How Many Black Sheep Can One Branch Hold?

     

                                                           Bjarki Sigursveinsson

     My great-great-grandfather, James O'Hora from County Carlow, was a lovely man.  I'm sure of it.  When he passed away in 1902 all the area newspapers sang his praises, and if you're familiar with old newspapers you know they really didn't hold back if they disliked you.  Even during his lifetime his local Shortsville, New York newspaper published many complimentary articles about him.

     Then there was his brother John's family.  John's local paper in Auburn, New York referred to his sons as part of the "notorious O'Hora gang" and seemed to take great pleasure in detailing their misdeeds which in truth were many.  After John's death his wife Catherine got in on the act with several arrests of her own, as did one of their daughters Catherine Jr.

      Another daughter of theirs, Anna, was married at seventeen to a man of twenty-three named Michael Travers.  Two years after their marriage Michael and Anna became the parents of a daughter who lived only four months.  The following year their son William was born and two years later, in 1873 another son, John, came into the world.  Anna died that same year quite possibly of childbed fever; the baby survived however and seems to have thrived.

     Like his O'Hora brothers-in-law, Michael Travers was a regular in the columns of the Auburn paper's crime section.  A month before Anna's death he was charged with selling liquor on a Sunday, but he seems to have gone on a real tear after her passing.  Within six months he was arrested with his brother-in-law Michael O'Hora and found guilty of assault and battery.  In early 1875 his liquor license was revoked but that would prove to be the least of his problems that year, Michael was about to be indicted for manslaughter--

Feb 13 1875--The Coroner's inquest in the case of Callahan O'Connor, mentioned in our last issue, was concluded last evening at six o'clock.   The testimony of Dr. Gerin who conducted the post-mortem, was to the effect that O'Connor's death was caused by rupture of the bladder.
     The testimony of several witnesses, who were present at the den of Travers, on the evening when deceased was injured in wrestling with that individual, confirmed O'Connor's ante-mortem statement, and the jury found as their verdict, that Callahan O'Connor came to his death on the 11th inst., in the city of Auburn, from injuries received at the hands of Michael Travers, on the evening of February 8, at his saloon on North street.

      Where Michael's two young sons were during this period can only be guessed at, they would have been about four and two. Michael himself was enumerated as a resident of the city jail  when the New York State census was taken in 1875 but his children appear nowhere in it's pages.  They weren't shown where they might be expected, in the home of their grandmother Catherine, perhaps they were made wards of the county.  Michael beat the manslaughter charge when a jury at his trial that December refused to convict, but he continued his fractious ways earning himself multiple arrests following one after the other, mostly incidents of fighting and excise tax violations.  He was refused a liquor licence in 1878 but the 1880 census reports his occupation as saloon keeper, apparently a licence was obtained at some point.  That census also reveals a new wife fifteen years Michael's senior with a brood of her own.  His sons William and John were also back with Michael at this point but not for long.  William was removed from his care in 1886--

May 19, 1886 Auburn--Willie Travers, the incorrigible, as to whom Recorder Gulon was reported to be in a dilemma, the other day, was finally committed to the orphan asylum. Yesterday morning he got away to see the circus and has not been seen himself since that time.

and in 1888 John was fatally injured while playing in the railroad yards.  Michael's wife Ellen passed away the first day of November the following year.

     Not much is known about the final years of Michael's life, he doesn't appear in later censuses.  The Auburn paper reported in 1883 that he lost a piece of property when he defaulted on a mortgage but nothing else until 1894.  In March of that year Michael was admitted to the Onondaga County Almshouse near Syracuse.  The admission form is a revealing document.  It shows Michael's birthplace of County Kildare, his age of 52, and that he sought admission to the almshouse due to sickness and his inability to do more than light work.  It notes his "habits" which were intemperate but said his parents were of temperate habit.  Michael stated his education was limited and that he had one sister and one living child.  It also notes he had earlier spent two months at St. Joseph's, a charitable hospital in Syracuse.

     Michael died in Syracuse in December of 1903.  A two line death notice in the Auburn newspaper was his only tribute. His surviving son, William, followed in his father's footsteps being himself a regular guest of the Auburn jail--

1895--William Travers was arested this afternoon on a warrant charging him
with assault in the second degree. The complainant is Elizabeth Ferris, a resident of Delevan street who alleges that Travers, who bears a hard reputation,struck her over the head yesterday with a piece of iron which he grabbed from a
stove. The woman's head is badly cut.

     Elizabeth Ferris wasn't unknown to William, she was in fact a sister of his late mother Anna.  It's hard to imagine what could have caused him to attack her so viciously.  In 1919, like his father before him, William was admitted to an almshouse.  When asked about his habits William owned up to being intemperate but when asked about his father's habits he blatantly lied and termed them "good" though it's understandable if he didn't want to open that can of worms.  William seems to have never married, probably a good thing, and died in Auburn at the age of 57 after a fall from a hayloft.

     It's puzzling how two branches of the same tree can be so radically different.  Grandpa James and his sons were hard working farmers and good neighbors while those that remained in Auburn seemed to have been lost souls.  I often wonder if perhaps that was part of the reason James left Auburn and moved far away from them.