My Old Ohio Home - Ireland

Michael Malone, a butler in Boston in 1902

2018-10-08T00:00:00-04:00

RMS Commonwealth

Some information about Moses Malone, a 30 year old butler who died at sea in 1902.

UK Incoming Passenger Lists, 1878-1960, at ancestry.com.

Ship: Commonwealth, Dominion Line
Port of Departure: Boston
Arrival: May 1902
Port of Arrival: Liverpool

Died at sea:
Name: Michael Malone, second cabin passenger.
Male or Female: male
Age: 30
Occupation: butler
Nationality: American, born, New York
Cause of death: Gastric ulcer, haemorrge
Died 30th April at 4:30 AM and was buried at sea the same day at 4PM.
Lat 50.15 N
Long. 17.17 W

UK Registers and Indexes of Births, Marriages and Deaths of Passengers and Seamen at Sea, 1891-1922

BT 334/027
Register of Deceased Passengers, 1902 to 1905
page 28, image 30
Register of Deceased Passengers
May 1902

Register General to whom reported: E
Source of Information: LB
U.K., C.I., I of M., Col., For., Etc.: U.K.
On Sea or in River or Harbour: Sea
Trade: For
Accident or Disease: D
Wreck or Casualty: _
Sail or Steam: S
Name of Ship: Commonwealth
Official Number: 113408
Port of Registry: Liverpool
Date of death: 30.4.02 4.30.am
Place of Death: Lat 50.15 N Long. 17.17 W
Name: Michael
Surname: Malone
Sex: M
Age: 30
occupation: butler
Nationality or birthplace: American/New York
last place of abode: 77 Mount Vernon St
cause of death: Boston Gastric Ulcer, haemorrhage

1900 Census for 77 Mount Vernon St

1900 Census Precinct 1, Ward 11, Boston, ED 1308, sheet 11, household 120, family 144
June 8, 1900
at 77 Mount Vernon Street
Henry Whitman, 60, married 33 years, born in Canada (English), parents also, arrived 1854, naturalized, wool merchant, renting
Sarah Whitman, 57, born in Maryland, parents in Massachusetts, artist
4 servants, none were Michael Malone. all foreign born.
https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:S3HY-6QDW-4V9?cc=1325221&wc=9B71-CXL%3A1030549901%2C1034570401%2C1034625701&lang=en&i=20

1902 Boston City Directory

Henry Whitman, died July 27, 1901
Mrs Henry Whitman, artist at 184 Boylston, h 77 Mt Vernon
five men named Michael Malone, none were butlers

1903 Boston City Directory

Mrs Henry Whitman, artist at 184 Boylston, h 77 Mt Vernon
many men named Michael Malone, none were butlers

Credits

Photo from Norway Heritage

Edwin O'Connor of Woonsocket, Rhode Island–A Brief Ancestry

2019-08-16T00:00:00-04:00

Some years ago I researched a friend's Irish ancestry. She was from Galway and it turned out that she was distantly related to John Ford the American movie director. That got me thinking about the Irish experience in the United States and about American movies in general, which eventually brought me around to reading, not watching, The Last Hurrah, by Edwin O'Connor.

I read the rest of his novels, enjoying them all. Somewhere along the way I learned he was raised near to where I was living at the time. In fact I had driven past his family's house more times than I could count. So I thought I'd see what I could find in the online records for the ancestry of Edwin O'Connor's family.

His biography, A Family of His Own, by Charles Duffy (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, ©2003), got me started with exact dates and locations for Edwin's birth and the marriage of his parents, John V. O'Connor and Mary Greene. According to the author's interiews with family members, Mary Greene's mother's family was from County Tipperary. Little was known about the O'Connors or the other branches. That seemed a bit of a shame.

The Research–a summary

To make a long story short, I was able to trace Edwin O'Connor's ancestry back to the immigrant ancestor in all lines. In most cases this was his great grandparent; in one line it was his gg grandparents. All were Irish.

The County Tipperary connection was the easiest, since their Catholic parish in Ireland—Templemore, Tipperary—was evidently carved on the headstones of John Ryan and Mary Healey. I narrowed them down a bit more to Clonmore, a village in that parish.

Richard Dwyer, John O'Connor's maternal grandfather, said he was from County Waterford when he was naturalized, but I couldn't get more specific than that.

And James Greene, Mary (Greene) O'Connor's father, was very likely from Corrabeagh/Curbeagh Townland, Fenagh Parish, County Leitrim. His naturalization record provided the county, and his marriage record gave his parents names: John Greene and Catherine McQueeney. There is only one couple in Leitrim with those names, and they were of that townland when two of their other children were baptized.

Most of the men in the first two generations in America were laborers except for Richard Dwyer who was a butcher. Two were insurance agents for a while, but one of them went back to being a mill worker. It might be interesting to find out just what constituted an "insurance agent" in northern Rhode Island around the turn of the 20th century that would lend itself to this type of transitioning. And speaking of mill workers, O'Connor's paternal grandmother, Anastasia Dwyer, was working in a cotton mill in Blackstone, Massachusetts, at the age of 14–along with her 12 year old sister.

Conclusion

Page 7 of A Family of His Own said that Edwin O'Connor's parents were "of a generation which seldom looked back to the 'old sod,' and which in fact often looked down on anyone playing the professional Irishman. The family took little interest in genealogical searches."

I guess that makes me a professional Irishman who takes an interest in genealogical searches. There really ought to be one in every family. Details and sources that went into the research are available on Edwin O'Connor's page in the Other Families tree on this site.

Finally, this article was not meant to be a history of the O'Connors and how they fit into their times. For that, read A Family of His Own, then find a history of Blackstone, Massachusetts, especially during the mill era, and one of Woonsocket, Rhode Island.

Credits

Wikipedia provided the image of the movie poster and says it is in the public domain, since the copyright was not renewed.

Found on Roadside

2019-09-02T00:00:00-04:00

While looking through the Irish Catholic parish registers, I found this entry:

1835 Parish Register, Ferns, Wexford

Baptized November 10, 1835, Parish of Ferns, Diocese of Ferns, County Wexford, Ireland
Child: Mary
Parents: Strangers
Sponsors: M Fitzharris
Note in right column: Found on the roadside near big tree

You can see it for yourself here: Mary, baptism, Ferns, Wexford.

Was she adopted? Did she grow up? What did she turn out to be? Did she ever wonder who her biological parents were? Or did she even know?

And I wonder if the strangers on the road ever looked back and asked themselves what became of their baby girl.

Credits

The image of the baptism record from Ferns Parish, Ferns Diocese, Wexford, is used courtesy of the National Library of Ireland.

Even the Snails Came from Spain

2019-07-20T00:00:00-04:00

Cepaea nemoralis snail

The legend among the Irish for the longest time was that they "came from Spain." You could say it was the mother of all family stories. Everyone in the family knew it was true, but everyone outside the family thought it was a lot of malarkey. It turns out that the Irish were right.

Scientists have even found DNA evidence linking snails in County Kerry, Ireland, to snails in the Pyrenees mountains in Northern Spain. This article came out a while ago, but I was between websites and didn't have anywhere to post a link to it: Scientists Use Snails to Trace Stone Age Trade Routes in Europe.

I'm supposed to say "Amazing! Awesome! You just have to read this!" but I grew up in the twentieth century, not the twenty-first, and you really don't have to read it anyway.

If you are interested in more of the recent evidence for the Irish having arrived there by way of Spain and Northern Africa, look for the following:

Facing the ocean : the Atlantic and its peoples, 8000 BC-AD 1500, by Barry Cunliffe, published by Oxford University Press, 2001. If I remember right, it is a coffee table size book, but it is worth lugging home from the library.

[September 2021: edited to remove a few dead links]

The scientific study referred to in the first article is at, I think, The Longue Durée of Genetic Ancestry: Multiple Genetic Marker Systems and Celtic Origins on the Atlantic Facade of Europe.

In Barry Cunliffe's book, or in some other book I read, there is a reference to an unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, A typological evaluation of Celtic/Hamito-Semitic syntactic parallels by Orin David Gensler at University of California, Berkeley, which identifies something like thirty peculiarities found only in "Gaelic" and some North African languages.

Edited September 2021: The dissertation by Orin David Gensler is now available on line at: https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8p00g5sd.

That sets up these next two articles which were really interesting. Or awesome and amazing:

OUR ANCIENT COUSINS THE BERBERS by J. M. McGill, F.S.A. Scot. and Berbers and Irish Language: Historical accounts.

Note, as of September 2021 this second article is now behind a paywall. I have a copy of the information if you are interested. Or find it now at https://marokko.nl/forums/showthread.php?t=4816326&p=119542215&viewfull=1#post119542215.

This time I'll quote a bit of the first article, or you'll never click on an article about linguistics:

"Sometime at the end of the fourteenth, or it may have been in the early fifteenth century, a ship was wrecked on a spit of sand jutting out from the Moroccan Atlantic coast. The sole survivor scrambled ashore and fell into the hands of the Berbers whose clan name was the Beni M'Touga, and who inhabited that part of the country. The Berbers spared his life, which was unusual clemency on their part as they had a hatred for all strangers. What was the reason for the unusual friendliness of these wild Berber tribesmen towards a shipwrecked sailor? One of the first steps towards amity between strangers is a knowledge of each other's languages and that is what most probably saved MacDowall."

So next time you doubt some family story that's been passed down for generations, just remember that even the snails came from Spain.

Credits

Image of snail from Wikimedia Commons/Mad_Max

Kilmore Quay Post Office

2018-10-08T00:00:00-04:00

Kilmore Quay Post Office

A while ago my cousin sent me a number of photographs of our family, and I have posted them in the Ohio photographs section of this site. However there were a few in the mix that are "leftovers." Neither of us have a clue how or why they became part of the family collection.

This picture of Kilmore Quay Post Office is one of them. Our family was not from County Wexford. It's possible that someone on my cousin's side was from County Wexford and this is a photograph of a long lost relative. It's just as likely that my aunt, or someone else along the way, thought this was a nice picture and decided to keep it.