01 / Two lives come together
A life together, after everything that came before.
In the 1940s, Frank Conlin and Regina McDermott were young Philadelphians living through an extraordinary decade. Their parents had known the city's factories, neighborhoods, churches and shifting fortunes. Frank and Regina would build their own future from that world.
Frank was born in Philadelphia in 1923. His 1942 draft card preserves a few particulars of his young adulthood: a home on East Cambria Street, a job with the Link-Belt Company, and his mother, Mame, named as the person who would know his whereabouts. Before he was a soldier, he was a young man with a job, a mother, and an address.
He entered Army service in December 1942. His surviving Pennsylvania veteran's application records overseas service and separation in November 1945. An obituary later associated him with the 27th Infantry Division; the available service records do not establish which operations he personally took part in. The war belongs in his story, but it does not explain the whole of his life.
Regina Delores McDermott, born November 18, 1924, grew up in another Philadelphia household. A 1930 census records her as Jean, age five; her family has confirmed that Jean was Regina. A 1943 Little Flower High School yearbook lists her among its students. Later she spent much of her professional life at Muhlenberg College—first in the Registrar's Office and subsequently supporting the dean's office. Her March 2008 obituary documents thirty-one years of service, ending with retirement in 1993; her exact start date is not independently confirmed.
By 1950 the couple appear together in a Philadelphia census household. Frank was working as a production supervisor. In the years that followed, his work included Air Products & Chemicals and real estate; Regina's college career and community commitments formed a substantial life of her own. Their marriage brought together stories that had begun long before either was born.
02 / The lives before the marriage
Two young people. Three addresses.
A school yearbook, a draft registration, and a census: three ordinary papers that bring Frank and Regina's Philadelphia into focus.
1943 / 221 East Willard Street
A face, a name, a neighborhood.
Before her later career at Muhlenberg College, Regina McDermott appeared in The Garland, Little Flower High School's 1943 yearbook. Her graduation portrait gives us a face. Beside her name, the page gives us a street: 221 East Willard Street.
Below the address, just two more words: St. Hugh. The St. Hugh of Cluny parish had been founded in 1922 at Howard and Tioga Streets. Her father Samuel's 1942 registration also gives the Willard Street address. We have a documented family location and parish—not a record of her private experience there.
1942 / 250 East Cambria Street
Before the uniform.
Across Philadelphia, eighteen-year-old Frank Conlin listed 250 East Cambria Street as his residence. His mother, Mame, was the person he named as someone who would always know where to find him.
He worked for Link-Belt on Hunting Park Avenue. Period business sources place its Philadelphia operation at 2045 West Hunting Park Avenue. The company built machinery for power transmission and moving materials. His card does not tell us what he did there.
Later that year Frank entered the Army. This ordinary registration preserves his life just before military service: a job, an address, and a person to contact.
The Smithsonian preserves Link-Belt equipment photographs from 1915–1967 ↗; an earlier factory illustration is catalogued at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania ↗. Neither documents Frank's particular job.
1950 / 6713 Souder Street
Then, the same address.
By April 1950, the census places Frank and Regina together at 6713 Souder Street. Frank is listed as a production supervisor. Regina's name is written immediately below his.
Two names that had appeared on different papers, at different addresses, now appear in the same household. There was an entire life still to come.
02 / The Philadelphia Conlins
Mary and John’s household.
In September 1906, Mary Anna Leonard gave birth to Edwin Russell Conlin in Philadelphia. His birth certificate named his father, John Joseph, and recorded John’s occupation as policeman. Below their particulars, two small entries reached further into Mary’s life: Edwin was her sixth child, and five of her children were living.
One child is present here only through that difference. The certificate gives no name, age or cause of death. Alongside the new child’s name, the form preserves a family loss.
In 1910, John and Mary were living with Francis, Raymond, Loretta, John and Edwin. John was still a police officer. Francis, eighteen, had begun a working life of his own as a machinist in the instrument trade.
The children who appear beside Francis have their own places in the record, even where little more survives of their later years. Meet Raymond, Loretta, John and Edwin in the family collection ↗
John served in a department closely tied to Philadelphia’s municipal politics. That year, a streetcar dispute widened into a general strike, with police involved in violent confrontations. His own district and assignments remain unknown; no family record places him at a strike incident.
Francis’s work belonged to another part of the same city. Philadelphia’s machine shops ranged from large manufacturers to small specialist businesses, where machinists used lathes, drills and milling machines to shape precise parts. His census entry names the instrument trade, but not his employer or the instruments he helped make.
Philadelphia · Two workshops in 1905
03 / Other roads to the same city
Not one journey. Several.
Regina’s earlier family included a metalworker and a teenage shirtwaist operator. In Mamie Wurst’s household, brothers and sisters worked in several of the city’s trades. These lives would meet through Frank and Regina, but each had its own beginning.
McDermott & Curran.
Regina's father Samuel McDermott came from a Philadelphia household associated with Thomas McDermott, a metalworker whose 1912 death certificate described his trade as annealer. It named Thomas's parents as Daniel McDermott and Ann Fisher, both reported born in Ireland; these were informant-reported details. Read his original 1912 certificate excerpt ↗ The document also names Agnes McDermott as informant but does not give her relationship to Thomas. Separate family materials use Agnes Stewart and Annie, and not all the name and age evidence has been reconciled.
A Philadelphia birth index records Samuel McDermott's birth on 27 December 1889 and identifies his parents as Thos. and Agnes McDermott. In the 1900 census, Thomas F. and Agnes lived with children including Thomas, Sallie, Frances, Samuel and Josephine. Thomas worked as an annealer at the U.S. Mint. In 1910, a Philadelphia household with Agnes, Samuel and Josephine appears again, but its head is written as John McDermott, a roller at the U.S. Mint. The shared children, an exactly ten-year progression in reported marriage duration and the same highly specific workplace strongly suggest the same family despite the recorded change of given name. Sallie's 1924 certificate names her parents as Thomas McDermott and Agnes Stewart. Her brother Thomas F. McDermott, the boy born in February 1884 in the 1900 census, has a 1964 death certificate giving February 27, 1884 as his birthday and the very same parents. He married Mary Cantwell. The younger Thomas should not be confused with the father whose 1912 certificate reports the trade of annealer. The siblings' independent certificates make Agnes Stewart's surname far more secure. Meet their extended family ↗
That connection reaches into the heart of the city's history. Founded in Philadelphia in 1792, the United States Mint had become both a national institution and a place of exacting, skilled labor. Annealers heated and cooled metal so it could be worked; rollers brought metal strips to the necessary thickness before coins were cut and struck. In 1901, between the two household censuses, the Mint opened its monumental third building on Spring Garden Street, replacing its older Chestnut Street facility and introducing electrically powered production equipment. The men whose names appear in the McDermott census records belonged to those trades, although the evidence does not establish continuous service or show either man in the surviving photographs.
The Philadelphia Mint · c. 1901–1910
Regina's mother Elizabeth Curran appears as Lizzie in the earlier household record. By 1910, she was a teenage shirtwaist operator—a glimpse of a young woman's working life, without evidence of a particular employer. In 1900 she lived with younger sisters Margaret and Mary; the 1910 census also named Samuel and Catherine among the children. Her parents Samuel Joseph Curran and Margaret Catherine Funk appear together on a Philadelphia marriage-license application dated 12 August 1892. Samuel, a fish packer, and Margaret were living at 214 Ledger Place; the application documents their intended marriage, while the 1900 and 1910 censuses record their married household. The precise ceremony date remains to be corroborated. Explore their family profiles ↗
By 1920 the two family lines had become one household. In Philadelphia's 34th Ward, Samuel and Elizabeth McDermott lived with their young children Robert and Agnes, while Elizabeth’s father Samuel Curran and her younger brother Samuel Curran were recorded at the same address. The elder Curran worked as a newspaper delivery clerk, his seventeen-year-old namesake as a railroad messenger, and Samuel McDermott as a pipe fitter in a shipyard. Elizabeth’s garment-work years, her marriage and the birth of her children thus belonged to a continuing family circle, not a complete break with her childhood home. The record establishes co-residence, but not why the generations chose to live together.
Another McDermott address brings the family's geography into focus. Samuel's sister Sallie A. Martin had lived at 217 East Willard Street, according to her 1924 death certificate; her husband James gave the same address. In 1930 Samuel and Elizabeth were at number 221. We cannot tell whether the siblings ever lived there at the same time, but the records put both family households within four house numbers of each other.
By 1930 Samuel and Elizabeth had made a more lasting home at 221 East Willard Street. The census recorded their house as owned, and Samuel's occupation had changed from shipyard pipe fitter to street railway conductor. The family spans two census sheets: Robert and Agnes appear with their parents on 22A, while James, Jean, John and baby Mary continue on 22B. Five-year-old Jean is a strong match for Regina, named with these same parents and siblings in 1940. By 1940 the street address held a larger family: Samuel and Elizabeth, children Robert, Anne, James, Regina, John and Mary, and an elderly uncle named John Lyons. The family reported that this was also its home in 1935. Two older children were already working outside it—Robert as a photographer for an electrical company and Anne as a city file clerk. That makes the address a record of daily lives crossing generations, not just a location in a yearbook.
The Philadelphia trolleys were another great part of the working city. In 1940 the census called Samuel a trolley conductor; his 1942 draft registration named the employer P.T.C., the Philadelphia Transportation Company, which succeeded Philadelphia Rapid Transit in 1940. He was still a trolley car conductor when the 1950 census found Samuel and Elizabeth at 221 with daughter Mary, then working in an insurance office. By that same census, Regina had her own household with Frank Conlin on Souder Street. One Philadelphia house had anchored the years between Regina's childhood and her marriage. Follow Regina home to Willard Street ↗
Another record brings Margaret Curran into Regina's own Philadelphia geography. When she died on 18 March 1944, her usual address was recorded as 221 East Willard Street, the house also associated with Regina and her parents. We cannot say when Margaret moved there, but her final address gives the Curran and McDermott generations a shared place in the city. Regina's Willard Street home ↗
Elsewhere in Philadelphia, the 1900 and 1910 censuses record another household headed by an older Samuel Curran and his wife Rebecca, both Irish-born. Their grown children included Sarah, Catherine (also written Katherine), Samuel and William, with a granddaughter, Edith Ashmead, present in 1900. But the younger Samuel in this household was recorded as widowed, whereas Elizabeth Curran's father was living with his wife Maggie and their children in 1900. A shared name cannot close that difference. The proposed parentage linking these households remains unproved.
Further back in Elizabeth's maternal family, an 1880 Philadelphia census brings three generations into view. Catherine Curley, a widowed Irish-born woman of fifty-eight, lived with her daughter Mary Funk, twenty-seven, and granddaughter Maggie Funk, nine. The 1944 death certificate of Margaret Curran, Elizabeth's mother, gives a November 1870 birth and names Henry Funk and Mary Curley as her parents. The matching dates, names and kinship make the young Maggie a compelling identification for the later Margaret Curran. Through that connection, Catherine Curley was likely Regina's great-great-grandmother—another Irish-born Philadelphia ancestor whose life is visible through the family she kept around her.
Wurst & Sperle.
Thirteen-year-old Mamie Wurst lived with her widowed mother, Barbara, and her siblings in 1910. Her brother William, twenty-four, was listed as head of the household and worked at a gas works. Annie, nineteen, cut material in a lace-curtain mill. Tillie, seventeen, was a folder in a textile mill, and sixteen-year-old John made trunks. Emma, eleven, was the youngest listed.
Annie’s and Tillie’s occupations stand alongside their brothers’ on the census page. Paid work was spread across the household. Barbara, forty-six, and the two younger girls had no occupation entered; the form leaves the work within their home largely unrecorded.
The family collection now follows William, Annie, Tillie, John and Emma as individuals ↗, alongside Emma’s husband Charles Patrick. Later records offer possible continuations for Annie and William, but their identities across those years are not presented as certain.
Barbara’s German birthplace appears in both this census and her 1942 death certificate. Her maiden surname survives in another document: when her daughter Emma Patrick died in 1946, the certificate named her parents as William Wurst and Barbara Sperle. Barbara’s certificate ↗ and Emma’s parentage entry ↗ preserve different parts of her history. Neither identifies her German town or names her parents.
Barbara's funeral notice also places her in a local community: it names St. Michael's German Lutheran Church, gives a former address at 2023 East Sergeant Street, and records burial at Greenmount Cemetery. The Library of Congress documents an originally German-speaking St. Michael's congregation in Kensington ↗. That is a strong local research lead, but we have not matched Barbara to its original membership records, nor identified her German birthplace more precisely.
April 12, 1919
Francis and Mamie marry
Nine years later, Mamie married Francis Conlin, entered as Frank J. Conlin in a Philadelphia church register. Their names share a line across two pages beneath German headings. With Barbara’s birthplace, the register offers a glimpse of the German-American institutions that formed part of the city’s life.
They married in the spring after Philadelphia’s devastating autumn 1918 influenza epidemic and the end of the war.
Their son Frank was born in Philadelphia in 1923. When he filled out his draft card at eighteen, he named his mother, Mame, as the person who would always know where to reach him.
The lives that reached us
The years that followed.
Frank’s working life continued after the Army: production supervision, Air Products & Chemicals, and real estate. Regina spent thirty-one years at Muhlenberg College, from the Registrar's Office to service as secretary to the dean, retiring in 1993. In Allentown, she belonged to St. Catharine of Siena parish from 1969, serving as a lector and helping with community fundraising.
The young people on the draft card and in the school portrait had many years ahead of them. Their separate biographies follow those years, giving work, family and later adulthood room beside the events that first bring them into the historical record.
Continue Frank’s story ↗ · Continue Regina’s story ↗
Return to Meghan's familyBehind the article
The records behind the lives.
This is a family-history narrative assembled from historical records. The reproduced documents concern deceased family members and are drawn from the separate Meghan family research collection. Period images are records, not illustrations of imagined experiences. The archive holds the source images and notes; unconnected research is identified separately.
Explore the source notes
- Frank and Regina: 1942 Frank Conlin draft registration; Pennsylvania World War II service compensation application; 1943 The Garland, Little Flower High School; 1950 U.S. census, Philadelphia; original obituary “Regina D. Conlin,” The Morning Call, 23 March 2008, p. 20 (published record ↗), confirming her parents Samuel and Elizabeth (Curran) McDermott and her Muhlenberg retirement in 1993 after 31 years; other family obituaries. Her obituary's reported age of 82 differs from the separately held November 18, 1924 family birth date; neither is resolved by this source. Specific military campaigns not attributed without unit records.
- Their Philadelphia: Regina D. McDermott's 1943 Garland yearbook portrait and entry (221 E. Willard Street; St. Hugh); Samuel McDermott's 1942 registration; Frank Conlin's 1942 draft registration (250 E. Cambria Street; Link-Belt); 1950 census (6713 Souder Street). External setting: St. Hugh parish history, Smithsonian Link-Belt archive, and 1900 Link-Belt factory illustration holding. No historical photograph is claimed to show their individual home.
- John, Mary and Francis: Edwin Russell Conlin’s 1906 Philadelphia birth certificate, file 160302; 1910 Philadelphia census, Ward 28, ED 646, sheet 1B, lines 79–85. The deceased child is not identified. John’s police assignments and Francis’s employer are unknown.
- 1919 marriage: Philadelphia German-language church register, Frank J. Conlin and Mamie Wurst, April 12, 1919, entry 14, pages 242–243. The parish has not been securely identified; do not equate it with Barbara’s funeral church. The register establishes neither household language nor personal experience of wartime hostility or influenza.
- Curran–Funk–Curley: The original 1880 Philadelphia census (private image
4244453-00790.jpg, ED read as 115, printed p. 393, first three lines of the household) records Catherine Curley (58, widow, born Ireland), daughter Mary Funk (27) and granddaughter Maggie Funk (9). Margaret Curran's original 18 March 1944 Pennsylvania death certificate (private image42342_2421406271_0975-03821.jpg) names her parents as Henry Funk and Mary Curley, date of birth 1 November 1870, late husband Samuel Curran, and usual residence 221 E. Willard Street. These sources make Maggie Funk = Margaret Curran a strongly supported identification, not a record-proven identity through an intervening marriage or baptism. The death record gives Margaret's address at death, not duration of residence. 1900 Philadelphia Ward 6, ED 108, sheet 4B, lines 96–100 (private scan4115180_00460.jpg) shows young Lizzie Curran (birth reported June 1894), her parents Samuel and Maggie and sisters Margaret and Mary. 1910 Philadelphia Ward 34, ED 849, sheet 17A, lines 34–40 (private scan4449968_00542.jpg) records seventeen years of marriage, six children born/five living, and Elizabeth's shirtwaist occupation. Their original Philadelphia marriage-license application is dated 12 August 1892; the precise ceremony date remains unconfirmed. - McDermott–Curran: FamilySearch city-birth index VBBP-2V7 gives Samuel's birth in Philadelphia on 27 December 1889, parents Thos. and Agnes McDermott. This indexed entry was reviewed in user-provided screenshots; an original register image was unavailable and it does not supply Agnes's maiden name. 1900 Philadelphia Ward 6, ED 110 (Thomas F. McDermott, U.S. Mint annealer) and 1910 Philadelphia Ward 6, ED 80 (John McDermott, U.S. Mint roller), with wife Agnes and children Samuel/Josephine in both records. The two enumerations report 24 and 34 years married respectively, strongly connecting the households. The name conflict is unresolved. Sallie Martin's 1924 certificate (private
41381_2421406259_0596-00715.jpg) names Thomas McDermott and Agnes Stewart as parents, as does son Thomas F. McDermott's 1964 certificate (private46628_520306900_0038-00367.jpg), which records a February 27, 1884 birth; father Thomas's 1912 certificate names the trade of annealer but has conflicting age information. The candidate 1870 Sarah Stewart (born England), daughter Agnes (12), is not attached: the 1880 candidate wife Agnes's mother was reportedly born Ireland. The third Philadelphia Mint opened in 1901; historical process details are from U.S. Mint Historic Coin Production. The exterior postcard is reproduced by the U.S. Department of the Treasury; the circa-1910 coining-room postcard is in the Free Library of Philadelphia. The library also holds a separate circa-1901 Mint exterior postcard. Elizabeth Curran's teenage shirtwaist occupation appears in a separate 1910 census. The 1920 Philadelphia census (Ward 34, ED 1201, enumerated February 28, lines 80–85; image 4385040_00069.jpg in the private family archive) records the shared Samuel and Elizabeth McDermott / Samuel Curran household in Philadelphia’s 34th Ward and the men’s distinct occupations. The record identifies the younger Samuel as brother-in-law and the elder Samuel as father-in-law to the household head; it does not establish the reasons for co-residence or home ownership. Sallie A. Martin's 1924 death record documents 217 E. Willard Street as former residence and informant James Martin's address, whereas Samuel's 1930 family lived at 221 E. Willard; the six-year gap prevents a claim of simultaneous occupancy. The 1930 census of Philadelphia Ward 34, ED 51-900, sheet 22A, lines 47–50 (private image4639454_00896.jpg) shows Samuel, Elizabeth, Robert and Agnes at house 221, with Samuel a conductor for a street railway; its continued sheet 22B is verified in the following source note. The original 1930 household continuation (Ward 34 ED 51-900, sheet 22B, lines 51–54; private4639454_00897.jpg, following sheet 22A4639454_00896.jpg) confirms children James, Jean, John and Mary L. at house 221, completing the family. Jean's identification with Regina rests on the 1940 parents/siblings, not an original given-name match. The 1940 census (ED 51-1054, sheet 2B, lines 41–49, private imageM-T0627-03721-00075.jpg) identifies Regina and other children, the 1935 same-house residence, and Samuel's trolley work. His 1942 draft names 221 E. Willard and employer P.T.C., while her 1943 yearbook repeats the address. The 1950 census (private image43290879-Pennsylvania-179654-0021.jpg, lines 17–19) still has Samuel, Elizabeth and Mary at house 221, with Samuel a trolley car conductor. The older 1930 description of “Jean” McDermott is from a separately cited ED and cannot yet be confirmed as the continuation of this specific 22A. Historic PRT/PTC chronology: Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia. - Wurst–Sperle correction: 1910 Philadelphia census, Ward 19, ED 311, sheet 3A, lines 11–17. William is 24, single, and head; Barbara is his widowed mother, 46. Earlier readings of William as her husband, aged 44 or 54, were mistaken. Annie is 19, Tillie 17, John 16, Mamie 13 and Emma 11. John’s trade is trunk making, not brush making; Tillie’s industry is described broadly here as textiles because the precise mill wording remains uncertain.
- Barbara and the older William: Barbara’s 1942 certificate reports German birth but no parents’ names or maiden surname. Emma Patrick’s 1946 certificate reports parents William Wurst and Barbara Sperle, with William born in Philadelphia. Anna Foell’s 1936 certificate reports William Wurst and Barbara Spoerl, but calls William Germany-born. These informant-reported details remain in conflict. The younger William’s 1910 census row cannot settle his father’s birthplace or age. The imported Württemberg parentage is withheld from the public tree pending an independent bridge; no unrelated identities have been merged.
- Historical setting: Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia: Philadelphia Police Department, General Strike of 1910, Machining and Machinists, and World War I; University of Pennsylvania Archives, Penn and the 1918 Influenza Epidemic; German Society of Pennsylvania, Horner Library. These describe the city and its institutions, not individual conduct or experiences.
Unconnected research
William Conlin of County Monaghan, the Boston family of William Conlan and Catherine Manning, and the Camden Conlin households have not been connected to Philadelphia policeman John Joseph Conlin. Earlier research combined two distinct John-and-Mary households. These records remain available for investigation, outside the verified ancestral narrative.
- William Conlin’s naturalization petition: County Monaghan and a reported Boston arrival around 1850; relationship to Frank unverified.
- William Conlan and Catherine Manning’s 1862 Boston marriage and John Conlin’s 1865 Boston birth: not a demonstrated bridge to the Philadelphia policeman. The Manning household in the 1850 Dorchester census and later Camden records are retained in the research collection.
- Jimmy Conlin’s historical profile: family relationship unverified.
Mary Leonard’s earlier family
The 1870 Newark household of Thomas and Margaret Leonard remains a candidate. No record yet connects their daughter Mary A. to the adult Mary Anna Leonard here, and reported parental birthplaces conflict. Any candidate links in the tree remain explicitly provisional.
Small discrepancies in spellings and dates are kept in the private ledger. The historical photos and records are not linked to potentially living descendants; the Melick and Meghan research databases remain separate.