Quigley Family Revisited

     A year ago I wrote a blog about my great-great-grandmother, Maria McGarr's sister Anna and her family who immigrated to the USA from Ireland many years after Grandma did.  You can read it here.  It concerned the "disappearance" of Daniel Quigley, the youngest son of the widow Anna McGarr Quigley; who up until 1908 resided with his mother.  I found an obituary for him that cleared up where he had gone, but not why unfortunately.

     I couldn't find Anna or Daniel in the 1910 census--and I still can't-- but today I found Anna's obituary so at least I have an idea what happened and where she was.  I ran many searches for this obit before giving up last year.  Today I revisited the cemetery website which holds what I believed to be details about Anna's burial.  I noted the burial date was 24 September 1913.  That suggests she died the 21st or 22nd day of September.  I then went to the Old Fulton site and began combing those editions of the local newspaper page by page, hoping to find the article, which I did!

Rochester, NY Democrat & Chronicle September 23, 1913

     I'm betting you can see why this didn't turn up in my searches, it's barely legible, the software couldn't read it, but I could--

QUIGLEY-- At St. Ann's Home For the Aged Sunday evening, September 21, 1913, Mrs. Anna Quigley, aged 81 years.  She leaves two sons and two daughters.  The body was taken to the home of her son John Quigley at No. 203 Atkinson St. [I know the street number only from the city directory]
    Funeral Wednesday morning ... at Immaculate Conception Church.  Interment at Holy Sepulchre Cemetery.

     It was definitely her in the cemetery index, My Anna's son John indeed lived on Atkinson St., and one of her five children had predeceased her, leaving Anna with four children.  Something clearly happened in or around 1908, the last year I find Anna and Daniel together in the Rochester directory.  Or find them at all for that matter, I can't locate Daniel in the 1915 NY census either.  Maybe Anna became too ill for Daniel to care for, though it makes me curious why her daughter or older married son didn't take her in?  Putting one's parent into a nursing home wasn't all that common in the early part of the 20th century.  I wonder if it was something like Alzheimer's or dementia and perhaps they were just unable to deal with it?  Although, it just occurred to me, Rochester Library has microfilm of Holy Sepulchre burial registers up til about 1915 and like the registers in San Francisco, they contain a cause of death!  There may be yet another sequel to this story.