Sympathy Saturday/Oliver Ryan's Misfortune

    

Oliver Ryan and his second wife Margaret Cotter

      Last year I wrote a blog about my 3rd-great uncle Cornelius Ryan, who with his parents came to America from South Tipperary  in 1860.  Con was born in 1844, the year before the famine began in Ireland, in the small townland of Goldengarden.  In Palmyra, New York Con became a shoemaker, and it was there that he married Anne Hennessy.  There too, their son Oliver was born in 1870.   No fairy-tale ending awaited this Ryan family however.  In the fall of 1877 Cornelius died, and six months later his wife Anne also passed away leaving eight year old Oliver an orphan.  For some time I believed Oliver went to live with his mother's brother, Edward Hennessy in Port Gibson after her death, since he was with him and his family  in the 1880 census.  Then a Ryan cousin stumbled across guardianship papers for Oliver filed in 1878 naming Edward Welch, the husband of Ellen Welch as Oliver's guardian.

     That of course begs the question, why was Oliver not living with Edward and Ellen Welch in 1880?  Looking at the papers themselves and the way they were worded, Ellen's name was grouped with several Hennessy relatives, like she was one of them.  I next looked at the 1880 census but no Edward and Ellen Welch could be found in or near Palmyra.  I then checked the Catholic Cemetery in Palmyra, and there they were, Ellen Welch age 39 died in 1879 and Edward Welch age 60 also died in 1879.  They died the same year...there just might be a story there, so the next stop was the Old Fulton site with it's wealth of newspapers.  There was a story all right!  Ellen had passed away first, leaving Edward so grief stricken over the loss of his young wife that he committed suicide by shooting himself in the head.  He was found lying on her grave in St. Anne's Cemetery in Palmyra--

May 28, 1879--At Palmyra Edward Welch, a laborer, shot himself dead on the grave of his wife who had died two weeks before.  After her death he would not work but wandered around bewailing his loss.

     I then checked Ancestry's deaths section and there I found a copy of Edward's will made on 22 April 1879.  In it Edward named Oliver Ryan, "my nephew who lives with me and is now my adopted son", as his sole heir.  No mention at all is made of Ellen so it appears to me she probably died in mid April.  I think the newspaper was mistaken when it claimed Ellen had been dead only two weeks when her husband took his life.  Edward made the will providing for Oliver and just over four weeks later he ended his life and his anguish.  And the poor little boy who had just lost a second mother figure was uprooted yet again.  I hope Oliver was able to remain with his Uncle Edward's family til he was grown.  There of course is no 1890 census, but New York's 1892 census shows Oliver in Farmington just a few miles from Port Gibson listed next to the Gorman family.  He might even have been living with them, that census does not give relationships or house numbers.  His Hennessy grandmother Bridget was a Gorman before her marriage so these people may have been family to Oliver.  

     The following year he married Elizabeth Cotter, and they had two children, Oliver Jr. in 1894 and Grace in 1896.  Elizabeth and Oliver's happiness would be short lived; twenty-one months after Grace's birth, in December of 1897, Elizabeth died.  In January of 1901 Oliver married again, this time to Margaret Cotter who may have been a sister or cousin of his first wife.  This marriage would last 24 years until tragedy struck once again in August of 1925 when Margaret passed away.  Oliver Jr. died in 1941, quite suddenly according to his obituary.

     Oliver himself died 21 February 1953, aged 83 at the home of his daughter-in-law, Oliver Jr's widow, Mary.  His daughter Grace survived him.  Oliver Ryan was one of those unfortunate people whose lives are plagued with tragedy.  It seems unfair he had to endure so much from such a young age.  I earnestly hope there were many joyful moments as well for Oliver.

Update To The Sad Story of Ellen Hennessey & Edward Welch

      

Welch monument in St. Anne's Cemetery Palmyra, NY

     This tale began with a blog about Oliver Ryan, the only child of my second great-grand-uncle Cornelius Ryan. Cornelius came to America from the townland of Golden Garden in South Tipperary with his parents Alice O'Dwyer and Cornelius Ryan Sr. in 1860, settling in Palmyra, New York.  Cornelius met another young immigrant, Anne Hennessey, there in Palmyra and the two were wed in 1869 at St. Anne's Catholic Church in the village.  The following year their son Oliver was born.  Tragically, Cornelius passed away when Oliver was seven and his mother Anne when he was eight.

     In surrogate court held at Lyons, New York, Ellen Hennessey Welch, a sister of Oliver's mother, was named his guardian along with her husband Edward Welch.  Tragedy struck Oliver's young world once again when Ellen died shortly after that.  To say Ellen's much older husband Edward was undone by her death would be an understatement, the grief stricken man fatally shot himself on her grave on 25 May 1879.

     Not surprisingly, newspapers of the time were less than accurate with the facts.  One reported Edward shot himself two weeks after her death, others remained silent on the timing.  I knew two weeks wasn't accurate because Edward had made his will on April 22nd, a will in which he left everything  to Oliver, making no mention of Ellen at all so she had to have been gone by that time.  Yesterday, I couldn't stand staying at home any longer, I had to do some genealogy!  Outdoors of course.  So I drove to the cemetery where Ellen was buried.  And I stayed there, walking up and down until I found her and Edward.  For some reason I hadn't noted the location of their stone on my last visit and the dates on it were so heavily encrusted with lichen back then that I couldn't read much of it.  Yesterday I came prepared with a soft toothbrush and a squirt bottle of water.

     It cleaned up quite well, the photo looks even better than the stone actually.  In the first blog I theorized Ellen had died earlier in April before Edward made his will.  Looking at the photo above you can see it says Ellen passed on Mar 31, 1879.  Edward's epitaph below looks like it says May 29th was the date of his death, though newspapers maintain he shot himself on the 25th.  However, several also report he was still alive when he was found lying unconscious on Ellen's grave so perhaps he lingered a few days before joining her in the afterlife.

     I don't know why it took me so long to go back to the cemetery, but I'm glad I did, it was wonderful to get out!

     

I Do Believe In Spooks!

     Most of you will recall the title of this post as the utterance of the Cowardly Lion in the movie, The Wizard Of Oz.  It could also have been the notion running through my mind a few nights ago as I participated in my first "ghost walk" in Palmyra, New York.  After the passing of my husband last year I cast about for something to occupy the time I now had in plentiful supply, settling on joining a group called Historic Palmyra.  Chosen not only because it was nearby and history is something I enjoy, but also because the building which houses one of the museums they operate was once a hotel/bar owned by the husband of my distant cousin Catherine Ryan Riffenburg, daughter of Thomas Ryan and Mary Power.  Furthermore, Catherine's first cousin, my great-grandmother Maggie Power, was shown working there as a teenage domestic in the 1900 census.

     Catherine and Maggie are far from the only ancestors of mine who once called Palmyra home.  Cornelius Ryan, (a different family of Ryans than Catherine), lived there after arriving from Tipperary and the Hogans, Sheehans, and Slatterys all were there for a time in the mid to late nineteenth century.  As easily imagined given the state of medical science at that time, there were more than a few tragedies associated with those families. Cornelius died at age 33 leaving a wife and young son Oliver; his widow Anna Hennessey died just six months later.  Anna's sister Ellen Hennessey, who with her husband Edward Welch became Oliver's guardians, died a year after that, causing the grief-stricken Edward Welch to commit suicide on her grave.

     Ten years earlier, Cornelius' sister Sarah Ryan had died in Palmyra at age 26 not long after her marriage to William Slattery, quite possibly in childbirth like her sister Ellen Ryan Maher who had passed a month before Cornelius in 1877.  Though Ellen's demise was in Ohio, she was buried in Palmyra.  William Slattery's wife before Sarah Ryan had been Catherine Hogan, a sister of  Bridget Hogan who was married to Sarah, Ellen, and Cornelius' brother Andrew Ryan.  Catherine is another likely candidate for death in childbirth.  It's quite involved I know.  But the point is, I felt like I had lots of material to work with here, vis a vis possible spirit activity.

     First stop on the walk was the oldest cemetery in the village where a woman wielding two dowsing rods asked questions of several of the "residents".  Which they appeared to answer!  Then on to a marvelously preserved general store dating back to canal times, and lastly to the old hotel.  Would Grandma Maggie stop by?  I can't say I'm positive ghosts really do exist though I definitely lean that way.  Over the years I've experienced what I consider unusual events, like the time I set out alone to find Aurelius, NY, first home in America of my great-great-grandfather James O'Hora from County Carlow.  Though my map said I was still miles away, at least the way I read the map, suddenly I somehow knew I was already in his town. (I was in fact, one road over from the farm he had lived on.) And the time I first saw French Cemetery in Victory, NY and was able to walk with no hesitation directly to the grave of my 4th great-grandmother.

     I did my best to remain open and approachable as we sat in the darkened former hotel listening for footsteps or knocks. Sad to say none were forthcoming.  Disappointing, but given the large size of the crowd, due to a pirate festival being held the same night on Main Street, it didn't seem to me especially conducive to ghostly appearances.  Were I them, I would have taken a walk until the intruders left my home.

     Still, the idea of communicating with family members who have gone to their rewards is an intriguing one.  So many questions could be answered!  The night really wasn't a loss, it was great fun to suspend disbelief while wandering the darkened old buildings, and to wonder, "what if"... and I even met a pirate.