Not long ago I wrote a blog about Oliver Hennessey and the woman I believe to be his widow, Johanna, or Jane Quinlan. Jane's story continued after Oliver's death with her marriage in about 1869 to a German immigrant by the name of Martin Rigger. Jane and Martin became parents to three more girls, Mary, Sarah, and the youngest, Jane who was born in Palmyra, New York in 1878. The elder Jane passed away in Palmyra in 1881 which apparently was when her last child and namesake was placed in a Catholic orphanage in Rochester, New York, not far from Palmyra.
Young Jane was adopted not long after by Mrs. Margaret Sholes, who like her biological mother Jane Quinlan, had come to America from Ireland. Mrs. Sholes raised Jane in Elmira, New York as her own daughter, never divulging the truth of her parentage to her until the girl had reached her twenty-first birthday. Still living with Mrs. Sholes at age thirty, Jane was about to receive news that would change her life forever.
That news arrived in 1910 in the form of a message from Father Moriarty of Rochester, the location of the orphanage where Margaret had been left years before. Father Moriarty had also been communicating with the two older Rigger children, Mary and Sarah in Rochester who had been searching for their younger sister. The young women had been notified of the death of a relative in Germany whose substantial estate had been left to the children of their father Martin. Before the estate could be settled however, the whereabouts of the youngest sister, the former Jane Rigger, needed to be ascertained.
After the church was able to locate Jane, one of her sisters traveled to Elmira to meet her and impart the facts of the case. It must have been an emotional reunion, Jane was unaware of having sisters or even of her family name. She was also surprised to learn her father Martin, though in ill health and confined to a Rochester hospital, was still living. Plans were made for Margaret to accompany her sister to Rochester to sign the legal papers to settle the estate and meet her other sister. I like to think perhaps she was able to spend time with her long lost father as well before he died the following year.
The papers trumpeted the news of Margaret's good fortune with headlines like, "Adopted Girl Gets Fortune And Learns Her Real Name". As they so often do, the press got some details wrong, asserting Jane had been left at the orphanage where she was adopted by Mrs. Sholes as a baby when in fact she was almost four years of age at the time. She can be found in the 1880 census of Palmyra, below, still living with her parents Martin and Jane and her sisters, including her half sister Anna Hennessey, at the age of three.
Sometimes I think reporters played a bit fast and loose with the truth if they thought it made for a better story. But it could only be through negligence the reporter transposed the names of Jane and her adoptive mother, stating throughout the article that it was "Margaret Rigger" who was adopted by "Jennie Sholes".
I've come across similar stories while seeking my ancestors, it happened all too often that mothers of small children died while giving birth to another and the family was broken up, which given the timeline could be the case here. This was the first time however, that I found them completely losing touch with each other only to be reunited over a small fortune!
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