Thomas Michael Ryder

Just heard from Thomas Michael Ryder, a journalist with whom I share an alma mater - Marquette University. I'm going to enter Tom's words verbatim:

My grandfather was Michael J. Ryder, who would be your grandfather's (TJR) brother.
The information I have is he came from Ireland in 1888, landing in Philadelphia (I haven't be able to find any ship record or naturalization records through.) He went to the far west of Wisconsin, making his home in Richland County, where there was a fairly good-sized number of Irish, including a Walsh family (can't find any ties there but suspect that's why he went there)in an area called Cazenovia. On 8 Oct. 1891 he married a neighbor's daughter, Kathryn Lyden. The marriage information comes from the church records although the church is no longer there. They moved to East Chicago in 1900.
Somewhere I read something that made me think he might have been a city councilman but I never found any records of it. And, the short item in The Hammond Times when he died in 1925 referred to him as an "East Chicago pioneer" but said nothing about him being a city councilman. The fact he was in politics might explain why he went broke with his tavern. The family said it was because he carried too many of his friends on the books. Apparently the votes were more valuable than the cash. One other thing about the tavern -- it was the reason my father never got to be an altarboy. The priest said no son of a tavern owner would be a server in his church.
My dad (Thomas Henry) was the youngest in his family. The oldest was Marie (or Mary Grace in the baptismal records in Wisconsin), who was married to John D. McInerney, who worked for the Racing Form. Next was Earl (William Earl according to the same church records). He was a superintendent at Inland Steel but his wife, Irma Mock, wasn't an invalid. Whenever Earl would stop at our house on his way home from church on Sunday he would usually say Irma wasn't "feeling well." I cut their grass when I was a kid and most of the time she would offer me something to drink afterward. I suspect she considered the Ryders below Earl's station and her family's. She was the Chicago area, Daddy had money and her sisters Worked at Marshall Fields (which was a big deal for women at that time.)
And the other brother Frank (Francis Bernard). He worked for the railroad at Youngstown Steel and lived in Hammond. He got married later in life. In fact, he lived in a bedroom in the basement of my grandmother's home and our family lived on the second floor when I was a toddler. Whenever my mother got mad at me I'd just go downstairs to see my grandmother, she never got mad at me. When she died in 1938, we moved downstairs.
An interesting story about her death. She died at the hospital sitting in a chair. She wasn't found for several hours and so they had to tie her down when they put her in the coffin. It was a good old Irish Wake -- women seated in the parlor talking, food on the sideboard in the dining room and the men in the kitchen with the drink. Tradition called for someone to sit with the body through the night. My mother said he would take the first night. But sometime late at night the ropes broke and my grandmother's body sat up in the casket. We almost had to have a second funeral for my mother.
I'll have more later on other family members as I remember them. Just two more items.
My brother, Daniel James, was in Martyna's class not only at Noll but also at St. Mary's. And teachers were always asking them if they were twins. I believe they both were born in February 1939. Dan died Dec. 30, 2006. My sister, Mary Katherine (Mary Kay) lives in the Tampa area of Florida.

Thanks, Tom, for this great information.