John Joseph Keating & Florence Ottinger are my great-great grandparents. Their daughter, Margaret Keating, married Edward Joseph McHugh. Their son, Edward John McHugh, married Charlotte Reba Hudson. Edward & Charlotte are my paternal grandparents.

I’ve chosen them as my next series because of a collection of articles I located about their marriage and life together. No stories have ever been passed down about John and Florence, at least on my side of the family. I was surprised when conducting a newspaper search to find articles with headlines describing John as a wife beater and to learn he’d been arrested several times for it.  He was notorious in the papers for this behavior – but no word of this was ever passed down in my family, at least not to me.

I decided to do my best to take apart the records I’ve found of them and attempt a deep dive into their lives to see what kind of picture I can put together.

Table of Contents

1. John Joseph Keating – Early Life (1868-1890)
   1. The Tragedy of Ella Keating aka Alice Somers (1863-1883)
2. Florence Ottinger – Early Life (1874-1890)
3. Early Marriage (1891-1900)
4. Florence & the Goat (1901-1905)
5. Separation & Abuse (1906-1910)
6. Quiet Years (1911-1919)
7. The Line Street Years (1920-1927)
8. John Dies in Car Accident (1928)
9. Florence’s Final Years (1929-1940)