Was Great-Great-Grandma a She Devil?

     When the Irish census of 1901 was taken, only 20 houses stood in the townland of Ballygologue in County Kerry.  Mary Elizabeth Gunn had been born in that speck on the map of Ireland in the spring of 1860; now, forty-one years later, she was thousands of miles from Ballygologue.  To be precise, Mary was in a courtroom in Ontario County, New York, defending herself against a charge of fraud.

     Mary came to the United States in 1879 where she found work as a servant on a farm in Macedon, NY.  That she left her parents John and Margaret (Browne) Gunn and brothers George and Francis in Ireland to travel alone was not unusual.  Many Irish women did the same; post famine Ireland had little to offer poor young Irish women.   Her mother’s sister Sarah Browne Griffin made her home close to Macedon, and was no doubt the reason Mary chose that area.  Her future husband, Philip Power, had emigrated from County Waterford, and by 1880 was working as a laborer on a nearby farm.

    The couple was married at St. Anne’s Catholic Church in Palmyra, NY on 8 November 1882; Mary’s Aunt Sarah Griffin was her witness.  At some point in their marriage they moved the few miles to Manchester, NY, where Phillip had found an opportunity to work a farm on shares.  The owner of the property, a widow named Lydia Clark, had recently died leaving two married daughters, and a son, Eugene.  It was he who inherited the farm, and allowed Mary, Phillip and their young children to move into the house with him.  That single decision set in motion a series of events that would reverberate through the local courts for years.

     Thirteen months after Mrs. Clark’s death, Eugene deeded the entire farm to Mary Power, reserving only life use for himself.  The fury of the Clark daughters can only be imagined.  This was no small farm, it encompassed over 180 acres.  They contended Eugene was incapable of minding his own affairs and sought to have a guardian appointed to watch over him and his property.  By the end of the year, they succeeded in having Eugene declared incompetent, but the story was far from over.  For the next six years the case would wind through the courts, being confirmed in one, only to be dismissed in another as appeal after counter appeal were filed.  Sensational headlines blared from local newspapers, “Man Was Under Complete Control of Powers Family” read one. 

     Charles McClouth, who for a time was appointed guardian of Eugene, filed suit against Mary Power; contending she had knowingly taken advantage of a “weak, feeble minded” man and was guilty of fraud.  In the papers he filed with the court, he made a point of their ages and the close proximity in which they lived.  While the charge was never explicitly made, the implication was there; a forty one year old woman living with a forty nine year old single man had worked her feminine wiles until he was rendered, “completely subservient to the will of Mrs. Power”.

     Mary countered with a motion of her own.  She claimed the deed was conveyed to her for, “good and valuable consideration, in good faith and without fraud.  That she has performed her part of the contract, has boarded Eugene, nursed him when he was ill, done his washing, mended his clothes, taken care of his room and administered to all his wants.”   Mary further maintained Eugene was and always had been of sound mind, and she may have been correct, he was trusted enough by the town to be elected collector of school taxes for several years.

       Eugene’s guardian Charles McClouth won that decision, only to find it reversed on appeal.  In 1905, Eugene's lawyer filed a motion seeking to have him declared competent.  The motion was granted.   His sisters and their husbands had had enough!   No more appeals were filed in the case.  When the New York State census was taken that year, Eugene was listed as a border in the household of Philip Power.   Eugene passed away in 1909; his obituary stated he died at the family home where he had always lived.  The 1910, 1920 and 1930 census’ all show the Power family living at the farm.   Their descendants resided there until 1978 when Phillip Power Jr. the last surviving son of Mary and Phillip Sr. died at the farm.

     Did Mary beguile Eugene to the point he was willing to give her everything he owned?  Or did she in truth have an understanding with him that she would care for him as his mother had always done for the remainder of his life?  The only certainty here is that by some means, a middle aged woman from an impoverished country who could not even sign her own name ultimately became the owner of a 180 acre farm in America.

Irish Genealogy Database

     The search for the birthplace in Ireland of my Gunn ancestors has finally been successful thanks to my new favorite internet database  http://www.irishgenealogy.ie .  From her marriage record, I knew the names of my great grandmother Mary Gunn's parents and that she was born in Ireland, but that was all I knew.  The clues have been few and far between, but they've finally come together.  The first came in a small Catholic cemetery located in Palmyra, NY.  There, next to the maintenance shed stood the badly weathered gravestone of my presumed great, great uncle George Gunn.  It bore what looked like the inscription, "Native of Listo, County Kerry, Ireland".  George, I later discovered, is next to the shed because at the time of his death, he was deemed undeserving of a Catholic burial and was placed in non-sacred ground.  The joke was on them though, the cemetery has grown to such an extent that George is now surrounded on all sides by holy ground.
     The second clue was his death certificate.  It named his birthplace as County Kerry, and his parents as John Gunn and Margaret Browne, the very same parents listed in Mary's marriage record.  Mary's name also appeared on the death certificate as the informant.  Taken together I concluded they were almost certainly siblings.  Clue three was finding George's name on the passenger list of a ship arriving in America in 1890, his address --  Listowel, now the partial word Listo on his stone made sense.  Listowel is a town, but also a parish so I knew the family's home wasn't necessarily in the town of Listowel.

     The breakthrough came from the Irish Genealogy site. There I found the baptismal records of not just George Gunn, but his sister Mary, brother Francis and a previously unknown sister Seragh.  The information included names of parents and godparents, and more remarkably, those transcriptions contained a townland, Ballygologue, County Kerry!  The site has records from Roman Catholic parishes in Kerry, Dublin and Cork.  Church of Ireland records are available from Carlow and Kerry along with Presbyterian records from Dublin.  The site is easy to navigate, and although there are as yet no images of my records, they promise they are coming, along with new records.  If only there were more sites like this one, and did I mention, it’s free!

What I Found on Ebay

These are a few of the more interesting items I've bought on Ebay.  Somehow, though purchased at different times, they're all from the Worden line on my father's side.  Below is Inez Worden (1908-2001) holding her baby sister Gladys (1914-1937), they were children of Arthur Worden and Edna Warner of Shortsville, NY.  Inez never married and Gladys never got the chance.  She died at age 22 almost two weeks after an operation for appendicitis.

The next item is a post card written by Flora Worden Post of Manchester, NY to Frank Mull who was hospitalized at St. Mary's in Rochester, NY.  Flora was the half sister of the girl's father Arthur Worden.  She was a Sunday school teacher at the local Methodist church.  On the front is written, June-14-08  Children's Day  Decorations Of Mrs. Post's Class, Manchester M.E. Church.

 

April 30 -10
Dear Friend Frank, Will has just come home this morning, all tired out, is lying down, he stayed with Gilbert last night, am so glad he went up to see you - he is so glad he went for he said you were so pleased to see him.  I have been sick for two weeks, when you get able you must come down and stay awhile with us - it is beautiful down here now. I have sat on the porch most all morning and enjoyed nature for I am not able to work.  Mrs. W.H. Post Manchester N. York 

Last is a fuel ration card from 1945 issued to Arthur Worden

And the hunt goes on...

The Census and the Cemetery or There's More Than One Way to Skin a Census Taker

     Hello all!  It's been some time since I posted anything here.  My dear mother's illness and recent passing have kept me occupied.  I'm slowly getting back to my research which often means trips to various cemeteries, which is where I learned the tip I'd like to share today.  Awhile ago I was having difficulty reading the handwriting of an 1870 census taker; to call it chicken scratching would be an insult to the fowl.  To make matters worse he had thrown in bizarre, never before seen abbreviations for first names and sometimes substituted the word child for names of young family members.

     A few days later I found myself in a cemetery in the very town that maddening enumerator had canvassed.  As I strolled among the graves I noticed some vaguely familiar names and then it hit me!  Those unreadable names in the census were right before me carved in granite.  I added several, correctly spelled I might add, to my tree that day and I've used it successfully in several other instances.  Some of the stones even identified their owner as a child of the person buried nearby.  I've also used old newspapers for hard to decipher names in census records, and even phone books, as families sometimes remain in one location for generations.

Return to St. Pat's Cemetery

    He wasn’t there, he just was not there!  And neither was she.  Spring had sprung and I had returned to the mountain known as St. Patrick’s Cemetery.  Some kind soul had cataloged the tombstones in the cemetery and posted the list online, and John Crotty was on the list.  Only he wasn’t there.  His wife was not on the list, but she should have been, where else would she be?  I had been up and down the cliff twice now, searched high and low, (excuse the pun) and nothing.  My family had a time honored tradition of leaving their loved ones final resting places unmarked; their thoughts seemed to be, we know where we planted them, why waste good money on tom foolery like a tombstone.  Far into the 1900’s few stones were placed.  But John must have had one, he was on the list. 

     John Crotty was the brother of my g.g.g. grandmother Honora Crotty.  She and John were born in the early 1800’s to Patrick and Ellen Crotty in County Waterford, Ireland.  John came to the US around 1854; Honora, the widow of Edmund Power didn’t arrive until almost 1880. Both lived in Farmington, NY, John with his wife Ellen and their daughter Mary while Honora resided with her daughter and son in law Ellen and Thomas Mahoney.  (That’s three different individuals named Ellen; I used to dislike my name, which is also Ellen, until I discovered how much the Irish appeared to like it.)

     Walking back towards my car I noticed an overgrown area two thirds of the way up and figured I may as well check it out, and there he was.  Under branches and vines, surrounded by weeds I found Uncle John.  I set about clearing the debris then pulled the weeds, and there on the side of his tombstone I discovered an inscription for Aunt Ellen Crotty, nee Mullett.  When the cemetery was being cataloged no one had looked at the side of the monument, not that I could blame them, it wasn’t easy to get to even by St. Patrick’s standards.   I wound up setting some flat stones into the hill by their plot as steps to make the climb easier.

     After my exertions I descended, (tripped) to a lower point and as I stood under a large pine tree looking back at their graves, musing on John and Ellen’s lives I heard a tinkling sound.  Looking up I saw someone had placed a small wind chime high in the tree.  How nice I thought, and then I looked higher … there sat the biggest bird I had ever seen in my life!  This raptor creature was as big as my entire upper body, and it was silently staring at me.   I am not a superstitions woman, but being Irish I have enough sense not to fool around with known harbingers of death!  Yet again I beat a hasty retreat from St. Patrick’s.  Maybe next time I’ll bring a body guard.