What Was the Relationship? In Which a Pugilist Breathes His Last and a Family Disappears

Bridget Hogan Ryan (1834-1902)

     The Hogans; I don't want to call them a thorn in my side, but...  My third-great-grandfather Cornelius Ryan and his son Con Jr., from the Tipperary parish of Anacarty/Donohill, both lie buried in Darby Hogan's family plot at St. Anne's Cemetery in Palmyra, New York.  Why is that?  Cornelius Sr.'s older son Andrew Ryan married a woman named Bridget Hogan from Knockavilla, Tipperary though her father was Thomas Hogan, not Darby who lived far away on the other side of Tipperary.  Was Darby a brother of Thomas?  What was Darby's tie to the Ryan family, was it Bridget's marriage?  I can't say, and so I continue tracking the Hogans looking for that elusive link.  

     I'm currently researching the descendants of Thomas Hogan and Catherine O'Dwyer, parents of several Hogans who left Tipperary and settled in Wayne and Monroe counties in upstate New York.  That much I'm sure of since Bridget's marriage record contained her parent's names.  There's also that naming pattern that confirms it further.  Bridget had a brother named Michael Hogan who was a witness at her marriage to Andrew in Palmyra.  Michael married Mary Dolan and lived close to Bridget and Andrew in Perinton, New York near Palmyra.  Bridget also had a sister, Catherine Hogan, who married fellow Irish immigrant William Slattery at Palmyra.  Their marriage, while cut short by Catherine's untimely death three years later, did produce a son named Timothy born at Palmyra and named for William's father.  Catherine's is the only Irish baptism I've found, (this parish's records don't begin until 1835), and it names Thomas Hogan and Catherine O'Dwyer as her parents with their address as Knockavilla.  There are three others I believe were brothers of Bridget, Michael, and Catherine, though the links are somewhat tenuous.

    The oldest would have been James Hogan who in 1860 was married and living in Galen near Clyde, New York, about twenty miles from Palmyra. There are several indications James was a brother, the first being his only son was named Thomas, as was Bridget's second son, and Michael's first son.  Secondly, a newspaper article noted James' son Thomas worked at a glass factory in Muncie Indiana, the importance of which you will see in just a minute.

     Another probable brother was Peter Hogan who was two names from James in the 1870 census of Galen.  He and James were both railroad workers according to that census which may explain how they wound up in Galen. Peter died in 1875 at about age forty, afterwards his wife Ellen married the widower, Michael Carroll.  Peter's son Thomas died from consumption at his mother's home in the spring of 1902.  His obituary read: "Thomas Hogan, the pugilist who died in Clyde Monday night of consumption, is said to have relatives living in Perinton. Mr. Hogan had been employed for the past year at the Muncie Ind. Glass Works."  The clear implication being, this Thomas and his cousin Thomas both worked in the glass industry in Muncie and the relatives in Perinton, mentioned in the obituary, would have been the deceased's father Peter's two siblings Bridget and Michael.  In one of those strange twists of fate, Michael Hogan in Perinton lost his own son Thomas six months later when the man fell into the Erie Canal there and drowned.

     William Hogan is the individual I have the least information on.  He lived closest to Bridget and Michael and was a baptismal sponsor for one of their children.  William appears in the Palmyra census of 1870 along with his wife Mary and children Thomas and Sarah.  A burial record at St. Anne's in Palmyra memorializes, "Mary Lawler wife of William Hogan", who was buried 30 August 1874.  The 1880 census shows the widower William Hogan still in Palmyra with his children Thomas 25 and Mary 23.  After that year they simply vanish, I've never found another trace of any of them.  Sarah may well have married and changed her last name, but she, William or Thomas should have left some trace.  In years of searching however, I have not found that trace.

    Returning to Catherine Hogan who married William Slattery, it should be noted that after her death William married again.  This time to Sarah Ryan, none other than the daughter of Cornelius Ryan Sr., interred in Darby Hogan's cemetery plot.  And who do you suppose William Slattery's parents were?  Timothy Slattery and Johanna Hogan.  Another Hogan!  As if the four Thomas Hogans weren't enough.  It would seem I have come full circle and ended up where I began.

     The Slattery family is interesting not just for Johanna Hogan, but because it appears they had roots in Knockgorman, Tipperary, part of the very same parish Cornelius Ryan lived in.  I found baptisms for three of the Slattery children in parish registers, Sarah in 1822, Julia in 1825, and Timothy Jr. in 1832.  Timothy Jr. would later turn up near William in Palmyra as a young adult.  The one baptism I didnt find was William's, who married Catherine Hogan and Sarah Ryan. However, after playing with the search engine at Find My Past I came up with the following baptism in 1828 at Anacarty/Donohill;

 "Wm of Tim ??? & Judy Hogan, the address was Knockgorman.  FMP thinks Tim's surname is Mathew, I'm not so sure.  It could just as easily be the letters SL as the letter M beginning that name. The image below shows how the parish priest formed the letters M and the letter S in his abbreviation for Sponsors.  The man was S challenged.  To top it off, one of this William's sponsors was Patt Heffernan -- all the other Slattery children had a Heffernan as their sponsor too.  I'm not ready to rule this out as William's baptism just yet.

     Knockgorman was less than two miles from Churchfield where Cornelius Ryan was living when he married Alice O'Dyer in 1824.  These two families, the Slatterys and Ryans, knew each other in Ireland, but the question remains, did they know Darby fifty miles away in Killeen?