Nell Mary Fahey was born in Grafton, Taylor County, West Virginia on November 27, 1886. She was the daughter of Michael J. Fahey and Mary Joyce, found in Piedmont, Mineral County, West Virginia at the time of the 1900 census.

1900 Census, Piedmont District, Mineral County, West Virginia
Michael Fahey, Head, 47, b Sep 1852, married 17 yrs, Moulder Iron, b Ire., Immig. 1869
Mary, Wife, 44, b Jul 1855, 6 children/5 living, b WV, parents b Ire.
Nellie, Dau., 15, b Nov 1884, At school, b WV
Stella, Dau., 11, b Aug 1888, At school, b WV
Joyce, Son, 10, b Mar 1889, At school, b WV
Eugene, Son, 8, b Feb 1892, At school, b WV
Joseph, Son, 6, b Feb 1894, b WV

1910 Census, Harmony Twp., Ambridge Borough, Beaver County, Pa
122 Maplewood Ave.
Michael J. Fahey, Head, 58, married x1 for 27 yrs., Moulder Bridge Shop, b Ire., Immig 1847[error]
Mary, Wife, 54, 6 children/5 living, b WV, parents b Ire.
Joyce, Son, 20, Machinist Bridge Shop, b WV
Stella, Dau, 22, b WV
Eugene, Son, 18, Laborer Bridge Shop, b WV
Joseph, Son, 16, Clerk Bridge Shop, b WV

Nell M. Fahey was a student nurse at St. Francis Hospital in 1910. She is found in that census, age 24, born in West Virginia.

Nell served in the Army Nurse Corps in Europe during World War I. A parade was held in Pittsburgh for the nurses when they returned from war. Nell was named as a "heroine" in this excerpt from a news article:

In Nell's application for WWI Veterans Service and Compensation, she stated that her legal residence at the time she entered service was Bridgeville, Allegheny County, Pa. (She may have been employed at Mercy Hospital at the time, per Service Card). She was inducted at Pittsburgh on July 21, 1917. She served overseas in the Nurse Corps from July 21, 1917 to May 5, 1919, and was honorably discharged on May 5 at Washington, D.C.

In 1920, Nell M. Fahey, 32, was working as a Registered Nurse at the Pittsburgh City Home and Hospital, South Fayette Township, Allegheny County, Pa.

According to the aforementioned application for compensation, Nell married William J. Carney. She stated that they had four sons: William J. Jr., Robert, Richard and Thomas. The application was made in 1934, at which time she was a resident of Petersburg, Pinnellas County, Florida.

Information found online, indicates that Nell's real name was Helena, and decribes that she married World War I veteran, William J. Carney. They moved to New York, and by 1940, they had four sons, William, Robert, Richard and Thomas. They eventually moved to Florida.

This truly amazing family story was written by Nell's grandson: [https://sites.google.com/a/stevecarney.com/www/sunshinestate]

SUNSHINE STATE

Mother knew she’d get through this, that they would all make it OK. Somehow.

They had to -- what choice did they have? But she was entitled to wonder -- at least for a moment, if she allowed it -- to wonder how she would manage. After all, she said herself she was "a good worrier."

Four children to raise, and now she was the sole breadwinner?

The older kids could understand a little better what was happening, that their lives were about to change drastically. But the youngest -- what would he do without his father around?

That was my dad, and he was 4 years old.

In 1933, his father came down with tuberculosis, and entered a veteran's hospital in upstate New York, on Tupper Lake in the Adirondack Mountains. Highly contagious, he had to separate from his wife and four sons. And though they also moved from the family home outside New York City, to at least be closer to him, the separation would soon be even greater.

The undulating landscape all around Tupper Lake was a patchwork of spruce, birch, and red and sugar maple, where craggy stone mountains rose above conifer swamps, and the scent of forests and fields swept across the deep, blue lakes that dotted the area. Here, Hawkeye stalked across bogs and rocks in “Last of the Mohicans” by James Fenimore Cooper, and, in the author’s namesake village nearby, about six years after Bill Carney checked into the hospital, the Baseball Hall of Fame opened in Cooperstown.

The hospital had been there since 1924, specifically to treat tuberculosis patients, and soon the wards filled with World War I veterans, some coughing blood from their ravaged lungs, or just hacking, wheezing and spreading contagion all around them. Bill was not nearly so bad off – his wife, Nell, was a nurse and knew better than to let the illness run rampant before they sought treatment.

The crisp, clean air and the idyllic setting at Tupper Lake were supposed to be a tonic for Bill and his fellow consumptives, for, apart from rest, and time, and the hope that one’s own immune system could fight off the infection, no cure for tuberculosis existed.

Bill was closer to Montreal and the Green Mountains of Vermont than New York City, where he had worked as a heating engineer, designing ductwork and other ventilation systems. He’d done well, even moving his office from White Plains, a northern suburb, into the heart of Manhattan, where he was one of the first tenants in the brand-new Empire State Building. The tallest in the world, and built in only 14 months, the gleaming steel spire thrust upward from Fifth Avenue, like a giant middle finger to the Depression that gripped the country. Inside, though, most other offices sat empty.

Nevertheless, things were looking up for William J. Carney.

He’d risen far from his family home, a tenement on West 178th Street in the Bronx, and from the Hell’s Kitchen walk-up where he lived when he married Helena Fahey. Nell, as everyone knew her, was a nurse at an army field hospital in France, and Bill was a fighter pilot in training when they met during the war.

Even before he hop-scotched the Burgundy countryside in a rickety wood and linen Curtiss airplane, he was up for an adventure. He traveled cross-country to attend college at USC, and spent a summer guiding tourist-laden mules down into the Grand Canyon. He even tried sporting a Van Dyke beard for a while, though it made him look vaguely like a Bolshevik – that is, if Lenin were Irish and had high, round cheekbones. He stood 5-foot-8 at his most upright, and kept his dark brown hair neatly combed to the right. When he was outside and squinting, his heavy brow curved at the edges, seemingly reaching down for those round cheeks.

Between 1922 and 1929, he and Nell had four sons – William Jr., Robert, Richard and Thomas, my dad. By the time Robert arrived, they had moved into a generous cedar-shingle house on Ogden Avenue in White Plains, with ivy-covered trellises flanking the entryway, and enough yard for the boys to run around in their overalls.

Bill was 41, and had already seen and done much. But now his world had become suddenly narrow, consisting of polished floors and manicured grounds of the hospital. His only contact with the territory beyond was by proxy, through the stamp collection he meticulously filed and catalogued, with postmarks arriving from San Francisco, New Orleans, and even Little America, Antarctica.

Now, because of the disease, his job was gone, his house was gone, and his family was about to leave.

Their stay in Sunmount, the town astride Tupper Lake, was temporary. Bill and Nell decided that she would venture on her own, and move the family 1,500 miles south, to St. Petersburg, Fla.

The boys did as they were told, but never really understood why they were going – they had no relatives or family friends in the area. And Florida wasn’t any better off, economically, than the rest of the country. In fact, it was still reeling from a land boom and bust in the 1920s. Ghostly housing developments – with streetlights poking up among the stately, swaying palms, and curbed boulevards winding through neighborhoods, but without a home in sight – dotted communities throughout the state.

Nevertheless, the boys packed a few clothes and belongings into their matching luggage – canvas Saturday Evening Post shoulder bags, from their magazine-delivery routes.

Was the destination simply a likely spot, where the warm weather would benefit Bill’s health?

Bill would stay behind at the hospital, rest and get better. Then he’d join them in Florida. At least that was the plan.

When his family pulled away in their 1929 Buick, a steamer trunk strapped to the front radiator, and the boys jostling each other in a back seat big as a restaurant banquette, they couldn’t be sure they’d ever see him again.

And the family wasn’t even done splintering.

The oldest, William J. Carney Jr. – or Billy, to everyone except the clerk who typed his birth certificate – had seriously injured his hip playing a pickup football game. It wasn’t healing, and doctors at an orthopedic hospital in New York City offered to try some experimental surgeries to mend the joint, and restore his mobility. He was 11, and left behind in the care of Ruth Pontius, Nell’s army buddy from the nursing corps, who would remain a close family friend until she died in the 1970s.

When they got to Florida, the difference of their new life could not be more stark from what they knew in White Plains, where theirs was the priciest house on the block, and they employed a live-in maid. Their new rental in the outskirts of steamy St. Petersburg had a two-car garage for their one car, so they used the extra space to raise chickens and eggs. The city boys learned the quickest way to slaughter and dress a chicken – swing it to break the neck, chop off its head, plunge it in boiling water to soften the feathers for plucking, then hang it from an orange tree until mother is ready to prepare it. And any empty feed bag gained arm and leg holes, and Tommy had new burlap romper.

But the new environment, home to want and sacrifice from an adult perspective, offered new wonders and adventures for the boys.

A citrus grove spread out just outside their back door, with all the oranges and grapefruit they could eat. And in the spring the orange trees bloomed, their delicate white flowers bursting open between bright green leaves, and flooding the air with their heady scent. Unlike some fussy tea rose, with a thick perfume that caught in the back of the throat, the orange blossoms gave off an aroma, sweet and fresh, that entered through the nose and seemed to lift the top of your head skyward, carrying you brain on the same breeze that delivered the scent.

To the boys, the citrus grove was a bounty they could have only imagined in New York. But it was there, available to them, simply because the owner couldn’t afford to harvest it. A crew of pickers would have cost more than the fruit was worth, so it waited in the trees for tiny hands to reach it. But there was far more than even the neighborhood kids could gorge themselves on, so the rest eventually fell to the ground and rotted.

By the time Bill rejoined them, the family had moved again. With the money Nell had earned enough from her job as a county health nurse, they could afford a two-story bungalow with a narrow lawn and a wide front porch. There Bill spent most of every day, sitting in the sun, devouring the New York Times or leafing through his stamp collection.

The family lived about five blocks from the water, down one of the bumpy brick-paved streets in the Old Northeast neighborhood of St. Petersburg, a ride that rattled your teeth if you took it too fast by car or bike, and roiled your guts if you took it too slow. But the boys and their friends mostly trudged down to Coffee Pot Bayou, a crooked finger of a waterway that led backward to Tampa Bay, and from there to the Gulf of Mexico. Along the march they they’d grab the dead palmetto fronds from the trees that lined the sidewalk, picking the dry, brown ones that had dropped to the ground and waving them at each other like Egyptian fans, or medieval clubs, depending on their mood. Or they’d play Tarzan, swinging from the fronds still hanging on the tree – but they soon learned everything you had to watch out for with that game. If you grabbed in the wrong place, the serrated edge on the stem would slice your hand pretty good. If you didn’t kick out form the tree far enough, or let go at the right time, you’d scrape your arm or back on the rough bark, which was like burlap and sandpaper glued together. Or – most fun of all – you could have the frond finally give up while you’re in the middle of your swing and snap loose from the tree, sending you thudding to the pavement, where you were either flat on your back, straining to fill your lungs with air again, or – best case – smarting from sidewalk burns on your knees and the balls of your hands.

Along the way, brown and green anole lizards dashed back and forth across the sidewalk. The boys knew if they caught any, they might be able to induce them to bite their fingers, latching on with tiny, dull teeth and dangling harmlessly. But they also knew they had to snatch them up by the head or body; grab the tail and it could snap off in your hand while the lizard scurried away. Sometimes that was even cooler, though.

When they finally reached the seawall, they could hop down to the narrow strip of beach right there, careful of the rocks that were either barnacle-encrusted, and could cut the bottoms of your feet, or slippery, and could send you falling into the barnacles. Sometimes they continued a little farther north to dive off the Snell Isle bridge, a two-lane crossing of whitewashed arches, low to the water, and they swam to a tiny mangrove island in the middle of the bayou. The water was always warm, and compelled you to stay in -- up to your neck, at least -- bobbing in the languid salt-water bath. This wasn’t like the frigid waters of the Atlantic, or Tupper Lake, where even in the middle of July the cold water felt like a pillar of ice a foot wide driving up through your core. It sent the air fleeing from your lungs again and again and again, as it hit first your groin, then your stomach, then your chest. You dunked your head in only in hope it would make the misery go away. That, compared to the balmy water of the gulf, or the bay, or the bayou, where you dunked yourself because you couldn’t resist.

Though the water was inviting, it wasn’t totally benign. Any summer afternoon, like clockwork, a thunderstorm would roll in from offshore. A strangely cool wind would kick up, rustling the palm fronds overhead and pushing the churning cumulus clouds until they menaced directly overhead. They boiled so heavy with water they turned from deep blue to charcoal gray. And if they ever took on a hint of green, they were about to unleash a violent downpour, or even a tornado. They could hear the low rumbles from far out on the water, and long before that, the flashes of lightning on the horizon, tendrils that poked from the bottoms of the thunderheads, then forked, then forked again, all in less than a blink. They knew they needed to get out of the water, before one of those bolts reached across the miles to them – though they didn’t always heed the sensible voices in their head, at least not right away.

The boys also kept reason at bay with another of their bayou pastimes. They’d wander along the seawall, venturing onto the wooden docks that stuck out here and there, across the street from their owners’ homes. The kids studied the water around the pillars until they saw what they were looking for -- an alligator lurking in the water, cruising for a discarded sandwich or a distracted duck. Then it was time for a rousing game of “bombard the alligator.” As my dad’s brother, Dick, described it: “You’d cannonball him and get the hell out of the water as fast as you could.”

Sometimes though, the older boys left Tommy behind, alone at home with his dad. The reunion with his family was not a months-long, tearful embrace. It couldn’t be. He was still contagious, and by necessity became more stand-offish, mostly keeping to himself these days. He read on the porch, or sequestered himself in the parents’ bedroom, off the dining room and off-limits to the boys. The family also took care to keep his dishes and silverware separate from theirs.

But every once in a while, when no one else was home and the ache became too great, Bill hauled little Tommy onto his lap for a story. He suppressed any cough, took care to cover up with his handkerchief, and balanced his baby boy on his knees. It’s just one story. What’s the harm?

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There is no contact information for the author, the grandson of Bill and Nell Carney..... They are found in the 1940 census of Pinellas County, Florida, and Nell, born in West Virginia - was working as a Public Nurse, County Health Department. Her husband gave the information in the census.

Bill Carney died in 1944, and Nell died in 1951 in Pinellas County, Florida.