52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks – Week 10: Strong Women: Anna M. (Sullivan) Hork

I am working on this year-long prompt, hosted by Amy Johnson Crow. I will write each week in one of my two blogs, either Mam-ma’s Southern Family or at My Trails Into the Past. I’m looking forward to writing about my children’s ancestors in new and exciting ways.

One of the strongest women I know in my family was my grandmother, Anne Marie Sullivan Hork.

When Anna was twenty years old, her mother died.[1]  She was attending the Montana State Normal College in Dillon, Montana, where she played basketball, volleyball, and sang in the Glee Club.[2]  She then spent her time teaching.

Anna is the front row on the far left (in sepia tone)

I don't know how she met her future husband, William Cyril Hork, but they married 22 November 1922 in Butte, Silver Bow County, Montana.[3]  They then moved to southern California.  William Cyril had been stationed in Long Beach during World War I and probably found the climate better than in Montana.[4]

They had four children.  However, Cyril held few jobs, drank a lot, and it was best that Anna (now known as Anne) leave him.  After a few years in San Bernardino county, she moved to Napa in 1940 to be with her late sister's husband, Vir Quigley.[5]  She worked in his restaurant, and then attended San Francisco State College in order to obtain a California teaching credential.[6]  She later taught in one-room schoolhouse along the Silverado Trail in Napa county.

This old schoolhouse is a private home now

The fact that she endured an unhappy marriage and was able to leave the marriage and move with her children showed great courage. She never divorced, as she was a very devout Catholic. She was a very loving person, to us grandkids and probably to all of her former students. She was the “fun” grandmother, who brought gifts, and both read to us and taught wonderful songs. She definitely turned her lemons in life into lemonade.

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[1] State of Montana Bureau of Vital Statistics, Death Certificate, Anne Gleeson Sullivan (certificate #55-281), 1912.

[2] The Chinook, Montana State Normal College, (Dillon, Montana: The Senior Class, 1914), pp. 34, 83, 89, 93, 108, 11, & 131.

[3] Silver Bow County, Montana, Marriage Record, William C. Hork to Anna M. Sullivan, record A-14551, 30 Nov 1922.

[4] Certification of Military Service, National Personnel Records Center, St. Louis, Missouri, Cyril W. Hork, no. 173-64-55, 1918-1919.

[5] Interviews with daughters, Virginia Gertridge and June Stewart, and nephew, John Quigley, Hork Family Papers, privately held by Lisa Gorrell [address for private use], California.

[6] San Francisco State College, diploma, Degree of Bachelor of Education, Anne Sullivan Hork,1952.

Copyright © 2018 by Lisa Suzanne Gorrell, My Trails into the Past. All Rights Reserved.