My informant also pointed out that in the Mexican newspaper story I quoted yesterday, the full sense does not come out in the Google translation of "The birth of Law in Torreón was circumstantial". He says,
Usual translation of circunstancial is unplanned, accidental, unintentional. Google is good in Spanish but misses nuances at times. Wonder how the reporter found that out? . . . I'm sure the polo club was not impressed.Another visitor noted,
Interesting that Law was born 5 months after his parents were wed. Must have been quite a scandal. I don't think many 5-month-old preemies survived in '31. Is there a church of record for Law's parents' marriage? . . . Why so many discrepancies? We wonder in politics who is sponsoring a candidate or an issue. It almost begs the question with Law? Who 'made' him & why?Indeed. Well, the discrepancies, and the questions, just keep on coming! Via Ancestry.com, I learned that Bernard Aloysius's father, Bernard Francis's paternal grandfather, was John P Law (1848-1914), himself the son of Irish immigrants, which by the way contradicts the statement in the official biography that Law was of Scots descent (the Stubblefields were Washington State pioneer stock).
John P Law was a conductor on the Lackawanna Railroad throughout his career. It would have been steady work at the peak of the rail industry, but with dangerous conditions and long hours, and it would not have created a family fortune. John P had many children from two wives (the first one passed away; Bernard Aloysius was from the second). By the time of John P's death, the family had gravitated to the Upper West Side of Manhattan. At that time, Bernard Aloysius, in his early twenties, was working as a store clerk. He had completed four years of high school, but had no college.
On April 24, 1914, he enlisted in the New York State National Guard as an enlisted man. By 1916, he was serving with General Pershing in the Mexican punitive expedition on the border. This lasted from March 14, 1916 to February 7, 1917. President Wilson ordered a full division of the New York Guard for service in this campaign. As the link indicates, because the end of the expedition coincided with the start of US involvement in World War I, little attention has been paid to it, but my informant, something of an intelligence buff, tells me that many details remain classified, apparently because the expedition itself nearly led to war with Mexico, and the circumstances remain extremely sensitive.
Bernard Aloysius Law was honorably discharged from the New York Guard on March 2, 1917 to begin flight training in the Air Corps as a commissioned officer in Coronado, CA. On April 6, 1917, the US declared war on Germany, and Bernard Aloysius went to France and served as a pilot. He was discharged with the rank of captain on March 21, 1919. However, Cardinal Law refers to his father as being "in and out of the Air [Corps]" over the subsequent decades, the Mexican newspaper story refers to him as a major in the 1930s, and via Ancestry.com records, he retired in 1950 as a colonel. We have only sketchy information on what he was doing during that time.
We must conclude that Bernard Aloysius made very, very good contacts while in service with the Mexican punitive expedition who were able to further his subsequent career. Beyond that, we know very little, except that he appears to have been doing work that may have been connected with political developments in Mexico in the 1920s and 1930s.
By sometime in 1919, though, Bernard Aloysius found himself in Houston, TX, where he married a Louise Elizabeth Lindsey (1898-1982). Louise had already had one previous marriage, and had a daughter from that marriage. The ex-husband was still living. Divorce at that time was still a major scandal. We don't know how long the marrriage to Louise Lindsey lasted, but it had presumably ended in divorce before Bernard Aloysius's second marriage to Helen Stubblefield.
Naturally, assuming Bernard Aloysius Law was Catholic (his father was buried in a Catholic cemetery, so this is probably the case), we're beginning to see a complex canonical situation, to which we don't have all the necessary information. If the marriage to Louise Lindsey was civil, in addition to her divorce, the Church's position would presumably be that this marriage was simply a cohabitation, although Bernard Aloysius would not be eligible for communion as long as it lasted.
Since he apparently later divorced Louise Lindsey, he would be eligible to marry Helen Stubblefield, although since she was not Catholic, we must presume the rushed El Paso wedding was also civil. Had Bernard Aloysius wished to marry Helen in a Presbyterian (or other Protestant) ceremony, he would have been required to get the local bishop's approval. Considering the circumstances, he probably didn't.
What we do know is that Bernard Aloysius passed away in 1955. Public statements from Cardinal Law variously indicate that Helen converted to Catholicism "while I was at Harvard" (which would have been before 1953) or "in 1955", which strongly suggests that she and her son were aware of the canonical situation, and she could not have become Catholic until after the death of her husband. However, my informant says that Helen did not in fact convert until Cardinal Law was in Boston, another of many discrepancies in the record.
The final piece in today's puzzle is the family's residence in the late 1930s and early 1940s. Bernard Aloysius's 1942 draft card, available through Ancestry.com, gives his address as 601 West 110th St (also known as Cathedral Parkway) in Manhattan. Information in the 1940 census indicates the family had lived there at least since 1935. This corresponds with the Mexican newspaper story that the Law family left Torreón for New York at some point in the 1930s. However, it appears that the family lived at that address for at least seven years, which contradicts Law's frequent public statements that the family moved often, and he had little memory of where they lived.
601 West 110th St in Manhattan appears to be the same building it was in the 1930s, an upscale apartment-condo, part of which is now used as a student residence for Barnard College. It's in the neighborhood of Columbia University and the Episcopalian cathedral. Bernard Aloysius Law's occupation in the 1940 census is given as "aviator". As "class of worker", he gave "working on own account" (which today might correspond to "contractor"). He worked 60 hours per week, 52 weeks in the past year. His income is listed as "0". Under "income other source" is listed as "yes".
Where was the future cardinal in school during this time, which would have been between ages 5 and 12? Did he have any relation at all to the Catholic Church? We don't know. Was he in fact eating exclusively from Wedgewood china? What is the real timeline of his family's places of residence? We don't know. In fact, we know very little, and probably as we learn more, we know less and less, except that Law's public statements about himself, and his official bio, seem less and less reliable.
I'll try again to get to the Harvard puzzles tomorrow.
