Super great research Mike and Porter. It can lead to many shave related theories explanations if needed.
I always thought Curran was Spanish or Italian .maurice curran WAS born in palmer, mass.: his parents, (lawrence and mary curran)
were both born in ireland and came over during the famine-
mary died when maurice was three, and lawrence and maurice went BACK to ireland,
where maurice went to school at christian brothers academy -
then maurice returned to the US (i dont know whether lawrence curran did or not)
this is when curran met joyce, basically as children from ireland in a new american industrial city
(SOURCE: HISTORY OF ESSEX COUNTY, VOLUMES 1&2)
It seems that all that obscure personal info may have had a purpose. They did posses valuable property and cash. It seems that it was some kind of misleading that was meant to be on purpose. Too many lost and misleading bread crumbs.Back when we were talking about the Brandeis confirmation hearings, this passage from Edward McClennan's testimony piqued my interest (emphasis mine):
There were 65,000 shares of stock in this company. Mr. Gillette held perhaps 16,000 shares, and Mr. Holloway something like 10,000 shares; and then there were other scattering stockholders. Mr. Joyce and Mr. Curran, who were, for all purposes, as has been said, one personthey were partners; they were brothers, they lived together, and they had a common purse, and everything of one belonged to the other. So Joyce means Curran & Joyce, really, as I use the term. Joyce held upward of 24,000 shares of the stock. Upwards of 8,000 shares of the stock were solely held by a group of gentlemen in Baltimore, who were represented by one individual board of directors not made a party to these suits.
I had already read in McKibben that JJJ had been a brewer, which was how he'd come to meet KCG while he was selling for Crown Cork and Seal. But what I turned up that I hadn't seen mentioned before was that the company he was a part of was the Curran & Joyce Bottling Company of Lawrence, MA, partnered with none other than Maurice J. Curran.
View attachment 461615
They started that company in 1877 when they bought the existing bottling business of William Heald. I then went and did a little more digging into public records and came up with this, even more interesting nugget from the 1900 Federal Census:
View attachment 461621
From that we can see that both Curran's and Joyce's families were living at 250 North Main Street in Andover, MA, with a staff of at least 5 people. Then, I pulled up the 1910 Federal Census record and found this:
View attachment 461644
Who do we see there on line #78 as now also living with the Curran and Joyce families? None other than Frank Fahey.
View attachment 461650
Strangely, it lists him as being the brother-in-law of Joyce, who was entered as the head of the household, when really he's JJJ's son-in-law, having married Genevieve Joyce, JJJ's daughter (not sister). Interestingly it also lists Maurice (incorrectly as "Morris" -- this particular census taker was more than a bit lackadaisical it would seem) as JJJ's brother-in-law, and Curran's wife, Abigail, as his sister-in-law. So I went digging even further and found that Joyce and Curran had married two sisters.
To be continued...
Looks like marketing was bending the truth a bit 100 years ago too. According to this ad, "You can't doubt that you shall be able to shave yourself with the Gillette. It's not something you have to learn - you just do it!" Lol, not quite that easy... you DO have to learn it.