


 * Thanks for prompting the discussion again. The AAUW got back to me a few weeks ago. Brady's fellowship file includes only a photograph (just asked if it's possible to use it), but the person who responded also dug up a 1952 mention of her receiving the fellowship. I'll add the source shortly, but it has some good information: that Brady was born in Tientsin, China, discussion about her proposed research, that her "place of study" was Harvard and Johns Hopkins, and that the fellowship was for $2,200. It also mentions that she was the "synonym editor" for "C. L. Barnhart, Inc., Bronxville, New York." On this information, perhaps we can surmise that she left academia for private practice after her "ill health" resignation from the community college (she's still listed until the early 1950s by the PMLA as at Penn, but that might not be correct), and that the fellowship was a way of trying to go back. It also puts her Harvard work in a different light; her time there seems likely to have been part of her fellowship, and not necessarily a teaching post. --Usernameunique (talk) 18:50, 19 April 2018 (UTC)


 * , that was a great suggestion. Berkeley just sent a scan of the dissertation cover page, and the Programme of the Final Examination for the Degree of Doctor oh Philosophy. The cover page says "Caroline Agnes Brady", with an edit mark between "Agnes" and "Brady"; the program, however, says "Caroline Agnes von Egmont Brady". Per email the spine also says "C. A. V. E. Brady". I had thought the "von Egmont" was an error introduced in the Proceedings of the Modern Language Association, but this makes it look as if you may well be right that she dropped the German-sounding part of her name. --Usernameunique (talk) 19:56, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

Von Egmont
I've just seen this after yesterday's TFA. I was intrigued by the "Von Egmont" and did some digging. I think I know where it came from. In the 1930 census, the family are listed thus:


 * Brady, David J., head, 49, born in Ohio; father born in New York; mother born in Virginia; occupation Statician[?] in electrical industry; veteran
 * ____, Maud S., wife, 47, born in Canada (English); father born in England; mother born in Holland
 * ____, Carol A., daughter, 22, born in China; father born in Ohio; mother born in Canada
 * ____, Frances M., daughter, 15, born in Canada; father born in Ohio; mother born in Canada

Note that Maud's mother's birthplace is given as Holland, which probably explains the name. I found out that an early Canadian, Anthony Van Egmond, settled in Ontario in 1828 and purchased a large tract of land there; he was at least married and I might have suggested he is an ancestor of Maud's if she hadn't said that her mother was born in Holland. The situation is a bit confused though. In the 1920 census and in the 1940 census, David's place of birth is listed as Texas; in 1920, his father is said to be from Ireland and his mother from Texas, not New York and Virginia as in 1940. Maud gives her place of birth as Quebec in Canada, her father's as England and her mother's as Ontario (not Holland). Unfortunately, I am not familiar enough with Canadian records or newspapers to delve further into this, but I wouldn't be surprised if her mother was Canadian but of Dutch ancestry and probably connected to this Antony Van Egmond/Von Egmont (I've seen both spellings used, e.g. George Bryce, A short history of the Canadian people, 1914, p. 357). Cheers, —Noswall59 (talk) 11:58, 28 November 2019 (UTC).
 * I have just found a marriage certificate for Annie Lucy Maude Short, aged 27, and David John Brady, engineer aged 33, on 10 May 1904 at Shanghai, China. His father was James Brady, a merchant, and hers the late John Short, lawyer. This is from Ancestry.com, Foreign Registers of British Subjects (original records at The National Archives, Kew: RG 33/14, p. 6, no. 130). Further, I have now found the following marriage announcement: "D. J. Brady, general manager of the Chinese Engineering & Mining Co., Chin-Wang-Tao, China, to A. L. Maude, dau. of the late John Short of Granby, formerly deputy prothonotary at Sherbrooke. Marriage. 10 June 1904" in a Google Preview of the Sherbrooke Daily Record. (Elaine Wilson and Terry Wilson, Sherbrooke Daily Record: Vital Statistics for the Period January 1, 1902 to December 31, 1906, North Hatley Historical Society, 1998, p. 192.)
 * Searching for more about Maude's ancestry, I note that Maud Short Brady's California Death Index entry on Ancestry states that she was born on 12 March 1877 in Canada (mother's maiden name Green) and died on 23 November 1959 in Los Angeles. There is a Baptismal Record from Sherbrooke Presbytarian Church (1890) which states that "Annie Lucy Maude, daughter of John Short, deputy-prothonotary, Sherbrooke, and Annie Caroline, his wife, was born on the twelfth day of March [1877]" and baptised on 19 September 1890. In the same parish registers, two other records occur both from 1874: "Annie Caroline, daughter of Henry S. Green and Susannah his wife, born the thirteenth day of December [1854] in Egmondville Co of Huron, Ont., and was baptised by me ... [22 September 1874]"; then on 3 November, "John Short ... of Sherbrooke ... and Annie Green of the same place ... married by me" [margin note: "marriage John Short + Annie C. Green". The signatures were John Short Jun., Annie Caroline Green, H. S. Green and another I cannot make out. Egmondville had been founded in 1845 by Constant Van Egmond, son of Anthony Van Egmond linked above. The next eldest brother of Maude, Herbert Andrew, died in Ontario in 1946 and his death certificate (also on Ancestry) states that he was born in 1878 to John Short, born in Sherbrooke, and Annie Green, born in Seaforth. Further evidence to tie them all together is offered by the Canadian census of 1901, which lists the family as follows:
 * Short, John, head, born 29 Aug 1830; aged 70; of English ancestry
 * ____, Anna C., wife, 13 Dec 185_[last number slightly obscured]; aged 47; of German ancestry
 * ____, Anna L. M., daughter, 12 March 1877
 * ____, Herbert A., son, 17 Dec. 1878, etc.
 * I would still like to probe Annie Caroline Green's ancestry further, but even if there is not a genealogical connexion to the Van Egmond family, there is clearly a geographical one. Cheers, —Noswall59 (talk) 13:44, 28 November 2019 (UTC).
 * And finally, after all that, I have found the proof. Loyalist Lineages of Canada, vol. 1, p. 498, recounts the descendents of one Andrew Helmer (1804–1878), who married in 1830 Marie Susanna Caroline Van Egmond (born in Holland, 1810; d. 1861); their daughter Susanna Caroline (1833–1916) married Henry Schlicter Greene in 1833 in Easthope, Ontario, and they had several children included Annie Caroline Greene (b. 1854, Seaforth, Ontario), who in 1873 married John Short (1828–1904) of Granby, among whose children was Annie Lucy Maude (b. 12 March 1877). All of that is in the source. It doesn't bring Maud's details down to the next generation (that I can see) but it is clear that she is, as outlined above, the mother of Caroline Agnes Von Egmont Brady. Cheers, —Noswall59 (talk) 10:19, 29 November 2019 (UTC).
 * The Encyclopedia of American biography: New series, Volume 16 (1943) states that Marie "Mary" Van Egmond was indeed the daughter of the settler Anthony Van Egmond. —Noswall59 (talk) 10:24, 29 November 2019 (UTC).

It also looks like Caroline's grandfather John Short (1828–1904) was the son of the judge John Short (1811–1887) and his wife Georgianna Brock Carter; if so then the elder John was the brother of Edward Short, a noted judge, and uncle of John Short, the politician; certainly, the birth date given in the Loyalist Lineages book matches the baptismal record for one John Short, b. 9 Aug 1828 in Three Rivers, son of John Short (student of law) and his wife Georgiana. Unfortunately, I cannot find a reliable source to connect them and the Sherbrooke Daily Record is not available online for the period around John Jr's death on 27 March 1904. I guess if anyone ever reads this and gets a chance to look at the hard copy in the Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec, it might reveal an obituary notice and further information to connect John Jr with that family. —Noswall59 (talk) 12:05, 30 November 2019 (UTC).
 * This is extremely cool, . It's nice to see that someone else has found the enigmatic parts of Brady's life as intriguing as I have—and has dug deep in search of answers! I've sketched together a family tree below, although it doesn't yet incorporate your last post. It's interesting that "Von Egmond" appears to have died out with Caroline Brady's great-great-grandmother, before reappearing with Brady. I'd be curious to know whether she was in fact born with the name, or adopted it at some point (perhaps around 1934). previously suggested that Brady may have wished to shed the German-sounding bit from her name in the 1930s, but perhaps the opposite was in fact true. --Usernameunique (talk) 18:37, 30 November 2019 (UTC)

Brady
Thanks, I'm glad my research helped. I enjoy finding answers to those pesky problems and I'm glad I could help here. I've done a bit of digging into the Brady family. I've found death certificates for both James and Agnes Brady; they are summarised below:
 * Agnes Brady, housewife, born 12 June 1844 in Ireland, d. 24 May 1922 at Long Beach, CA, husband of James Brady; father's name unknown Walker; mother's name unknown. Had lived in Long Beach for 1 year. Informant F. B. Wildon.
 * James Brady, retired, b. 12 Sept 1841 in Ireland, d. 16 Dec. 1924 at Long Beach, CA; father's name James Brady, mother's name unknown. Had lived at Long Beach for 3 years. Informant F. B. Wilder.

As you can see, neither of them knew their parents. Aside from the fact that they may never have told their own children about their Irish family, a further clue as to why might be seen in this excerpt from the 1900 census:
 * Resident at 1902 Guadalupe St, Austin, Texas:
 * Brady, James, head, b. Sept 1842 in Ireland; married 36 years; father and mother from Ireland; merchant, grocer; year migrated, 1848;
 * __, Agnes, wife, b. June 1844 in England; married 36 years; father b in England; mother born in Ireland; migrated 1848
 * __, Will P., son, Febb 1876 Texas, teacher
 * __, John W., son, Apr 1870 Texas, lawyer
 * __, Helen, dau, Jan 1875 Texas, teacher
 * __, Agnes, dau, Jul 1876 Texas, teacher

Note that the year of migration was 1848, during the height of the Great Famine in Ireland. I've searched ancestry for immigration records and there are several James Bradys arriving from Ireland as children in 1848 and 1849. Perhaps the big anomaly is Agnes, because this census states (as does the 1880 census) that she was born in England like her father, not Ireland as her death record and later censuses state. This could be an error, or it could be that family lore had it that she was Irish like James, when in fact she wasn't. I've done a search of English births in 1844 and there were four plausible options (assuming (a) that she was born in England; (b) that 1844 is the correct year; and (c) that her parents did register her birth). The English birth indexes only list the quarter in which the registration took place, not the date of birth (you have to order the certificate at £10+p&p to see the full details), but I did also find baptism records on Ancestry which seem to match three of the four potential births:
 * QQ2 1844 in Ulverson, Lancashire – likely the Agnes Walker baptised on 5 May 1844 at Haverthwaite
 * Q2 1844 in Chesterfield, Derbyshire – quite probably the Agnes Walker baptised at Staveley, Derbyshire, on 8 May 1844
 * Q2 1844 in Mansfield, Nottinghamshire – this could be her
 * Q3 1844 in Liverpool, Lancashire – likely the Agnes Walker born on 29 July and bapt 3 November at Mount Pleasant Presbytarian Church, Liverpool

If those three assumptions I made above are correct and the birthdate she used later was accurate, then it is possible that the Agnes Walker born in 1844 in Mansfield, Nottinghamshire, is her. I can't find a matching person in England's 1851 census. Having said all of this, I'm not sure that it'd add anything to the articles on her children anyway, and even if the certificate showed a matching date of birth it doesn't necessarily prove that it's the same person (though I'd say it's very likely). I've also put together some more info on the children based on marriage and death records:
 * David John Brady, b. 4 April 1868 in Texas (mother's maiden name Walker), d. 27 Jan 1953 in Los Angeles (Ancestry: California Death Indexes)
 * John W. Brady, retired, b. 6 April 1869 in Texas (son of James Brady b in Ireland, and Agnes ????, b in Ireland); d. 17 Dec 1943 at Seton Hospital, Austin; m. Nellie C. Brady. (Ancestry: Texas Death Certificates, no. 58222)
 * Helen Brady White, b. 25 January 1872 in Austin, Texas; d. 6 November 1944 in Hotel Dieu, El Paso (last residence 1413 Montana St, El Paso; resident in the city for 44 years). Widowed. Father = James Brady, b in Ireland; mother: Agnes Walker, b in Ireland. Informant Don J. White Jr. (Ancestry: Texas Death Certificates)
 * Helen G. Brady m. Daniel T. White in Travis, Texas, on 30 Apr 1901. (Texas Marriage Index, FHL film no. 978168; see also, Travis County Marriage Records, Book Series 9-12.)
 * Daniel Trundell White, merchandise broker (self-employed), b. 17 August 1863 in Lowden County, Maryland (son of William White, b. Lowden County, and Virginia Marlow, b. Virginia), d. 20 Feb. 1941 in 2733 Louisville, El Paso, Texas (having lived there for 40 years). (Texas Death Certificates, no. 7610)
 * Agnes Elizabeth Brady, b 13 July 1875 at Austin, dau of James and Agnes (née Walker) Brady. Attended Austin High School. Attained BLit from University of Texas, 1901. (University of Texas Record, vol. 4, 1902, p. 35 – snippet on Google Books)
 * Agnes Brady Wilder, retired school teacher, born Texas, 13 July 1874; died 8 January 1968 in El Paso (lived there for 14 years; last address 408 Cincinnati Ave); father James Brady; mother Agnes Walker (State of Texas, Certificate of Death, state file no. 10458)
 * Agnes Brady Wilder, died aged 93, on 8 Jan 1963. Widow of Fred. B. Wilder (m. 1906). First came to El Paso in 1903, taught at Central and San Jacinto Schools. Graduate of University of Texas at Austin. Moved to Arizona and California, returning to El Paso in 1953. Had two daus Mrs J. F. Nelan, of El Paso, and Mrs Jane W. Platt, of El Paso. Nephew Dan T. White. ("Mrs. Wilder Services Scheduled", El Paso Herald-Post, 9 Jan. 1968, p. 18.)
 * William Paul Brady, b. 12 Feb 1876 in Austin, Texas; son of James Brady and Agnes Walker. (Social Security Applications and Claims, SSN 553166065.)

FA???
As many know I'm highly critical of the FA process. This article provides another case in point. How in the world did it pass FA with statements cited to the Social Security Death Index and so on? EEng 02:51, 18 February 2023 (UTC)