I Attend Lectures At the National Archives of Ireland, And So Can You

      

     It's true, you can!  I'm a faithful reader of Clare Santry's Irish Genealogy News blog which covers all things pertaining to Irish genealogical research, from databases to site updates, to bargains. Pickings have been slim since covid reared its ugly head, but one helpful thing that did come out of the lock downs was an increase in Zoom accessible lectures.  A while ago on Clare's site I noticed one such talk sponsored by the Archives titled, From Tithes to Griffith's: Property and Valuation Records, given by professional genealogist Michael Walsh and now available at You Tube.  As I happened to currently be working in just that area of my research, I decided to give it a go.

      I've been fruitlessly searching for my third-great-grandfather Michael Hoar/O'Hora, of  Ricketstown, County Carlow, in the Tithe Applotment Books ever since they came online in 2012.  I've found a John "Hoar", another variation, in Ricketstown but no Michael, whose children's baptism records give his address as that place. The tithe book of the Civil Parish of Rahill in County Carlow contains part of Ricketstown; the other part of the townland lies in the Civil Parish of Kineagh, County Carlow.  I cannot find it, and Lord knows I've looked!  

John Hoar in the Rahill Parish book, mistakenly indexed as Hoan at the Archives

     Once again, I pulled up the Kineagh book.  It had 131 images online at Family Search, not bad, may as well look at them all.  The first pages seemed to be a protracted argument about who should get the cash from the tithes, but then the image below came up. Take a look at the heading, it reads, "Particulars of Rent-Charge payable to Thomas G. Maple in lieu of Composition...".  What did that mean? Typically, it would have read just, "Annual Composition", though all the tithe books are a little different.  There was no standard form used, each locality designed thier own format.

Ricketstown is the last entry in the Kineagh Parish book, person liable for rent-charge is J. Hutchinson

     

            This page was followed by more discussion of who was entitled to benefit from the tithes, then suddenly, I found myself in County Cork.  Seems it also has a parish by the name of Kineagh.  Returning to the page, it appears J. Hutchinson, in the third column, was responsible for Ricketstown's tithes so possibly no list of occupiers was done?  Maybe that professional genealogist could help.

     I've hesitated in the past to try these lectures. Attempting to calculate the time differences and navigate the intricacies of Zoom, along with my aversion to attempting anything that might cause me frustration, (like computers) intimidated me a bit.  However, this proved literally painless.  I reserved my "ticket", followed the instructions emailed to me, and I was in like Flynn.  I really didn't even read the instructions closely, which for me is always a last resort, and it still worked.  Kudos to the Archives.

     The program was enjoyable, and it felt quite glamorous to be attending an academic lecture.  I even learned a few things.  There was a Q & A session afterwards, but unfortunately my question about the phrase, "in lieu of composition", wasn't chosen.  

     I remain completely confused by all this, the description at Family Search says the year of the Kineagh book is unknown, but it appears to be post 1837.  For years the british had been floating bills to change how tithes were collected, hoping Catholic tenants could be mollified by lowering their tithes and rolling them into their rent payments. That became law in 1838 and would explain the use of the term, "Rent-Charge", on the document.  Still, I came across a book done in 1850 which still listed occupiers at that late date.  All I know is that the names of Ricketstown residents in Kineagh are missing.  I'm not quite ready to give up though, maybe I should be looking in the Cork film?

     

     

     

That Missing 1890 Census! In Which I Discover Mary Ann O'Hora's Story, Find Two New Cousins, And Share Some Free Rochester, NY Databases

 

Aftermath of the fire that destroyed the 1890 census

     Irish immigrants Margaret Welch and Michael O'Hora, (the brother of my great-great-grandfather James O'Hora), were a prolific couple.  They produced twelve children between 1855 and 1877 in Cayuga County, New York, and even more amazingly for the mid-19th century, they kept every one of them alive to adulthood.  I had accounted for all twelve children with the exception of one, Mary Ann, born in about 1863.  I knew from several of her brother's obituaries that Mary had at times lived in New York City and Jersey City, along with her sister Margaret O'Hora Murphy, and had picked up a husband with the surname Seeley at some point.  That was all I had.

     I began with the New York State Marriage Index, brought to us through the perseverance of the good folks at Reclaim the Records who sued for their release.  Nothing turned up there, so I next searched New York City marriages, nothing there either, or in the New Jersey index.  That was odd.  Next, I checked census records, the closest I came was a Mary and Charles Seeley that could have been the right couple, but that really didn't pan out.  Then in the 1910 census I found a Mary A. Seeley, wife of Frederick W. Seeley.  Now that looked promising, this Mary was born in New York, both of her parents were from Ireland, and she was of the right age, but there were two young men listed as stepsons to Frederick in the household, Alexander and Joseph Farquhar.  That couldn't be right, I'd never heard that name before, and none of the obituaries I'd read had ever mentioned another husband for Mary.  Still, the youngest son, Joseph, wasn't born until 1888 and none of those obituaries were that early, so it was a possibility, however unlikely it seemed.

    Rechecking the obituaries, I saw that any reference to Mary Seeley had stopped by 1921, she wasn't included in her brother Michael's obituary that year, nor her brother John's in 1922, though all the other living siblings were listed in both.  The 1909 obituary of Henry O'Hora, "Mrs. Mary Seeley, of Jersey City NJ", and the 1910 obituaries of James and Thomas O'Hora, "Mrs. Seeley of NYC", were the last mentions of Mary Ann. She must have passed away between 1910 and 1921.  A search of Find A Grave turned up a burial for a Mary Seeley who died in 1917 and was interred in Holy Name Cemetery in Jersey City.  I visited the cemetery's website and did a search for Mary Seeley; when the result page came up, there was a wee button titled, "Additional Deceased in Plot (1)".  Clicking the button I found, Frederick W.!  That 1910 census was looking better by the minute. The death date of Mary Seeley in Holy Name fit my timeline nicely, in addition to her age, current residence, birthplace and parent's birthplace.  But who were those Farquhar's?

     New York City vital records aren't included in the New York State indexes, so I did a separate search in the NYC vital records database. This is what came up--  

O'Hara!  That is awfully close to O'Hora.    

     The Old Fulton newspaper website was my next stop; if only I could find something that definitively tied the Farquhar's to the O'Hora's I could be certain Mary Farquhar was my girl.  And after several tries, I did find it, in an estate settlement in 1923--

To Jennie O'Hora, Margaret Murphy, Frank O'Hora, Patrick O'Hora, Anna O'Hora, Alice O'Hora, ... numerous other O'Hora's... (but no Mary Seeley) ... and finally, the very last names, Alexander, and Joseph Farquhar. They were all requested to appear in court in Auburn if they wished to contest probate of the will of Mary's brother John O'Hora.  I recognized all these names as children and grandchildren of Michael and Margaret O'Hora, Mary's parents.

   Now I was convinced this was my Mary Ann, but I wanted more, I wanted that O'Hora/Farquhar marriage record.  Just to see what happened, I added the two boys to Mary's tree on Ancestry.  Alexander's WWII draft card came up, his birthplace-- Rochester, New York.  Rochester!  That changed everything.  I know Rochester genealogy, I live in the neighborhood, I know where to look and what's available.  First I checked the city's, "Rochester Historic Marriage Records", database, figuring Mary Ann may have tied the knot in Rochester since her first child was born there.  Nothing came up.  But I wasn't done, next I searched the, "Rochester Churches Indexing Project", and found this--

     There it is, Mary's first husband was Joseph Farquhar just like on her son's birth certificate.  Look at the bride's parents' names, perfect.  Everything had conspired against me finding this marriage, starting with no available census in 1890 to find the couple in.  They should have been in the Rochester marriage database but weren't, and they weren't in the New York State Marriage Index either.  I checked that index manually since I now had a year, and pages 361 to 421 were missing.  Right where Mary O'Hora would have been.  I can't explain why Joseph Farquhar wasn't listed other than it had only been a few years since New York State began requiring that marriages be reported, and compliance wasn't quite up to snuff yet.  

     That left but two loose ends, what became of Joseph Farkuhar, and when and where did Mary Ann wed Mr. Seeley?  Back to the New York City Vital Records site where I struck out.  However, Ancestry has a death index for NYC, there I located Joseph's death and the number of the death certificate.  Using that number I found the actual certificate on the NYC site--

     As for Mary's second marriage, I suspected it took place in New Jersey, which doesn't have a nice site with certificate images like New York City, but those folks at Reclaim the Records I mentioned earlier had also asked New Jersey for their old vital records.  They didn't even have to file a lawsuit in this case.  In those records I found Mary O'Hara marrying Frederick Seeley in 1904, no further dates or address given.  I think that's a wrap.

A Time In Mom's Life Found In A Photo Album

      

     I've sat down several times to write this blog, but a feeling of sadness washes over me and I abandon the attempt.  It began when I was looking through a photo album I inherited from my late mother.  Actually, it was more like I stumbled upon it on a closet shelf while cleaning out the family home after my father had also passed.  The album was from the 1940's and as I leafed through it, I noticed the pages were beginning to deteriorate.  That couldn't be good for the pictures it held, so I began removing them, careful to keep them in order.

     I should note up front my mother had a more difficult life than most, and my feelings for her are colored by the empathy I feel.  At age seven she witnessed her mother fatally injured while filling the kitchen stove from a can of kerosine.  It exploded in her hands, blowing out a window and burning her terribly.  It's a miracle none of the children waiting for their breakfast were injured.  Their father remarried shortly after, to a younger woman who didn't want his seven children around.  They were sent to live with their grandmother, rarely to see their father who started another family. When my mother was thirteen her favorite sister died after a botched operation, even as Mom donated blood in an attempt to save her.  It seemed fate had finally smiled on her in 1945 when she married Dan, the man of her dreams, only to have that dream devolve into a nightmare when he was killed during the Korean War five years later.  Five years after Dan's death she married my father.  Without going into detail, it was not a happy marriage. 

     As I removed the photos from the album, I noticed writing on the backs of some of them.  One caught my eye; it was a picture of Mom with her brother Ken in full uniform.  On the back was written in part, "113 South 5th St. where our apartment was... on our way to Greenfield Lake".  Where was Greenfield Lake I wondered?  I knew my mother had married Dan, a career Marine, in Wilmington, North Carolina so I started there.  A Google Maps search for Greenfield Lake, NC brought it up, just outside Wilmington!  Another photo was exactly the same as the first one, only instead of Ken, it was Dan standing next to my mother, and this one was dated, 1945.  

Mom and her brother Ken Lash

Mom and Dan Carroll

     What were the odds the house was still there I wondered?  Now I was reasonably sure the city was Wilmington, I returned to Google Maps, where I did a search on the street address from the back of the photo--

     It was the house!  There was no mistaking the brickwork out front.  That spot on the side walk to the right of the steps is the exact spot where my mother had stood seventy-eight years ago.  Could it really be that long?  That's when I teared up a little and left this blog for another day.

     Returning today to hopefully finish the project, I found another photo taken the same day as the others.  It's of Mom and Dan in the bow of a small boat floating on, you guessed it, Greenfield Lake.  I'd bet it was snapped by my Uncle Ken also sitting in the boat.

Sgt. Dan and Mom, the skirt was red!

     I'm not sure why these photos have the effect on me that they do.  The people in them are young, happy, and in love.  The war in Europe is over, they all made it through, life is good and the future is bright.  Maybe it's because I know what lies in store for them, it's like a movie one has seen a dozen times but somehow you desperately want the ending to be different this time.  This time I want that can of kerosene to not explode; I want Mom's sister to have a competent surgeon; this time I want Dan to come home from Korea. What I really want is my dear mother to be happy.

When A Marriage Certificate Contradicts It Own Self

      

     I've spent some time lately researching those less popular subjects in my tree, the ones who never married or had children, so their line comes to an end with not a lot to trace.  You never know though, and that is why I'm sitting here -- that and the sub-freezing temps outside.  This morning I've been looking at my great-great-aunt Lida C. Powers who I had only bare bones information about.  I think I wanted to learn more about her because it annoys me to no end how other family trees insist on using the name Lydia, found in exactly one single census, instead of her correct name of Lida, as recorded in the other censuses.  I know Lida was her name because she was the sister of my grandfather's mother and he spoke of her often.  I even met the lady once myself; only once because she was elderly by then and resided near New York City while I rusticated upstate in the boondocks near Rochester.

     I knew Lida had married later than most, as many Irish ladies did, that she was a nurse and instructor, and her husband, Uncle Leland, was a well to do funeral director.  Getting started, I pulled up Ancestry and commenced a search for her.  One item that came up was a marriage certificate from New Brunswick, Canada.  That could fit, I knew Leland was born in Canada though he wasn't currently living there.  Of course, Ancestry wouldn't allow me look at the certificate when I tried since I don't have a world subscription, so I set about finding another way to view it, which I usually can with a little searching.  Family Search looked promising, but these particular records hadn't been indexed and while I was plodding through them the images stopped loading.  I found another site, The Provincial Archives of New Brunswick, and tried that one successfully!  It also had free images.

     I easily found the certificate which gave the correct birthplace and parent's names for Lida, so I was confident it was her.  The problem was with the certificate itself.  

     It clearly says the marriage took place the 27th of September in 1928, but look closely down in the right hand corner, it apears to say it was registered the 29th of September in 1938, or does it?

     It certainly looks like it says 1938, but what's the deal with that weird little tail on the 3?  I decided the anwer could be found in the 1930 census, and there was Aunt Lida, living at the nursing college where she was the principal, listed as single.  Her future husband was in the same town, living and working as a supervisor at an "insane hospital", he was listed as widowed.  It looked as though they couldn't have married in 1928, and the 1938 date was the right one.  But then I looked at her age on the certificate and it was what it would have been in 1928, not ten years later.  Now I was really confused.  Checking the 1940 census, I saw that Lida and Leland were living in Kings County, New York and said they had been living at the same place in 1935, so they must have been married BEFORE 1938. This called for some serious thought.

     Try as I may, I could not reconcile the facts as given.  I recalled reading that there was a time when female teachers were required to remain single or lose their jobs, but was that still the case in the late 1920's?  From what I could find on the internet, it was.  By 1930 Lida was more than a teacher, she had moved into a principal's position.  Could it be she wasn't ready to end her career and kept her marriage secret for a time?  That would certainly explain why she chose to marry in Canada rather than New York where she had sisters and a father still living.  I did one last search at Ancestry, this one for Leland and I found my answer, at least a partial one in a Massachusetts passenger list--

Leland Macdonald
Departure Place	Yarmouth, Nova Scotia
Arrival Date	27 Sep 1936
Arrival Place	Boston, Massachusetts, USA

     Not just Leland was among the passengers, Lida C. MacDonald was with him on that trip.  In 1936.  I'm not sure I'll ever know with certainty what motivated Lida and Leland to hide their union for at least two years, but I'm ready to add the marriage to my tree, in 1928.

What Sort of House Did You Say That Was?

     Everyone wants to believe their ancestors were upstanding people who worked hard and made sacrifices, paving the way for succeeding generations. Of course, a few black sheep are always appreciated, they add spice to the story.  But an entire family of them is something else.

     My great-great-grandfather, James O'Hora, who emigrated from Ricketstown in County Carlow, Ireland was by all accounts, a man to be proud of. The local newspaper that covered the small hamlet of Littleville, New York where his farm was located, had not a bad word to say about James nor his wife Maria McGarr in all the decades they lived there.  Coincidentally, James' older brother John had married Maria's sister Catherine McGarr in Ireland.  After the birth of their first child, John and Catherine set sail for New York, immediately settling in the Auburn, New York area where they had relatives. 

     James and Maria married in Auburn after arriving in America several years apart, and they too lived in the Auburn area for a time before purchasing their farm in Littleville. That is where all similarities between the two families end. 

     John passed away around 1872 I'm guessing, he doesn't appear with his wife Catherine and their children in New York's1875 census, and that year of 1872 is the first one in which his widow appears on the rolls of the overseer of the poor in Auburn. Things seemed a little off with this family when I found the marriage record of their oldest daughter, Mary, in 1861, only fifteen years after her baptism in Ireland. That was incredibly young for an Irish woman to marry. Her first child came along in 1863, perhaps she miscarried one in 1861? Her sister Anne waited a few years, marrying at age eighteen, but still quite young. Her firstborn came two years later. Something seemed fishy here.

     Then there were the boys. Daniel, Michael, John, Peter and Richard, all of whom were, shall we say, well known in Auburn. Particularly in police circles, and all had lengthy rap sheets.  The following article published in July of 1880 says it all-- "Michael O'Hora, one of the famous O'Hora gang was brought in last night by officer Crosby for public intoxication on Perrine Street".  And that was one of their more innocuous violations. Everything from theft, assault, general mayhem, they did it. Their sister Elizabeth married William Ferris at the more appropriate age of twenty-two and raised a large family in Auburn.  Elizabeth managed to keep herself out of the news unlike her siblings.  That leaves Catherine, who was a year older that Elizabeth.

     Catherine lived with her widowed mother, earning her living as a laundress. For a long time, I viewed her as the dutiful daughter caring for her poor, aging, widowed mother; see, that's me still wanting to believe the best of my relatives. Then while doing some newspaper searches recently, instead of typing in "Catherine O'Hora" I used the search term "Kate O'Hora", and the floodgates opened.

     In 1891-- Kate O'Hora Willis last week pleaded guilty to the charge of stealing $5 from Mrs. Mary Eager of Delevan Street.  Wait one minute...Willis? After a search of the NYS marriage index, I found Catherine did indeed marry Thomas Willis in 1887, at age 30, there in Auburn.  Also, in 1891 I found Kate Willis arrested for intoxication and disorderly conduct with Mark LaDuce, a Salvation Army man no less.

     In 1894 we see Kate O'Hora charged with threatening violence and using profane language to one Ellen Ryan who was attempting, in vain, to drag her intoxicated husband William from the O'Hora residence. In that case, Kate's mother Catherine was charged with keeping a disorderly house.

     In 1901 this headline appeared, "From Jail To Hospital"; Kate O'Hora completed a sentence of 30 days for intoxication and was sent in a carriage to the city hospital on the order of the jail physician.  (Notice she no longer used the surname Willis. They were living on Delevan Street along with Catherine's mother in one city directory, but I have a feeling Mr. Willis made his exit after a few years of life with the "O'Hora Gang".)

     Auburn's 1902 city directory shows Mrs. Kate Willis living in a room over Falconi's Saloon on Clark Street, a rough and tumble sort of place with no shortage of stabbings, slashings, and even a shooting, as I found after doing a newspaper search for the establishment.  In other words, about the last place on earth someone like Kate should call home. 

     The coup de grace came in 1914,

 ...five of the defendants represented a raid made on an alleged disorderly house in Genesee Street a few nights ago. The entire five were arraigned this morning. Sarah Simmons who was charged with maintaining the house was given a flat sentence of 61 days in the Onondaga County Penitentiary. The other four defendants were charged with being inmates. Catherine O'Hora was given the option of paying $5 or spending 30 days in jail... The striking feature of the case was that all of the defendants were well past middle life. When judgment was passed on them, some of the elderly defendants broke down and sobbed... 

      At that time Kate was age 57.

     The term disorderly occurs quite often in these articles. What exactly did that really mean back then I wondered?  The Cornell Law School has the following definition on its website-

     A mostly outdated charge against someone creating a nuisance in the area. The most common use of a disorderly house charge was for using a house as a brothel. Other actions that could give rise to a disorderly house charge include dealing alcohol or hosting gambling in a house.

     I was beginning to have serious doubts about Catherine, aka Kate. Especially after reading that last article referring to her as the inmate of a disorderly house.  I think we all know another word for the inmate of a disorderly house.  At least it seems she pulled herself together in her later years, judging from her obituary--

Auburn Citizen Thursday Aug 25, 1927

     The death of Mrs. Katherine Willis occurred yesterday afternoon shortly after 2 o'clock after a brief illness. While she had been complaining slightly for some time past of a weakened heart, no alarm was felt until she contracted a severe cold which proved fatal yesterday. She had been a resident of this city nearly all of her life and was well known and liked by those who knew her...

    Kate was 70 years of age at her death.  Her obituary said her only survivors were nieces and nephews; she had outlived all eight of her brothers and sisters. Perhaps that last arrest in 1914 was when Kate hit rock bottom and took stock of her life.  Her mother had passed in 1903 and her only surviving sister in 191l, leaving her without any close female relative.  I wish I had a photograph of Catherine, I'm so curious about her.  I plan to keep looking for more information to hopefully get a clearer picture of her life, particularly her final years for which no census or directory records seem to exist.

My Oldestest Brick Wall Is Still Gathering Moss

 

    To put it mildly, I've had the devil's own time tracing my McGarr ancestors, the family of my great-great-grandmother Maria on my father's side.  Maria was born somewhere in Ireland and at some point, came to America.  That was all I knew when I began.  Maria's granddaughter, my grandmother, had given me the names of Maria's children, her husband, James O'Hara, (in fact it was O'Hora), and the obituary of one of her sons that gave Maria's maiden name as McGraw instead of McGarr.  No wonder I struggled so in the beginning.  This was before the days of Ancestry and online censuses, forcing me to travel to a nearby town to view those records; there I made my first breakthrough.  In the censuses I found James and Maria along with all the children's names as Grandma had told me, but the surname was O'Hora, not O'Hara.  All the census records had that spelling though, as did the newspapers I later found on microfilm from the NYS library, so apparently Grandma had preferred the O'Hara spelling which she herself had used before her marriage.  Can't say I blame her.

     It took a bit longer to straighten out Maria's maiden name.  Finally a fellow researcher set me straight on that one and gave me a county, Kildare.  Now I would surely find the townland of  my McGarr clan!  How foolish I was.  It would be years before Irish church records came online and I was finally able to track the family down, but even that didn't prove easy.  The McGarr family lived in one of those parishes whose boundry crossed county lines.  I should have been looking for church records in the county of Wicklow, not in their home county of Kildare, and in the parish of Baltinglass to which their townland, Ballyraggan, (as I found in baptism records), belonged.  Then there was the fact the simple surname McGarr confused a surprising number of people.  In records it was variously spelled, McGah, Megar, Mager, McGare, etc... in only one instance did a church baptism record use the spelling "McGarr" and those search engines did not pick up the other versions.  But at last, find them I did; Maria's parents, along with siblings I never knew she had.  

   Using US records, I had earlier found two sisters of Maria who like her, made their first home in America in Auburn, New York.  Now, Irish baptim records revealed two more sisters and two brothers, the boys being the last children born in this family.  Richard McGarr arrived in 1839, and his brother John in 1842.  Then they vanished.  Unlike the two new sisters, I've never found a single reference to either one of the boys after their baptisms, and therein lies my brick wall.

     This complete lack of records concerning the pair makes me tend to believe they did not survive childhood.  They would have been quite young when the potato blight hit Ireland, John only three and Richard six.  Even though Kildare wasn't as badly affected as the western counties, hunger was not unknow and fever was rife in their area.  It may have had some bearing that their mother Anne was known in her community as a healer, a tradition passed down in the family from mother to daughter.  As late as 1899, her daughter Bridget Kinsella in New York was advertising her services in her hometown newspaper.  Its conceivable individuals stricken with fever or other illnesses sought Anne's help in Ballyraggan, thereby spreading disease to her sons.

     Another clue is the lease their father Daniel held for many years.  In most cases, it would have gone to his eldest son, or at least to one of the sons upon his death, but it did not.  Valuation Office records show that after Daniel died in 1875 it passed to Thomas Hughes, the husband of Daniel's youngest daughter Sarah.

     I have my doubts I will ever discover the fate of Maria's two younger brothers.  There are few early records available for Catholics, other than church records which in the 1800's didn't usually include death or burial information.  Civil registration didn't start until 1864, obituaries for their class were unheard of, and tombstones almost unheard of.  Did they contract one of the numerous diseases that plagued childhood, suffer from a deadly birth defect, meet with an accident?  Did they leave Ireland for England or the United States?  It seems if they came to America they would have settled near their sisters, at least initially, but no amount of searching has turned either of them up there or on the continent.  I'm not ready to give up however, you never know what might be discovered in a new database.  It took me well over a decade to find the county, (Queens), and parish, (Rathdowney), of great-great-grandfather James White; not until the advent of DNA, since the parish records for his era no longer exist.  But if the data is out there, I will find it.

You Know It's Bad When The Bishop Closes Your Church, or Rebellion In Auburn

     Auburn, a community in upstate New York, was home to an appreciable Irish population in the 19th century. The first had arrived by 1810, while my McGarr ancestors came over in the early 1830's and during the famine years.  As their numbers steadily increased the need for a Catholic Church was becoming apparent. To answer that need Father O'Dononghue, the city's resident priest, purchased the abandoned Methodist church on Chapel Street to serve as his congregation's home. Dedicated in 1830 as The Church of the Holy Family, it would serve the Catholic community of Auburn for the next thirty-one years until a new building, the one still in use today, was erected in 1861 under the auspices of Father Michael Creedon. January of 1868 saw the appointment of Reverend Bernard McQuaid, a member of the conservative wing of the American church, to serve as Bishop of the newly formed Diocese of Rochester, of which Auburn, formerly of the Diocese of Buffalo, was now a part. 

     Maybe it was due to a rebellious streak, or because they were used to operating without central church authority looking over their shoulders for so long, but the honeymoon, as they say, did not last. On the morning of Sunday, February 21, 1869, a large number of parishioners assembled at the church to protest Bishop McQuaid's decision to remove their beloved pastor, the Reverend Thomas O'Flaherty. In their displeasure, they took Father O'Flaherty's replacement, Father Kavanagh, by the arm and escorted him from the church building, refusing to allow him to say Mass. Needless to say, bishops generally do not brook interference with, let alone criticism of their actions. Bishop McQuaide was no exception, and his reaction was swift.

Bishop McQuaid

     The following day, warrants were issued, and five leaders of the protest were arrested on charges of disturbing religious worship. Among the group was William McGarr, a tailor from County Wicklow who had arrived in New York in 1850 with his oldest son William Lannes McGarr. Of course, one of my relatives was involved. The unusual middle name of Lannes bestowed by William upon his son was in honor of French General Jean Lannes, who aided the Irish during the 1798 rising. So there was indeed a rebellious tendency there.

     At their trial the following week Attorney Wright, for the defense, maintained his clients, "were simply performing their duty under the law, which declares the right of majorities to govern and express their preferences". "The right of the majority to govern", how precious, this man was clearly not a Catholic. The jury members were probably not either, they voted for an acquittal within five minutes and the prisoners were discharged.

     The congregation was still not backing down, however. The following Sunday they again refused to allow Father Kavanagh to say Mass, infuriating the bishop who summarily locked the church doors and suspended Father O'Flaherty. Father O'Flaherty wasn't helping matters with his inflamitory statements to the local press denigrating the bishop, appealing his suspension to Rome, and later suing the bishop for libel. Though he failed to pursue his suit.

     The doors of Holy Family remained closed until April the 11th when the bishop himself took to the pulpit, giving the congregation a good dressing down for their scandalous behavior and singling out fourteen of them by name, saying they would be refused the sacraments unless they publicly begged pardon for their actions. I would be willing to wager William McGarr was among the fourteen though the article failed to mention their names or whether they complied. I would think William did as the bishop asked since two of his children were married at Holy Family three years later. Bishop McQuaid then went on to attack Father O'Flaherty, accusing him among other things, of appropriating to himself $600 in church funds. At some point, he took the extreme step of excommunicating the priest.

     The story was not quite finished though. On New Year's Day of 1893, the New York Times announced, "Father O'Flaherty Restored". After twenty-four years, Mgr. Satolli, (papal delegate), had seen fit to remove the bishop's sentence of excommunication, thereby restoring Father O'Flaherty to the priesthood. When asked, Bishop McQuaide refused comment.