Sometimes A Little Peek Is All You Need

     

     Anna Quigley Hennessey was everything one would expect a woman born in 1895 not to be-- independent, divorced, and living over one thousand miles from her family.  Anna's life is a bit of a mystery with only it's beginning well defined, it's ending less so, and the middle mostly unknown.

     Anna was born on 7 April 1859 in County Kildare, Ireland to James Quigley and Anna McGarr, the sister of my second great-grandmother Maria McGarr.  She was baptized  several days later in Baltinglass and grew up in that town with two sisters and two brothers; that is all that is known of her younger days.  Sometime around 1880 Anna emigrated, probably to New York which is where the rest of her family eventually settled, in Rochester.  I can't say whether she was married in Ireland or in America.

     The lives of her brothers and sisters were much easier to trace once they arrived in the United States as young adults.  They all lived in Rochester, New York and it is in their obituaries we find our first glimpses of Anna in her new country.  Her younger sister Sarah died in 1907; listed among her survivors is her sister Anna Hennessey of Kansas.  When Anna's brother Daniel died in 1916 she was referred to as Mrs. A. Hennessey of Kansas City in his obituary.  So was she really in Kansas in 1907 or was it Kansas City?  Newspapers often get such fine distinctions wrong and further complicating things, there is a place called Kansas City in both Kansas and Missouri, right next to each other.  After hours of searching I can't locate Anna in either place in 1900 or 1910, but in the 1920 census she is enumerated in Jasper, Missouri living alone, a divorcee working as a telegraph operator for a railroad.  Or is she?  There is another Anna Hennessey in Kansas City, Missouri of about the right age with a husband and family, I was unsure which Anna was mine.

     In 1930 the divorced Anna had moved a few miles to Joplin, Missouri while the other Anna was still in Kansas City.  Her brother John Quigley's obituary the following year mentions his sister Anna Hennessey of Asbury, Missouri, which is quite near Joplin, seeming to indicate she was indeed the right Anna.  Still, I wasn't totally convinced.  The 1940 census however, placed Anna the divorcee smack in Asbury and indicated she resided there in 1935 also.  After looking around the web I came across an article about a woman celebrating her ninetieth birthday in Asbury, but it was the name that made me sit up straighter, "Annie Quigley Hennessey"!  It was her there in Asbury.  I couldn't read the entire article, only a small bit since I don't subscribe to that archive.  I could however see the name of the newspaper, the Joplin Globe, and luckily Ancestry has that very newspaper on it's site. Below is the full article:

Asbury MO, April 11 1949--Mrs. Annie Quigley Hennessey of Asbury celebrated her ninetieth birthday April 7 at her home in Asbury, where she has lived for 35 years. Mrs. Hennessey is a native of county Kildare Ireland and came to the USA when a young woman.  She served as telegraph operator for the Kansas City Southern RR for many years and retired from active service after she was past 70.  She lives alone and is still quite active.

    Anna died in March of the following year.  Her tombstone is on Find A Grave, but there is no further information on that site and Ancestry doesn't have the March editions of The Globe in it's database.  I was excited to find a Missouri State site with actual images of death certificates, but when Anna's came up all it said was she died in another state and her certificate could be found there.  Found where?  There was no indication of where she died and she was not listed in the Social Security Death index.  I sent off an inquiry to the state site not really expecting an answer, but to my surprise, bright and early the very next morning the answer was waiting in my email--Anna died in Kansas.  Which unfortunately does not post it's death certificates.  I had suspected Kansas was a possibility since she lived so near the border and with all her brothers and sisters in New York deceased by 1950 she'd have no reason to travel there at age ninety one, but why Kansas?

     One possible answer is Anna became ill and a better hospital could be found in Kansas just across the border from her home in Missouri, or a nursing home.  Unless an obituary turns up I probably won't know since I don't plan on paying for the death certificate of a first cousin three times removed, but I would love to know Anna's story and about the shadowy Mr. Hennessey.