Anna Dougherty-Finn

She left behind six children.

Germantown, Philadelphia.

Photograph of Anna “Nan” Dougherty-Finn, Courtesy of Angela Nace.

I’d like to submit the following information about my maternal great-great grandmother, Anna Dougherty-Finn (b. 1882), who passed away at age 36 during the Influenza Pandemic in Philadelphia on October 15, 1918. She left behind 6 children, including my great-grandmother Rita Finn at age 3, and a younger sister who was only an infant. She was a resident of Germantown. She was able to be buried quickly on October 18th at Holy Sepulchre Cemetery in Germantown because her brother, Vincent J. Dougherty, was a priest.

Photo of Anna’s mother, Mary Agnes Dougherty, and her son, Father Vincent J. Dougherty, brother responsible for expediting Anna’s funeral and burial taken in 1939. Courtesy of Angela Nace.

My grandmother, Lorraine Haag, told me that after Anna’s passing her husband, Joseph E. Finn quickly remarried a woman named Jennie Meisel in 1919, and had another son in 1921. This woman threatened the lives of my great grandmother and her full-siblings by releasing a poisonous gas in a room they were locked in in the home. Luckily, they were able to escape, but then bounced around in the care of various religious homes for children in Germantown.

Contributed by Angela Nace, Great- Great Granddaughter of Anna Dougherty-Finn.