The Finucan-e's of Stutson Street, Charlotte NY.

22/08/2026

SENECA LAKE: this was the lake that my brother in law, John McFarlane and his brother immersed a two-man SUB (actually Yellow in color) that they built, back in the late 1950's into this lake to see if they could find it's source.

The recent submergible sub that imploded off the coast of Newfoundland that was going to view the SS Titanic brings to mind what a tragedy or demised could have been for my future brother in law.

https://www.facebook.com/100063507012630/posts/880753790718180/?

That is an earlier post of mine on my family Geneology page, featuring John's two-man sub that sat in the backyard of 18 Rye Road, in Greece NY.

"In the 1950s, the McFarlane brothers experimented with a homemade, two-man submersible in the deep waters of Seneca Lake in New York to test its capabilities and explore the depths. Their underwater trials and the functional testing of the craft earned coverage in regional newspapers including the Democrat and Chronicle. You can read more about the publication at Democrat and Chronicle."

This YELLOW SUBMARINE was not a happy song for my sister Peg, and was a constant 'nagging' subliminal reminder of those tough times she had living in Greenville Mississippi.

It is interesting how life throws a curve ball, as Peg should have been in an OFF BROADWAY musical in her 20's not living on a Greenville Mississippi River levee
...yes, my sister was THAT talented, an amazing Soprano voice.

John finally got rid of it, and pretty much gave it away, as I don't think the guy claimed ever paid him fully for it.

John was an eccentric creative soul, money was never a priority, but creating thing out of JUNK was his escape, his distraction from his reality.

John was one of those souls that was born in the wrong century...a good man with a very good empathic heart, and inventor of sorts....he most certainly walked to the beat of a different drummer.

Amazing voice, and she was the Carol Burnett/Cloris Leachman of our family...the DRAMA QUEEN, and still kicking at 89 years of age.

I did an AI google search, as I remember seeing a yellowed newspaper article from the D&C Rochester paper about it, and AI came back with this...as I assume it is in there archives and available for a FEE

21/08/2026

MISSISSIPPI 1964: My family trip

As a 10-year-old kid, we drove to Greenville Mississippi from our home in western NYS in a non-air-conditioned 62 Catalina, and it was hot as Africa.

Mom and dad & I were visiting my 17-year-older sister (now 27), and her three kids, and  husband on Lake Ferguson, in Greenville, Mississippi.

She unfortunately had to live there with her eccentric “get rich quick” husband, who believed there was a sunken treasure of ORE that sank in the MISSISSIPPI River.

A “treasure” that they could retrieve by finding DISCOVERING it with a 2-man yellow mini-submarine that he and his brother welded together & built.

….TRUE STORY,  and more than likely the loss of the iron or into the river was probably a false insurance claim, as it was never found.

Prior the two experimented with this two-man sub in Seneca Lake, and it made the local news.

Seneca Lake is the deepest of the Finger Lakes and they wanted to PROVE how deep it was.

We are all aware of that TITANIC SUBMERSIBLE dive of recent years and thank goodness it did not IMPLODE.

Oh yeah, they didn’t get too deep, but they proved it worked .

I reminds me of the movie with Harrison Ford, The Mosquito Coast (1986) where he moved his whole family to the Amazon to find wealth by bringing ice to the Amazon tribes.

Watching that Harrison Ford movie in the 1980s, I actually asked her to write the MISSISSIPPI story down because she’s 89 years of age, but it was so traumatic in those years, she refuses to.

My brother-in-law John came from a fairly wealthy family, and his father was a bit eccentric, and…
“the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree!”

While in Mississippi, they struggled financially with a sick youngest child, Scotty, as my sister Peggy was the ONLY breadwinner while he was chasing rainbows 🌈 of part of gold sunken in the deep mud of the Mississippi River.

Between this sister’s story, and six-year-old sister in unwed mother scenario/trauma of the 60’s (thar I never found out about until I was in my 60s), and then a 3rd older sister married who had troubles with the “drink” and a creepy predator father-in-law.

… I came to realize that I grew up in a truly dysfunctional, depressed environment in the 1960s…the root of my depression tree.

My OLDER brother and sisters had a lot of freaking baggage in the 196O’s
…but I digress.

MY POINT IS THIS, I WAS 10 YEARS OLD TRAVEL IN RURAL MISSISSIPPI IN THE EARLY 60S!

Even at that age, IT WAS ANOTHER WORLD TO THIS LITTLE BOY.

https://www.facebook.com/share/v/1BkXKF7Jfx/?mibextid=wwXIfr

04/08/2026

Posted 12 years ago. WORTH DOING AGAIN

This is a powerful AMERICAN EXPERIENCE posting. I remember these times very well, and I personally experienced Mississippi, that very year -1964.

My sister, Peggy, her husband John, and my niece, and very young nephews, lived in Mississippi.

In summer of 1964, my dad drove with my mom and I down in tow , from Rochester, NY, to visit my sister's & family in Greenville, Mississippi home.

The white, '62 Pontiac Catalina, with New York State plates, stood out like a neon sign in those rural Mississippi towns.

After a stop at one gas station, my dad, whispered to my mom, that he was warned by the attendant, to NOT go down a certain road, with NYS plates; as there was a K*K meeting in progress.

I was VERY aware, that dad seemed a bit worried, even though I really didn't understand what "K*K" meant.

I was only ten years old.

Dog-like, I would stick my head out the cars open window, and hot breeze would hit my face, like a wet rag.

My mom, placed a white cotton bed sheet, on the vinyl back seat. It keep me from sticking, as I was stripped down to just my whity-tighty BVDs.

There was no AC, as it was not standard option in a car for the Rochester weather.

Mississippi was Africa hot!

I thought we might be near Africa, as there were so many black people were about.

I gazed at endless rows of manicured fields, speckled with white balls of cotton.

Every so often, we would pass an old one room, farm shack, that I could see right through.

My dad called 'em "sh****ns" shacks.

There were no glass windows, just opening on the sides and there appeared to be one doors on the front and one directly on the opposite side.

You could see from one side through the other!

That’s why they were called sh***un shacks, cause you could fire a sh***un through the front door and it would go through the back door opening.

I thought these shacks were abandoned, but I saw dark figures, moving about, within.

I was so happy Dad at stopped for some cold drinks.

I grabbed an Orange Crush out of Coca Cola freezer and I reached into on an old country store's porch.

The weathered gray store had an appearance of going out of business, but it was just old.

A few straw hatred old men sat there, fanning themselves.

They studied us quietly as we paid for the sodas.

An old black man with big yellow-white eyes, smiled at me, and I nodded with wide eye amazement.

And nervously smiled back, but started back to the car.

He said something to my dad, I only understood the words,

"ya’all from Nah Yahhhk city".

My dad smiled and said, "yes sir", and all laughed for some reason.

My sister, Peggy, had a black woman, a nurse who worked for her.

A very sweet, always smiling woman, who went by the name, Mammy.

She called me, "Master Bobby".

I thought it was funny, and laughed every time, she said,

"Masta Babba, woudcha lika some lemanah?"

It was a different world, for sure.

That was same year, these poor teenage kids, lost there lives, in trying to make a positive change in that back woods state.

Negating racism in America, still has a long way to go; there is no doubt in my mind on that fact!

02/08/2026

FINUCANES OF NOTORIETY
Retired FDNY Lieutenant John Finucane wrote the historical novel “When the Bronx Burned: New York's Best Kept Secret”, published in 2007.

The book details the devastating wave of arson-for-profit that tore through the South Bronx during the late 1960s and 1970s.

http://firehooksunlimited.net/whenthebronxburned.html

23/07/2026

History, lesson of what I considered to be my families's company of so many years from my grandmother to my uncles and aunts, their offsprings, my cousins and even my brother and ones
sister was there for awhile. Me TOO.

19/07/2026

Sharing this, as I’ve been to this area of New Jersey when I lived in South Jersey.

There’s actually a Swedesboro NJ and quite a few nice little towns in South Jersey, I always liked Bridgeton & Salem.

Reason for this post on the Irish Finucan page is my sister Marilyn married us full-blooded Sweden, born in Sweden by the name of Lief Eriksson, and these two produced four lovely daughters.

It was the smallest, least-populated and shortest-lived colony in the US. But despite being virtually unheard of today, it helped shape the nation's birth 250 years ago.

Read more here (via BBC Travel): https://bbc.in/4vlNVXw