Working on the Railroad

My last two blog posts both dealt with the Driscoll and Collins families in Oswego, New York. I’m going to continue on that thread here and in the next post as well. This line of research has been very fruitful, although not without a few roadblocks along the way. However, there are so many paths to explore, that I’m far from running out of leads to follow.

To quickly recap: I’ve already written about three ancestors who emigrated from West Cork. These were my great great grandmother, Ellen (Collins) Driscoll, her daughter Hannah, and her brother, Peter Collins. It turns out, though, that they were only the tip of the iceberg. The story of the Driscolls and Collins in the U.S. has really expanded thanks to DNA tests. As I tried to understand and reconcile some mysterious close DNA matches, I found out just how little I knew.

This story begins with a DNA match with my mother, a match that Ancestry.com estimated was a 4th to 6th cousin (a total of 41 centimorgans of shared DNA over three segments). That was enough to get my attention, and my interest was further piqued by the family tree this user had: the father and paternal grandfather of the person whose DNA this was were named Collins. So I explored a little further.

The grandfather’s name was Thomas J. Collins, and his son, also named Thomas, was born and died in Norwich, New York. (A warning: we're going to encounter a number of people named Thomas Collins. To help keep them straight, I'll give them nicknames. For reasons that will be clear soon, I'll refer to the first one, Thomas J. Collins, as Engineer Tom.) The fact that Engineer Tom lived in New York State led me to explore that combination of name and place in the website fultonhistory.com. I’m not sure if I’ve already described this website before, but this is an admirable one-man operation run by Tom Tryniski out of Fulton, New York, just south of Oswego. He’s been digitizing, databasing, and providing free on-line access to historical newspapers, originally mostly in New York State, but lately expanding ot other areas. According to the website, there are now over 49.5 million pages available on-line. Being from Fulton, it’s not surprising that there are extensive records for the papers from central New York.

As I rummaged through the fultonhistory.com resource I was surprised to find that an obituary for Engineer Tom was published in The Oswego Daily Palladium on 17 May 1916. Like his son, Engineer Tom also died in Norwich, but the obituary reported that he was a former resident of Oswego. Now the combination of Collins, Oswego, and the DNA match really had my attention, and I ended up researching this line for months. One other thing in the obituary was notable. In addition to the typical regrets were these sentences:

He was a patriotic citizen, a useful member of society, a loving husband and devoted father, and a delightful companion who faithfully discharged every duty and obligation. Seldom has the death of any one brought keener sorrow to so many hearts. There was no one along the O. & W. lines or among those with whom he came in contact that was not his friend.

Another death notice published in the Middletown Times-Press noted that Engineer Tom was “a well known locomotive engineer on the O. & W.” The O&W began its life as the New York and Oswego Midland Rail Road, the brainchild of Dewitt C. Littlejohn (1818-1892). Construction began in 1868 for a line that would run from Cornwall, New York (on the Hudson River) northwest to Fulton, with a branch to Utica. I was fascinated to learn that the funds to build the railroad came largely from the towns along its route, a kind of pay-to-play scheme. As a result, the road was long and winding and included some steep grades and deep cuts. The scale of these construction costs forced the company into bankruptcy within a month of the actual completion of construction. The company was then reorganized in 1880 under the name of the New York, Ontario & Western Railway, or the O&W.

Dewitt Clinton Littlejohn, founder of the New York and Oswego Midland Rail Road. National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; Frederick Hill Meserve Collection.

The relationship of the O&W with other railroad companies was complicated: the owners were also involved in other companies, rail lines were shared between rivals, and the many original small companies were being gobbled up by the big conglomerates. This was the heyday of Corrnelius Vanderbilt and the New York Central Railroad. Vanderbilt started out owning companies in the New York City area, expanded northward through the Hudson Valley, and then his acquisitions turned toward the west to Buffalo and beyond. The O&W also expanded its own lines, sharing track with the New York Central from Fulton to the port in Oswego and also opening a terminal in Weehawken, New Jersey, just where the Lincoln Tunnel is today.

The main businesses of the O&W were carrying passengers, mainly tourists going from the City to the resorts in the lower Catskills; hauling milk and other dairy; and eventually getting deep into the transport of coal out of the fields in northeastern Pennsylvania. One of my sources said that by the early 1930s coal accounted for 50% of the O&W business. By that time the company also owned three collieries, an early 20th century example of vertical integration. Unfortunately, this turned out to be a fraught financial decision. Two of the coal companies defaulted on their loans from the O&W, forcing the railroad in turn to default on its own mortgages. The O&W eventually declared bankruptcy (again) and the last train ran in 1957.

Very little of the physical footprint of the O&W remains: a few abandoned railroad tunnels, very little track, and some depots. The Oswego County Recreational Trail follows the old route of the railroad, and the Harbor Rail Trail in the city of Oswego makes use of the old railroad bridge across the river. There is still a good deal of interest in the railroad: the Ontario & Western Railway Historical Society is “dedicated to preserving the heritage of the New York Ontario & Western and other area railways.” They are involved in numerous restoration projects, maintain the company archives (600 cubic feet of records – five tons!), publish a newsletter, calendar, sponsor talks, etc.

Postcard of the city of Oswego, around 1900, looking south (upriver), with the railroad bridge in the background.

The railroad bridge in 1885.

The railroad bridge today, the Harbor Rail Trail, looking north toward Lake Ontario.

Thomas J. Collins (1867-1916), my Engineer Tom, pictured at left, was promoted to engineer on 20 Feb 1892. Together with George W. Obenauer he founded the Lyon Brook Lodge #216 of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen and Enginemen. Engineer Tom’s son, Tom, married Betty Ann Fagan in 1943. Both her father, John Edward Fagan (1887-1972), and his father before him, John Fagan (1854-1919), were also engineers working for the O&W. The picture at the beginning of this post shows John Fagan, on the left, with his conductor. The long family history of engineers – in total there were seven of them – was the subject of a photo-story by John Taibi, “Fagan, Batie, Colllins, & King – A family that spanned a railroad’s life.” It has quite a few historical photographs of the engineers and their engines.

Let’s retrace our steps here. I have a DNA match with a grandson of Engineer Tom, and the latter died in Norwich, but was born in Oswego. Engineer Tom was the son of John Collins and Julia (Johanna) Burns. I’m not sure about the details of her name: both are found in the records I’ve uncovered. John was born in 1846, as was Julia. John arrived in the U.S. somewhere around 1863-1864 at the age of 18, and he initially worked on the lumber docks in Oswego. Eventually, he became a coal dealer. It was this profession that made it possible for me to recognize this particular John Collins among the other men by the same name living in Oswego around the turn of the 20th century.

John Collins died sometime late in the night of New Year’s Eve or in the early morning of New Year's Day in 1917. If you check back, you’ll see that his son, Engineer Tom, died earlier in 1916, on 14 May 1916. But as John’s obituary noted, there was a third death in the family that year. Julia, John’s wife and Engineer Tom’s mother, passed on 26 April 1916. A short notice in the Oswego Daily Palladium on the 24th of January of that year reported that she was critically ill at her home on 120 East Tenth Street. It was later recorded that she had been in ill health for some time and was “very much depressed.” Sometime around 3 a.m. on April 26 members of the family reported hearing her moving about the house, going from one room to another. When they got up to check on her, she had apparently gone back to sleep. But shortly before 6 a.m. they discovered that she was missing, and her son Peter and daughter Mary began a search. The newspaper reported that they eventually found her in the shallow waters of Lake Ontario, near St. Paul’s Cemetery, roughly a mile away from home (as the crow flies). The house itself is only about 4-5 blocks away from the lake, and perhaps the current moved her northeast toward the cemetery. It doesn't record whether she was in her nightclothes or properly dressed. The most that I could find about the weather at the time was that it was predicted to be cloudy and cool in Oswego; in Buffalo the temperature range for that day was 46°-52° F. I imagine that it was pretty nippy at dawn on the lake shore in Oswego in late April.

View of Lake Ontario from St. Paul's Cemetery, looking toward the city of Oswego.

The exact relationship of John Collins was confirmed in his obituary, which closed with the words “He is survived by … one sister, Mrs. Ellen Driscoll [my 2nd great grandmother], and one brother, Peter Collins of this city.” To further support the relationship of John to my 2GG Ellen and her brother, my 3rd great uncle Peter, I obtained a copy of John’s death certificate from the office of the Oswego city clerk. On this it was recorded that his parents were Thomas Collins [3GG Tom] and Mary Gainey, the same names found for the parents of Ellen (on her baptismal record) and Peter (on both his baptismal and death records).

As I was uncovering these records and looking for newspaper articles to fill in details of the lives of John and Julia Collins, I came across this short notice published in the Oswego Daily Times on 23 Sep 1902:

Returns from Ireland

John Collins, the East Side coal dealer, and his nephew, Peter Collins, have returned from a ten weeks’ visit to Ireland. They visited its principal cities including Dublin, Cork, Limerick and Belfast and report having a most enjoyable time.

A nephew Peter Collins? John had a son named Peter, but neither the Ellen nor the Peter that I knew had a son by that name. Who was this person? This was the door opening into yet another part of the family. Recall from my last blog post that the earliest U.S. record I have of my great grandmother, Hannah Driscoll, came from the 1892 New York census. There she was listed immediately after the entries for a Thomas Collins – yes, another Tom Collins – followed by a Peter and a Nellie Collins. This Thomas was then the sexton of St. Paul’s Cemetery, so I'll refer to him as Sexton Tom. His wife, Ann Burns, had died in 1889, and they had had five children. Two daughters, Mary and Catherine, died young, and, of course, there was a son named Thomas. Tom the Sexton's son died in 1888 at the age of 22 in a railroad accident. Sexton Tom died of a heart attack in 1894. By that time his his brother (I think) Peter had already come to Oswego from Ireland, but his sister, Ellen, would not arrive for another year or so. I’m hedging a little bit here: so far I’ve not found any DNA match with Sexton Tom’s descendants. However, and you won’t be surprised at this, 3GG Thomas Collins and Mary Geaney in Drishanebeg did have a son that they named Thomas who was born at about the same time as the sexton. Whether that Tom and Sexton Tom are one and the same seems very likely to me, but I’m still missing definitive evidence. Similarly, I am just so tempted to infer some relationship between the wives of Sexton Tom and John the coal merchant, both of whom had the surname Burns. I haven’t tracked that one down yet, but it is very intriguing.

So far, then, I have (I think) four Collins siblings in Oswego: Sexton Thomas, Peter, Ellen, and John. I went back to the baptismal records in Skibbereen parish in Ireland looking for additional children born to 3GG Thomas Collins and Mary Geany. Indeed, there were more: a son named Jeremiah who was born in 1826, and another son, Barry born in 1829. That means that the four children who moved to Oswego were the youngest of the family. I’m still trying to run Jeremiah and Barry to ground. It appears that they both stayed in Ireland on the old homestead in the townland of Drishanebeg. And I have found at least one DNA match with a descendant of Jeremiah. For what it’s worth, I think that it’s noteworthy that Sexton Tom’s son, Peter, had the middle name Barry, just like his putative uncle. I take that as some confirmation that I’m on the right track. There are lots of trails to follow still, but it looks very promising. I know that the similarity in names is probably confusing. By my count, in this post alone there are five different people named Tom Collins. That’s confusing for me as well, especially when a document only has the name and nothing else. One example of this is the death certificate of Sexton Tom. The danger of confirmation bias is also something that I try to be aware of, but I’m only human. I hope that, with enough pieces of evidence that fit together, we can try to cobble together a coherent picture.

You knew this was coming, didn't you? I had to close this post with a sixth Tom Collins!

Sources

• Taibi, J. Fagan, Batie, Collins, & King - a family that spanned a railroad's life. The Northern Division Bridge & Building Dept., No. 113. http://ontarioexpress.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/nd_FBCK.pdf
• Ontario & Western Railway Historical Society, Inc. http://nyow.org

A Sable Galley

We all had such great plans for 2020, didn't we? My plan for the summer was to attend the International Congress of Entomology, scheduled for mid-July in Helsinki. After a week of binging on bugs in the capital city, we were going to spend a week traveling in Finland, followed by a week in Ireland. I had all the places lined up for a bit of a family history tour. Well, that plan didn't work out so well. The Congress has been postponed for a year, but with any luck I may still be able to make the trip. Until then everything has to be virtual. I had done a fair amount of preparation, though, and since I couldn't go to Ireland in person, I thought that I'd try to pre-create (is that a word) my planned trip.

Let's begin with my great grandmother - my mother's mother's mother. Her name was Hannah (or Johanna) Driscoll, and she was born in West Cork, Ireland in the townland of Ballymacrown (in Irish, that would be Baile Mhic Eiriúin). She was baptized in the Catholic parish of Rath and The Islands on March 1st, 1870. Well, that's what the parish record says, anyway. In later life she would say that she was born in 1872. Time seems to have been a flexible commodity in that era and that place. Her parents were Timothy Driscoll and Ellen Collins, and the baptism was witnessed by Barry Collins and Ellen Sullivan. (Barry was probably her uncle.) Today, the townland of Ballymacrown is in the parish of Skibbereen, so the extent of the parishes must have changed over the past 150 years. It turns out that there are lots of older family connections throughout West Cork. Both of the surnames Driscoll and Collins are very common in this area, and the names Timothy, Ellen, and Johanna are found everywhere (although, not so nearly common as Mary!).

Baptismal record for Johanna Driscoll from the parish register.

As far as I've been able to determine, Hannah and her brother Jeremiah were the first of her immediate family to emigrate to the U.S. The oldest record I've found is in the 1892 census of New York State in which she is described as a domestic and living in the city of Oswego, New York. This document does not explicitly say anything about the relationships between the people listed, nor does it specify the address. That said, it is more or less organized by households since the surnames are clustered and children are generally listed in order of age. So I think we can make some tentative interpretations: the name immediately before Hannah's is "Jerrimiah," 22 years old, and that age corresponds with what I found in the Irish parish registers. The next three names above Jeremiah's are interesting, and something I hadn't noticed until writing this blog post: they are Thomas Collins, aged 54, sexton; Peter Collins, aged 18, laborer; and Nellie Collins, aged 15, domestic. This meant absolutely nothing to me when I first found this record several years ago, but on the basis of this summer's research I think that I know who these people were! That'll have to be the subject of one of the next blog posts. (I'm really excited to see this now.)

1892 New York census record for Hannah Driscoll and her brother Jeremiah.

In 1895, following the death of her husband, Ellen Driscoll emigrated to the U.S., travelling with her four children Timothy, Ellen, Katie, and Michael. They entered the country in Philadelphia, came from Skibbereen, and their destination was recorded as "Sister Hannah, 152 Water St., Oswego."

Immigration record for Ellen Driscoll and children (lines 7-11) at the port of Philadelphia.

My goal in this post is not to pursue the fate of all of these children in America, but rather to go in the other direction, back to Ireland. Skibbereen (An Sciobarín) is a small town, with a population of 2,778 in 2016, located about 50 miles southwest of Cork city. The town sells itself today as the "hub of West Cork," a base from which to explore the area. However, it gained international fame during the years of the Great Famine (an Gorta Mór, 1845-1852). The Illustrated London News sent an artist to the area in early 1847 to report on the conditions and provide pictures of what he found. Some of these pictures are very famous and have been reprinted many times, particularly the images of people suffering.

Mahony also sketched the town of Skibbereen. The caption says the vantage point was Clover Hill, and this is basically the northern entrance into town. The two buildings in the drawing are still there. On the left is the Courthouse, still serving that function today. On the right is the schoolhouse that had just been built. Today that building is the headquarters of a local tech company, Spearline. You may find a discrepancy between the two pictures of the schoolhouse: renovations in the 1970s converted the two-story building to three.

One of the highlights that I was looking forward to was a visit to the Skibbereen Heritage Centre. I found the story about the Courthouse and schoolhouse on their website, and you can find more details in their story about an Interesting history of two prominent buildings in Skibbereen. I had scheduled an appointment with Margaret, the genealogist at the Heritage Centre, but of course I had to cancel. That might have been a bit of a blessing: I've discovered so much about my Driscoll and Collins relatives over the summer. When I do get a chance to meet with her, I'll have a lot more background material for her.

I believe that Ellen Collins was born in the townland of Drishane. The photograph of her baptismal record is barely legible, and I don't think the townland was recorded. It is recorded, though, in the baptismal records of some of her brothers. Drishane borders the village of Castletownshend, which is only 5.5 miles (8.8 km) southeast of Skibbereen. At the end of this post is a map of West Cork with all of these places labelled. The townland is the location of Drishane House, built in 1780, the ancestral home of the Somervilles. Some of you may recall the television series produced by Ulster Television and Raidió Teilifis Éireann (Irish Radio & Television) from 1983-1985, The Irish R.M. (R.M. stands for resident magistrate.) I saw it occasionally in PBS reruns. The connection is that the TV series was based on stories authored by the cousins Edith Œnone Sommerville and her (female) cousin Martin Ross. I've added a short video with an aerial view of Drishane House.

The townland of Ballymacrown, where Tim and Ellen Driscoll farmed, is southwest of Skibbereen, near the port town of Baltimore (Baile an Tighe Mór). No, not that Baltimore: although the U.S. city of Baltimore was named for the second Baron Baltimore, his Baltimore Manor was in north-central Ireland, in County Longford. Confusingly, there were two Timothy Driscolls living and farming in Ballymacrown. It's very tempting to conclude that they were somehow related, but I haven't been able to figure that out yet. My Tim Driscoll died fairly young, at the age of 47 in 1883 of some kind of fever. One of my genealogical loose ends is that the informant in the civil registration of his death was his niece, Anne Driscoll. Frustratingly, I still don't know who she was.

View of the townland of Ballymacrown, County Cork.

Ellen Driscoll passed away in 1919 in Oswego, and her obituary states that "She is survived by four sons, Jeremiah, Timothy, Daniel, and Michael of this city, and two daughters, Mrs. Patrick Cotter, Ireland and Mrs. Frederick Bough; also a brother, Peter Collins of this city" (published in the Oswego Daily Times, 01 Jul 1919). For the longest time I had been able to account for everyone on that list except for the mysterious Mrs. Patrick Cotter. To solve that problem required a bit of speculation initially.

Headstone of Ellen Driscoll in St. Paul's Cemetery, Section Q, in Oswego, New York.

The first step was to work my way through all of the baptismal records in the area of West Cork around Skibbereen, looking for children with the parents Timothy Driscoll and Ellen Collins from the townland of Ballymacrown. At the end of this there was a grand total of ten children! Seven of these I've already named. In addition there was John, the firstborn, who died at the age of 5 in 1867. There were two Timothys, the one in the immigration record from Philadelphia, but also an earlier one baptized in 1872 (another reason to not believe that Hannah was born in 1872). I presume that this child also died young, but I haven't found a death record. And the third one, new to my list at the time, was a girl: Mary. Since this was the only daughter that was unaccounted for, I concluded that she must be the missing Mrs. Cotter. And if Mrs. Cotter was living in Ireland at the time of her mother's death in 1919, then likely she would appear in one or both of the surviving censuses of Ireland which were made in 1901 and 1911. Luckily enough, I was able to find her in both of them. Her husband Patrick is not included in either census, but he was a fisherman and likely was out at sea when the census taker came round. Mary Anne Cotter (for her middle name turned out to be Anne) had seven children, all of whom survived childhood. She worked, probably in her home, as a dressmaker in a place that the census recorded as Middle Glen, Skibbereen.

1911 Census of Ireland record for the Cotter household.

At this point it would be appropriate to challenge me: how do you know that this is the right Patrick Cotter and Mary Driscoll? These are very common names, and this may be nothing more than coincidence. In my defense, the civil record of their marriage in 1885 stated that Mary was from Ballymacrown and that her father was named Timothy (already deceased by this time). Further research has revealed several DNA matches with descendants of Patrick and Mary. Therefore, I'm reasonably confident that I was lucky enough to find the right couple.

A couple of things to note about the census record. First, Mary spoke both Irish and English. West Cork is one of the few places left in Ireland, the Gaeltacht, where Irish is a first language and is used as an everyday means of communication. Second, the "address" where they lived: Middle Glen, Skibbereen. You'd be forgiven if you thought that Middle Glen was a neighborhood in that town. Instead, Middle Glen is on Cape Clear (Cléire or Oileán Chléire), and despite its name, this is an island off the far southwestern coast of Ireland. The population of the island, as of 2011, was only 124 people on a total of 2.6 square miles (6.7 km²). Cape Clear is the southernmost populated area of Ireland.

View of North Harbor on Cape Clear.

Once I'd discovered Mary Anne Cotter (1865-1941) it felt like a door had opened, and I entered a house with dozens of new rooms to explore. Mary and Patrick had eight children: John Patrick (1887-1974), Mary Anne (1891-1961), Patrick (1893-1963), Catherine (1895-1978), James (1898-????), Hannah (1900-????), Timothy (1903-1916), and Elizabeth (1906-1980). The question marks with some of those names are a clue that there's still a lot for me to learn about the family. But from what I know so far, I've found descendants of them in Ireland (of course), England, Scotland, Connecticut, California, Australia, and even a third cousin living here in Columbus, Ohio!

The eldest son, John Patrick, has an interesting history. Like many in the family, he was a man of the sea. He only completed one year of high school education, but by 1940 his occupation is cited in the census as Ship Captain. I'm not sure exactly when he emigrated to the U.S., but in 1917 when he registered for the World War I draft he was a naturalized citizen and living, or at least based, in San Francisco. At that time he was Mate on the S.S. Ecuador, a ship then owned by the Pacific Mail Steamship Company.

During the Second World War Cotter served in a number of roles in the Navy, including captain of several different ships transporting troops around the Pacific theater of operations. Here is an excerpt from a letter the he wrote to his brother Patrick and published in the newspaper Southern Star:

We all made Brisbane safe on December 22 [1942], stayed there three weeks, then sailed for Port Moresby in New Guinea. Again I was attacked by submarines, three of them, and I had no cruiser or plane. I had to run for New Zealand, got to the port of Auckland, and had to wait there twenty-three days for a convoy. Then started out again and made Port Moresby safe. From Port Moresby we returned to Sydney Australia and loaded cargo and troops for Port Darwin in North Australia. We had a convoy of ten ships and an American destroyer [the USS Peary, I believe]. The Meigs [a troop transport] was with us.

At 10 o'clock on the morning of February 19, 1942, while getting ready to anchor in Darwin Harbour forty Jap bombing planes appeared overhead and started bombing.

Our Destroyer was the first to get hit, she went to pieces. Then the Meigs sank. I ran out under a smoke screen and made twenty-two knots an hour until dark, when I was told to return to Brisbane.

There were seven ships sunk in Darwin that morning in about forty-five minutes. I sure was lucky I had a fast ship and a good one. There was one man killed on the Meigs and several wounded including the Captain. He was chief officer with me when I was in charge of the Meigs. Everyone on the Destroyer was lost.

The S.S. West Lewark in 1921, later renamed the USAT Meigs.

I want to wrap up this post by returning to Cape Clear and West Cork. On the northwest side of the island, facing the Atlantic, are the ruins of O'Driscoll's castle (Dún an Óir, Gold Castle). There is also another O Driscoll castle, Dún na Séad, in the port village of Baltimore. These are just two fortified buildings - castles or ports - associated with the Driscoll family in West Cork. The family traces its history back into the mists of mythical times, and the name is derived from Ó hEidirsceoil. They were Kings of Munster in the 7th century and remained one of the dominant groups up until the reign of Henry VIII in England. At that point the ruling class were dispossessed, but the name remains one of the dominant ones in this part of Ireland. As I've started learning a bit more of this part of Irish history, I can tell that there is a tremendous amount of information of which I am totally ignorant. This will be an interesting area to continue to dig into.

Dún an Óir, O Driscoll "castle" on Cape Clear.

Dún na Séad, O Driscoll "castle" in Baltimore.

I've found two resources to help me to learn more about the O Driscoll family. The first is a website devoted to the O Driscolls at odriscolls.me.uk The second is a book that I saw for sale on the web: O Driscolls Past and Present by Éamon Lankford. Lankford, among his many pursuits, is the founder and director of the Cape Clear Island Museum and Archive. In addition to its exhibits, the small museum "houses the O Driscoll Memorial Archive and exhibition panels relating to the history and heritage of the Worldwide O Driscoll family" (capeclearmuseum.ie). This is certainly a place I would love to visit. After I ordered the book, I was surprised to receive a personal email from the author, inviting me to contribute my own family story to their collection of stories from the O Driscoll diaspora. He also pointed out that annually (well, in non-COVID years) there is an annual O Driscoll Clan Gathering on the last weekend in June. That's definitely something to factor in when we can feel safe in travelling again!

2019 O Driscoll Clan Gathering in Baltimore.

If you look closely at the Clan Gathering picture, you can see on the flag one rendition of the O Driscoll coat of arms. The version that I have at the top of this post, and that inspired the title of the post, comes from Lankford's book. Here is his explanation of its significance: The O Driscoll crest has a black (sable) galley on a white (argent) background. The galley represents the Clan's maritime power, while the furled sails represent constancy. The cormorant overhead is the emblem of Charity, while the white background significies Peace and Security."

To close, here is the promised map of the places that I've mentioned in the post.

Reference

Lankford, E. 2019. Ó Drisceoil. O Driscolls Past and Present. Celum Publishing, Cork. 193 pp.

Search for the One-Armed Man

Those of a certain age will remember the TV show The Fugitive, "...starring David Janssen as Dr. Richard Kimble, an innocent victim of blind justice. Falsely convicted for the murder of his wife ... reprieved by fate when a train wreck freed him en route to the death house ... freed him to hide in lonely desperation ... to change his identity ... to toll at many jobs ... freed him to search for a one-armed man he saw leave the scene of the crime ...."

My search for the one-armed man began with an email from a cousin Amie - 4th cousin once removed, to be precise - asking about a certain Catherine Collins. To orient you, we're on my mother's side of the family, all Irish. Specifically, it's Hannah Driscoll's side of the family (my maternal grandmother's mother). The focus of Amie's question, Catherine Collins, was Hannah's first cousin, the daughter of her uncle Peter Collins (1838-1923). Amie had had a hard time finding records for Catherine and was curious if I might be able to contribute.

My first concern was to verify that the information that I did have was accurate. I had been exploring the Oswego connections very early in my family history research and hadn't pursued it recently. To be frank, I wasn't entirely confident that what I thought I knew was really true. I had made the link from my 2nd great grandmother Ellen (Collins) Driscoll to Catherine's father, Peter, through a line in Ellen's obituary:

She is survived by four sons, Jeremiah, Timothy, Daniel and Michael of this city [Oswego, New York] and two daughters, Mrs. Patrick Cotter, Ireland, and Mrs. Frederick Bough; also a brother, Peter Collins of this city.

I was a bit concerned that the Peter Collins I'd latched on to wasn't actually Ellen's brother, but just another guy with the same common name. Actually, the fact the Amie found me should have been reassuring: it turns out that there's a DNA match between the two of us. With that independent confirmation of a relationship I was much more confident that I'd found the right Peter.

Catherine Collins was baptized on 20 Aug 1865, the child of Peter Collins and Bridget Heagerty, in Skibbereen, County Cork. I'm not sure when she emigrated to the U.S., but she married a man named Luther E. Church on 04 Dec 1885 in Fulton, New York. I also found her name mentioned in the obituary of her son, Thomas D. Collins, who died 20 Sep 1945 in Syracuse, New York. As a sharp-eyed reader, I'm sure that you've caught the fact that Thomas used his mother's maiden name Collins, and not Church.

Baptismal record for Catherine Collins from the parish registers of Skibbereen parish.

So this was the state of my records when Amie contacted me, and that prompted me to dig a little deeper. I found conflicting stories about Luther Church and Katy Collins, and I thought that I would let you be the judge and decide which one you believe. Let's begin with Luther Church, as that's the side with the most detailed paper record.

Luther Church

Luther Church was born in Ohio in 1848 to Daniel Church and Sarah Anne Harvey. The family had moved to Ohio from New England (Massachusetts and Connecticut). He had 5 sisters and 2 brothers: Luke Ancil, Sarah Jane, Elizabeth, Adeline, Almina, Eli, and Sophia. In 1850 they were living in Scipio Township in Seneca County, Ohio. That's about an hour to the north of where I live in Columbus. On 03 Oct 1863 Luther and his brother Eli both volunteered to join Company I of the 9th Ohio Cavalry. A little arithmetic, and we see that Luther was not 18 years old as he claimed (and as Lieutenant Turner confirmed), but only 14!

Volunteer enlistment of Luther Church into Company I, 9th Ohio Cavalry.

Luther's army career was short-lived. Here is his account as related in a deposition in 1865 (with some punctuation and capitalization edited):

...while with and acting as a private in said Co & Rgt [Company I of 9th Ohio Volunteer Cavalry] at Decatur Alabama. Early in the morning of the first day of June 1864 they were attaked by Rebell Cavalry or an alarm given in the Union camp when hasty orders were given for his company to saddle. When he in attempting to get his saddle out from an old building said saddle having a carobine lashed to it in attempting to pick up or draw his said saddle to him the cock of said carobine ketched and drew it back so that when it come loos it caused the carobine to explode and sent its contents through his left arm near the shoulder nearly severing the arm from the shoulder. He was immediately taken to the General Hospital where his arm was amputated about one hour after the accident. That he was in line of duty and trying to obey his commanding officers at the time of the accident.

This account was corroborated by Sergeant Rush P. Baldwin later, interestingly using many of the same words:

"Rush P. Baldwin ... says that he is a sargent in Co. I of the 9th Ohio Volunteer Cavalry. That he was with and had command of a detachment from said Co. & Regt. on or about the first day of June 1864. They was then at Decatur in the State of Alabama and on or about said first day of June 1864 Luther E. Church, a private in said Co. & Rgt. was shot through the left arm near the shoulder by accident. Which happened as follows to wit - We camped over knight in a building. The next morning orders was given to saddle. When said Luther E. Church in attempting to pickup his saddle which had a carobine lashed to it, the cock of which kitched, and in picking up or drawing said saddle to him drawed the cock back and caused said carobine to explode and send its contents through the left arm of said Luther E. Church making a bad wound and rendering amputation necessary. He said Luther E Church being in line of duty at the time of the accident."

Deposition of Sgt. Rush Baldwin concerning accidental wounding of Luther Church.

Luther's arm was amputated in its upper third, leaving a stump that was not long enough for him to later be fitted with an artificial arm. He was moved from the General Hospital in Decatur to another one in Nashville; Tennessee; then on to Madison, Indiana; and finally to Camp Dennison in Ohio (near Cincinnati). There he was formally discharged on 29 Oct 1864, just a bit over a year since he volunteered.

After his discharge, Luther applied for and received a pension from the federal government. His justification was that he was an orphan (his father having died in 1858), his mother was in indigent conditions, and he was unable to work because of the loss of his left arm. The application was approved, and the pension began retroactively to his date of discharge at the princely sum of $8 per month. Most of these details are drawn from his pension file from the U.S. Archives, a file that is 101 pages long. That length is primarily due to the fact that Luther seemed to be constantly applying for an increase in the amount he received each month. As far as I can tell none of these requests were approved, but over the years Congress did raise veterans' pensions: In 1866 Luther's income was raised to $15/month; in 1872 to $18; in 1874 to $24; 1883 to $30, 1886 to $45; and, finally, in 1903 his payments were increased to $55 per month. During most of his life Luther lived in north central Ohio, in Seneca County in Tiffin and Republic. There is an interlude, though, when he was in central New York, at least from 1875 to 1889. I haven't been able to figure out what he was doing there, but this will be an important part of my tale.

The applications for pension increases became more plaintive over time. Luther truly suffered, of that I am sure. How much his ailments were the result of the loss of his arm is much less certain. Toward the end of his life he was restricted to a chair. Because of dropsy, he was even unable to lie down to sleep as his lungs would fill with fluid. He died on 30 Dec 1903 in Tiffin and was buried in Farewell Retreat Cemetery in the nearby town of Republic.

Farewell Retreat Cemetery in Republic, Ohio.

Headstone of Luther E. Church, Company I, 9th Ohio Cavalry.

The life of Luther Church was notable not only for his Civil War service, but for his married life as well... his marriages.

The Three Wives of Luther Church

In 1898 the Bureau of Pensions included an additional form to be completed by the pensioner in which information was requested concerning marriage status and children. The first question was "Are you married?" Luther dutifully reported that he was married to Pearl (Bidleman) Church, and that their marriage took place on 12 Jul 1894 in the Methodist Episcopal Church in Tiffin, presided over by the Rev. McKibbins. With the fourth question, the answers become even more interesting: "Were you previously married?" It turns out that Luther had plenty of information to pass on here. He reported that he had been married to "Maggie E. Church via Harding" in 1872, and that they divorced in 1877. Further, he had later married my cousin, Kate Collins, in 1886, and they divorced in 1887. Finally, concerning any children, Luther reported "One boy living, 2nd wife, 12 years old, July 4th in Oswego NY. With his grandmother Bridget Collins. Raised him for me until 16 years of age."

Questionnaire concerning family completed by Luther Church for the Bureau of Pensions.

That sounds straightforward, but in fact Luther's record with the wedded state was much more complicated. My first hint of this came when I found a document recording that in 1887 he had been sentenced to two years in the Onondaga County Penitentiary for the crime of ... bigamy. Apparently the report that he'd divorced first wife Maggie was a bit of wishful thinking. It took me some time to find any records of that first marriage. Luther married Margaret E. Harding (born 1861) in Dryden, New York on 08 Sep 1875. Dryden is a small town about 43 miles (69 km) south of Syracuse and 13 miles (22 km) to the east of the college town of Ithaca. Five years later, in the 1880 census, they were living in Barton, New York, a town 32 miles (52 km) south of Ithaca near the Pennsylvania border. The next record I have for Luther is his marriage to Kate Collins in Fulton, New York. This is another small town but on the opposite side of Syracuse, about 30 miles (48 km) to the northwest, and only 11 miles (17.5 km) southeast of the port city of Oswego.

I'm not sure if a conviction of bigamy automatically comes with one or more divorces, but the date of his divorce from Kate corresponds to the beginning Luther's term in the Onondaga County Penitentiary. (I guess Oswego County didn't have an appropriate jail, so he was sent to the Syracuse area.) He didn't serve the full two year sentence, though. On 06 Feb 1889 his sentence was commuted to time served - 1 year, 4 months, and 16 days - by order of the Governor of New York, David B. Hill (that's his official portrait to the right). The commutation was made under one condition, that is that "Luther E. Church shall totally abstain from the use of intoxicating liquors for the period of five years...." Although the Governor has the power to commute or pardon, he also is obliged to state the reasons for his decision to the Legislature. Governor Hill's justification for Luther's commutation gives one side of the story:

The facts of this case, as reported to me, are, that some six years before the commission of the offense, prisoner's wife left him for another man with whom she has been living ever since. He was induced, while intoxicated, to marry the complainant, a woman of notoriously bad character, who, after living with him for two or three years, deserted him and became an inmate of a house of ill-fame, and, it is alleged, preferred a charge of bigamy against him, in order to rid herself of his importunities to return to him. His offense resulted in no private injury and the law has been fully vindicated by the time served.

Unpacking this, the information given to the Governor was that on or about 1879 (six years before he married Kate Collins and thereby committed bigamy) Luther's first wife, Maggie, left him. This is inconsistent with the 1880 census record, but it's within a year so it might be only a rounding error. I haven't yet been able to determine who this second man was. Hill's statement then gets into a bit of character assassination. He doesn't name names, but clearly the "woman of notoriously bad character" was Kate Collins, that she "induced" Luther into marriage, and then later became a prostitute. Nothing is said about the fact that there was a child involved: Tom was born on the Fourth of July, 1886. Thus, I find the assertion that the offense resulted in no private injury a bit hard to swallow.

So, was Luther Church the hapless victim of an evil woman and his love for the liquor? There are a few more items that might influence your opinion. These were gleaned from the newspapers in Oswego. Luther Church isn't a particularly common name, and in fact, there was another man by that name who lived in the area near Saratoga, New York at the same time. Identification of my target was made easier by the fact that the reporters often added a little bit of color to their story by referring to Luther's missing arm.

• From the Oswego Palladium, 26 Jun 1886: "Luther E. Church, charged with using profane and obscene language in public, pleaded not guilty; over until 4.30."
• From the Oswego Daily Times Express, 10 Sep 1886: "Luther E. Church was arranged [sic] on a charge of assault on his wife. He is a one armed man and frankly admitted committing the offence while intoxicated. Recorder Bulger asked him if he had reported around that he, Recorder Bulger, had given him $50 with which to buy votes for him and this charge Mr. Church indignantly denied, although his mother-in-law [Bridget Heagerty Collins], who was present, insisted that he had made the statement. There was quite a lively time in the court room until Recorder Bulger put and end to it by giving him a sentence of 59 days in the county jail."
• From the Oswego Palladium, 08 Nov 1886: "Luther E. Church, charged upon complaint of his wife with non-support, pleaded not guilty. Convicted and held to $300 bail or six months in the county jail for the future maintenance of his wife and family. In default of bail he was sent to jail. Church, according to his own statement receives a pension of $45 per month from the government. His wife says he spends the most of it for rum. The charge of petit larceny made against Church was adjourned for six months."
• From the Oswego Palladium, 28 Dec 1886: "Luther E. Church was arrested yesterday on complaint of his wife charged with being a disorderly person and failing to support herself and child. He pleaded guilty and was allowed to go on condition that he furnished board and paying to his wife three dollars a week.

That doesn't sound to me like a man importuning his wife to return to him. I've attempted to find out where the Governor got the information he cited in his decision to commute, but was informed by New York State Corrections and Community Supervision that "[m]aterial in the clemency file is considered confidential and will be made available only in the discretion of the Governor." It seems a little silly, 131 years after the fact, to assert that release of the information "would constitute an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy." I'm no lawyer, but it seems to me that the unsubstantiated allegations about Kate made by the Governor were the invasion of privacy. I do have the option to appeal this decision and will probably do so.

Unfortunately, that's where I have to leave the story of Kate Collins. I haven't been able to find anything else about her. She is not in the 1888 or 1899 city directories for Oswego (the ones available online to me), nor in the directories for 1903 and later in Fulton. She is not in the 1900 census that I can find. Her son is, though, under the name Thomas Church and living with his grandparents Peter and Bridget Collins. According to the website findagrave.com there is a Catherine Collins buried in St. Paul's Cemetery in Oswego, but no other information is provided other than her age of 66 years. I haven't been able to figure out who that person is. We were unsuccessful in our search for that grave when we visited St. Paul's in October, even though we knew it was in Section J. In sum, I guess I didn't succeed in helping Amie much to flesh out the life of Catherine Collins. There surely were a lot of interesting detours on the way though!

St. Paul's Cemetery in Oswego, New York, right on the shore of Lake Ontario.

Gathering information in St. Paul's Cemetery. Unfortunately, these McCarthys turned out to be a false lead.

Detours

Luther Church's eldest brother, Luke Ancil Church (1831-1901) moved to California in 1851 where he worked as a prospector, miner, a stage driver, and a hotel owner. His hotel was in a place called Don Pedro Bar, an area that is now lost under the waters of Don Pedro Lake. He moved from there to Paradise, in the process taking the wood from his old hotel to build his house there. In 1870 he then moved that house to the new settlement of Modesto, the third house in the town. That house still stands to this day.

Top, portrait of Luke Ancil Church (1831-1901). Bottom, the Church House in Modesto, California.

Luther's other brother did not fare so well (if that's the right word). He volunteered for the Union cause at the same time as Luther, and so was also in Company I of the 9th Ohio Volunteer Cavalry. He died of typhus fever on 27 Apr 1864 in the Regimental Hospital in Nashville, Tennessee.