The Poniards...Ponards...uh.. Punyards

Well it took some sleuthing because James Poniard's descendants and their contemporaries couldn't get the spelling correct.  James went from Brittany, France some time in the early 1800s to work for the Lambert's in Galway, Ireland collecting tithes from tenants at Castle Lambert in Athenry. Things probably weren't so great in France at the time and one story has it that James' sister married into the Lambert's and brought her brother along.

Latrr, James and Sarah Monahan had a slew of kids and when things started going badly in the titihe collecting biz they took off for different parts,  Some sons went to Canada, Australia, and Charleston. Some stayed in Ireland. I think the Lambert's had some business interests in Charleston, so maybe that is how Anthony Poniard ended up here. At some point his wife Bridget Eagle joined him, but wasn't on the manifest for the ship Victoria when Anthony came in The 1850s. Anthony became a teamster.  His brother Darby came over at the outbreak of the Civil War And was promptly dispatched to Ft Sumter and killed by a Yankee Parrott shell in about 1862 3 days after he arrived. Darby's CO spelled his name as Punyard.  Anthony was older so he was a teammaster in the reserve artillery. Not sure if he saw any action, as his unit was called up and moved into NC as the war ended. He was very musically talented, which may  have  influenced Herb Ponard to pursue a music career.

 Someone of the Poniard's set up shop as a bookkeeper eventually and  later went into biz with John J Delaney possibly after JJ married Anthony's daughter Mary or before. Mary and John's kids were Greta and Norbert.  Greta married Louis Honer and she gave birth to Louis (Jack), John (Billy) and Margaret (my Mom). Norbert had a great job as head of purchasing for some company and never had any kids. When he died, his wife Rose\ got a hot 1956 T-bird hardtop and a mink coat. She came to visit to show them off and I never saw her again.

Anthony's daughter Theresa married a John Ham who was a steamboat captain and smuggler for the Confederacy during the war.  Their family included Rita Lindley Ham who married Martin Corbin and had
four daughters and a son, including Maggie and Sara who live in  Brattleboro, VT and are on FB. Rita was an artist for the Catholic church and her works were published in their newsletters and magazines.



See more slightly inaccurate details on the Poniards here:

http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~irlgalway/galwayp.pdf
.

Anthony and Bridget Poniard Grave in St Lawrence Cemetary in Charleston SC

 

 Anthony Poniard's house on Wentworth St, Charleston, SC

Poniard slave quarters behind house on Wentworth St.

James Poniard's sundial in  Galway, Ireland

The first Louis Honer

Well maybe not the first but we are talking about relevance to us who are here today.  Our Louis Honer came from Cincinnati and had a lot of brothers. His oldest brother Albert ended up with the family business: a jewelry store in Cincinnati that their father took over after marrying the bosses' daughter. Our Louis Honer ended up in the printing buainess as a stereotyper. That was a union job at the time. I don't know if he did that in Cincinnati or if it didn't happen until he ended up in Atlanta.

He was a union organizer in Atlanta and maybe he was sent there for that purpose.  .He was a founder in the union and there was a time when union busters threw trash on his lawn and threatened his family and he chased them off with a shotgun.

There's also a story of him taking a bar bet and cold cocking a horse with one punch and winning the bet.  He died fighting off a mugger when he was in his 70's and he happened to fall down the stairs actually in the subway station in New York and that's what killed him.  He was also one of the early members of the first chapter Knights of Columbus in Atlanta.   My Mom said he was a founder but I checked with the KofC and he wasn't.  Once a pit bull, bit my Mom when she was a kid, busily adopting every stray dog in the neighborhood until they had up to 13 of them. Louis took the pit bull by the hind legs, swung it around and smashed its skull in against a telephone pole.

His son, Louis, worked for the Clyde line as a purser and docked in Charleston often and maybe that's where he met Greta Delaney. I have no idea how all the Honers ended up in NYC..unless the original Louis had something to do with it. But since Greta's roots are in Charleston, I see no reason for her to come north before her marriage to Louis Jr.

Uncle Jack...big and gregarious

Uncle Jack was about 6 years older than my mom so I don't think they were as close has my mom was to Billy. Uncle Jack's real name was Louis and Uncle Billy's name was John. A nurse or more likely a house keeper or babysitter couldn't keep their names straight so she gave them the names of Jack and Billy and it stuck.

Uncle Billy was sickly as a kid I think he had Saint Vitus dance and had to go through some therapy to get stronger. Uncle Jack introduced him to rowing and Billy excelled at the single sculls. I also remember a picture of Uncle Jack with football gear on and the old leather helmets. I'm not sure how he got the affiliation with rowing teams and football teams but he was obviously a man about town.

He once took us to Roosevelt Raceway to watch the trotters. I thought those horses would be hard to bet on because they all seem to be able to do the same pace. But it was still pretty exciting to watch the horses run.

Once he took me, my sister, and cousin Ronnie to Jahns ice cream parlor and we had a super duper for two which the four of us could not finish. I have never seen so much ice cream in one bowl more like a soup tureen than a bowl. It was huge.

I don't know how uncle Billy ended up in such a different type of career than Jack. Uncle Jack was definitely his father's son. Louis Honer Sr was very much an white collar worker at the Clyde lines where he was a purser.


Uncle Jack really had the need for the thrill of closing a deal and he worked primarily selling fencing, real estate and mortgages. I remember him saying that a good salesman could sell anything and he would send friends of his out on sales calls where they knew nothing a the product and still were able to close the deal when they were good salesman.

I remember when Uncle Jack mentioned that when he came back from World War II and the sailors landed in San Francisco. The first thing that they wanted wasn't liquor, they wanted real milk. After all those days at sea and drinking reconstituted milk they wanted the real thing.

Working with Uncle Billy

My first summer job after high school was as a laborer at Royal Guard fence company in Westbury. I started out sorting fittings and loading trucks. Eventually I got to drive the ftorklift and go out on jobs. That was the first time I had ever made cement. Me and two iron workers were sent down to Coney Island to put in some posts along the boardwalk on a retaining wall. I had to mix all the cement by, hand for the posts,. Obviously I never done that and  made it pretty sloppy. Trying to push a wheel barrel of sloppy cement along 2x6's laid in the sand was kind of difficult. At one point the cement got the better of me and started tipping. I couldn't hold the wheelbarrow and it flipped me over the retaining wall and all the cement came down on top of me. Eventually we did get the posts in and the guys bought me a Rheingold and a hot dog for lunch.

I also was called upon to be a flag man on the Belt Parkway under the Verranzano bridge while other guys fixed guardrail along the Belt Parkway. It was pretty dangerous and I came pretty close to getting hit a few times. They eventually replaced me with a mechanical dummy and he ended up losing his arm. At the end of that summer I thought I knew something about the building of fences. The following summer I asked Uncle Billy if I could work with him at the fence company he was at. He did get me the job.

I learn from one of the guys to make cement by making a pit in a big pile of sand on the back of the truck and dumping the cement into it. He would just watch the color of the soil and when it was right he would pitch in to the wheelbarrow and add water. He was so much faster than I was until I got the knack. Uncle Billy showed me how to stretch chain link fence and how to do mitres for hills and dips. He was a real hero to me after all he had been through in WWII.

He had Ranger training but ended up with Patton. He was guarding a bridge when shellfire came too close and he got hit in the head with shrapnel. The guy next to him had his head blown off.  He also got shot in the leg later in the war.  He ended up with a steel plate to replace part of his skull. One of the most even tempered guys I knew. And he had a lot to put up with between me and one other guy named Elwin Peters.  We were useless some mornings after partying all night.  But when a new guy came on we would bust his butt to see if he could do the job.  We would flip 250 lb rolls of fence wire onto our shoulders and throw them over the side of the truck. Then tell the newbie to finish loading in the same way. Had to know what you were doing to not have it land on the ground or yourself.  I got into a fight with one smartass..but two summers of fence work and a summer of Kenpo lessons and he was on the ground. I learned more about using tools and having the confidence to taking on construction projects from Uncle Billy than three years of shop classes. Did I mention he was also my godfather?

The great cremains caper

When my father passed on 2001, he was married to a drunken crackpot named Margory Hagy Parente.  For some reason as his health declined they packed up their house and spread their stuff all over Abingdon, where ever she could scam space from someone. Pretty sure the title to their house had some issues and it was never really all theirs. Or they were renting and never let on.

Anyway, she drives north with Dad to her friend's house in Sag Harbor, NY. Her friend is a Monseigneur who didn't use it often since his diocese was in Brooklyn. He owed my Dad a favor anyway since my dad paid his way to see the Pope.

So my Dad goes into the hospital and I stay in the house for a while and visit him until I have to go back home. Lisa was moving into the dorms at USC at that time and I had to help her move. My dad passed away at that time and I went back for the funeral. My sister came out also and we went through the memorial service and went back to the house in Sag Harbor for everyone to enjoy a buffet that I had put together with Marge's son.

My father's cremains were on the coffee table and Marge told us that she intended to put them into the Long Island Sound. My sister and I talked about it and decided he needed to be buried with our mother and that we didn't believe that what Marjorie was saying was my father's wishes. So at the end of the buffet I ran into a interference and told Margorie off. Margaret grabbed my father's remains and ran out the door with the kids. I followed and so did everyone else. Unfortunately cousin Lorraine was in the bathroom and came out and everyone was gone and had a rather sheepish exit to perform on her own.

The rest of the story is on my sister's blog margeweiner.blogspot. com. But it took us  about 6 years to bury him because we didn't have the cremation certificate and had to wait till Margorie died to get it.

I should mention that Dad and Margorie only knew each other because her husband, Gene and Dad worked together at Meenan Oil.  Gene died on the job from a heart attack and Margorie was desperate to find a sugar daddy.

My Dad had already dated a number of close friends after my Mom passed. One was Barbara Will who would have been a great catch. She was level headed and loaded and a really nice person. Somehow Marjorie chased them all off and weedled her way into moving in with my father.
I know my father took Mary O'flaherty to Paris and may have dated Aunt Ronnie as well. I am sure there were others and I know he had a wild time on a trip to India where he shacked up with a married Canadian woman in Kashmir and an Indian woman on a cruise in Greece.