I have been researching a very colourful distant cousin named Ned Mallahan born in Connecticut in 1849. Our Ned sparred as a boxer as a young man, whilst also establishing himself as a purveyor of fine liquors as he traveled around America demonstrating the noble art.

In his mid-twenties, Ned settled in Manhattan and formed business partnerships with like-minded young sportsmen. Ned became a respected boxing referee, trainer and promoter. By the late 1870’s, Ned had assembled the most talented (or most ruthless) stable of raw Irish immigrant pugilists. With funding from supportive NYC sports fanatics, Ned organized fight night extravaganzas featuring infamous brawlers, boxers and wrestlers. His theatre houses were packed every weekend.

The Pantomime Villain image of the popular Edward F Mallahan on the left dates from 1886 when Ned could not have been a day over 37 years. He looks much older after a life grappling in carnival tents.

I found the newspaper report in the link below on the back page of the New York Herald. It reports on the much-anticipated international lightweight boxing bout between local hero Mike Coburn and “Spring” Dick Goodwin, an English challenger, on Friday night, 21st February 1879. As you will see, the display of fistic science went on and on, for 52 rounds, lasting 3 hours and 46 minutes. Even the NY Herald reporter was becoming exhausted by the contest. The eager hack had started off by writing up a round-by-round account of the encounter, but after 25 rounds he was out of words, and out of column space.

I sense that most observers were somewhat relieved when the NY Police raided the premises and brought a halt to the gruesome spectacle by arresting all involved, including the spectators, and the boxers, and Coburn’s corner-man and boxing impresario, Ned Mallahan. You see, professional boxing was illegal in NYC in 1879 – but still Back-Page headline news.

1879 NY Herald (Mick Coburn v Spring Dick)

I love the last “impartial” words of the loyal Herald newsman. When Coburn appeared before Justice Morgan the next morning [he] “did not seem to have a blemish on him” – after enduring 3 hours and 46 minutes in the ring with the fearsome English sporting gent, Spring Dick.

It is strange to consider that the Mormon church, founded in the 1820′s, possesses original ancestry records which pre-date surviving Irish Catholic parish registers and make reference to Irish vital events in the 18th century – before the Mormon church even existed. How can this be? Well … it needs a series of very unusual historical happenings to have taken place in an Irish ancestor’s life, and one such ancestor was Johanna O’Connor born in County Kerry in 1807. Her amazing life story was summarized in a recent post on this blog. Refer to Irish Mormon Pioneer.

The key to being able to use exclusive Mormon records to identify ancient Irish family tree members whose names do not appear in preserved Irish church registers is that your research subject must have converted to Mormonism. Conversion from devout Roman Catholicism, as practiced in 19th century Ireland, to the new and very controversial Mormon religion which expanded from American roots to English towns in the 1840′s was literally a major “leap of faith” for any Irish man or woman. Very, very few would fit this ancestral profile. Johanna was not the only Irish person who settled in Utah over 150 years ago, but I have yet to come across another Irish Catholic ancestor who survived the harsh LDS pioneer trail and subsequently filed her mainly 18th century genealogy. Let me know if your own Irish family history contains a similar character.

In case you are unaware of Mormon doctrine, a practitioner of this religion is obliged to “baptise” (by proxy) any deceased non-Mormon relative into their Christian church. The deceased ancestor is then believed to have the right to accept or reject the baptism into the Church of the LDS, and Mormon followers consider that acceptance of the LDS faith ensures that the deceased can enter the Kingdom of God [Heaven]. This practice started in 1840, and towards the end of her life, Johanna spent many days during 1889 and 1890 baptizing over 50 members of her extended family. Until recently, we knew where Johanna’s marital in-laws came from (because they feature in corresponding Anglican church registers) but the precise roots of 35 listed Irish relatives could not be established, except that they all came from County Kerry according to Johanna’s LDS Temple notes. It was apparent to every researcher who studied the names that they did not exist in Irish record collections. So where were all these inter-related Irish folk from?

The LDS Registrar for Johanna’s baptisms by proxy left one clue by way of some semi-legible scrawl. Alongside the name of Johanna’s father, we could see a town birthplace written as “Bally B- – -”; the last three letters could be interpreted in several ways. The mystery was only solved when genealogists from Price & Associates contributed one extra clue left behind when Johanna passed away in 1894.

Here is my transcription of all the wonderful ancestral information which Johanna was able to recall:

1889 LDS Baptisms for the Dead (of Johanna O’Connor Farmer’s family)

In most ancestry projects, the goal of the genealogist is to discover the dates of the three normal vital events of their research subject, i.e. birth, marriage and death. The exact places where these events took place is also high on the research agenda. When a researcher is successful enough to track down the date and place of death of the ancestor in question, this information can be used to search for a published funeral notice or obituary … and an obit often opens up links to many “lost” family members who attended the funeral or were given respectful mentions as relatives of the deceased. In Johanna’s case, we thought that the discovery of a four sentence obituary in the Manti Messenger was the sum total of contemporaneous tributes to a remarkable Irish lady. Sadly, the local Manti newspaper article did not reveal anything about Johanna which we didn’t already know, after thorough research.

Therefore, it was with great surprise and delight when Diane Rogers from Price & Associates discovered that the Deseret News, the LDS Church’s oldest newspaper in Utah, printed a long tribute celebrating Johanna’s unique life after her demise in 1894. It was a joy to see that the obituary listed obscure facts about Johanna’s life which we had already unearthed from other research sources. Our complicated research processes were fully justified, but it was a bonus to read about other tidbits of Johanna’s life story and her character traits which, until now, we had only been able to speculate about. Finally, we knew for certain that Johanna was the pioneering woman we had envisioned and admired.

The Deseret News obit provided one new and crucial O’Connor birthplace clue. As shown below, it states that “Joanna Farmer, was born in Castle Island, County Kerry” [sic]. At last, we had a specific region of County Kerry to investigate. Castleisland is a small town and large civil parish in SW Ireland.

Some very intensive studies of the distribution of O’Connor families around Castleisland and the unique geography of the area eventually led me to “Ballybane”, the curious place which widowed Mrs Johanna Farmer referred to as her ancestral homestead in her 1889/90 LDS Temple notes.

There is no townland called Ballybane in the civil parish of Castleisland, although namesake places exist in other parts of County Kerry according to the national database of Irish place names. It appears that Johanna referred to her birthplace by its common local name which preceded the formalization of Irish townland designations. In my opinion Johanna was born in Ballybane which forms the southern portion of the townland of Ballyduff, located about 10 miles north of Castleisland town. This region falls within the RC parish of Knocknagoshel, but the local Catholic church registers only survive from December 1866 onwards. So Johanna’s detailed listing of her parents’ generation and her grandparents informs us about a complete Irish family that does not feature in record collections of Irish origin. By accident, Johanna has created a unique Irish Catholic family tree which pre-dates County Kerry parish registers by over 100 years.

More recent records indicate that many members of the O’Connor family still reside in and around Ballyduff townland. I would be pleased to converse with anybody who believes that they have connections with the ancient O’Connor and Kirby ancestors listed in Johanna’s Baptisms for the Dead.

After life’s fitful fever she sleeps well

I have previously recounted the sorry tale of the plight of dozens of poor Sligo natives who were attempting to escape famine conditions in 1848 by sailing to the Port of Liverpool for onward connections to other far-flung destinations. Half of the passengers never made it beyond Londonderry. Read more here: Sligo sailing disaster. Below is an account of another tragedy at sea, less than 12 months later, this time involving over a hundred souls fleeing from the north-west of County Clare and Connemara in County Galway.

On 7th September 1849, the St John, a brig of about 200 tons, sailed out of Galway harbour bound for Boston. She was owned by Henry Comerford of Galway and Ballykeale House, Kilfenora, and Captain Oliver from Bohermore in County Galway was in command. Aboard were nine crew members and about a hundred passengers in two main parties from Clare and Connemara, although later investigations asserted that the captain might have been illegally carrying another 30 emigres not entered on to the official manifest. On Saturday 6th October, the ship came close to land near Cape Cod almost at the end of her journey to Massachusetts Bay. The voyage had been a good one and so the captain issued a ration of grog to the crew in celebration. Captain Oliver suggested to the passengers that they too might celebrate their last night aboard the St John. The Irish human cargo had every reason for merriment; they had left far behind them a country of starvation, disease and death. The voyage had been less of a trial then they had expected and they were in sight of the shores of the Promised Land. They hurried to decorate the rigging and decks with candles and passed the night with traditional Irish songs and dance.

At five o’clock in the evening the brig passed Cape Cod Light and by one o’clock in the morning the First Mate guided the St John around Scituate Light. All of a sudden, the ship caught the wind of a fierce north-easterly gale and was soon being driven towards the shore. The rigging was hurriedly adjusted and a new, safer course was set. By daylight, the gale had become a full storm and the ship was being blown southwards along the Massachusetts coast. An hour later, on a mountainous sea, the St John was sighted at the mouth of Cohasset Bay. Inexorably the wind drove the little ship closer and closer towards the shore, with all hands on deck fighting to regain control of the St John over insurmountable elements. It was to no avail; the sails were now in shreds and the storm too powerful to fight. Both anchors were dropped but they dragged. As a last resort, Captain Oliver had both masts cut away but the wind and seas were relentless and the brig was helplessly forced onto Grampus Ledge. It was then about seven o’clock on Sunday morning.

Enormous waves lifted the stricken vessel and smashed her again and again on the rocks. The impact broke her back and opened her seams. A hole was quickly broken in her hull and those below decks were drowned within minutes. Pounded against the rocks, the brig began to break up. Horrified spectators saw people being “swept in their dozens” into the boiling surf from the crowded decks. Even though they were deafened by the howling of the wind and the thunder of the seas, the watchers were convinced that they could hear the screams of the unfortunates as they were dragged to their deaths. Sickeningly, there was nothing any bystander could do to help.

The jolly boat (or tender) had been hanging by its tackle alongside the brig. Suddenly, the stern rigging bolt broke and the small jolly boat fell into the water, in danger of being swept away. The captain, the second mate, two of the crewmen and two apprentice boys jumped into the maelstrom and managed to secure her, but immediately about twenty-five frenzied passengers attempted to board the little boat and it was swamped. Of the people in or around the jolly boat, only one survived – Captain Oliver, who managed to grab a rope which was hanging from the main deck and was pulled aboard the ship by the first mate, Henry Comerford (believed to be a nephew of the ship’s owner of the same name).

Another group of passengers jumped into the water in an attempt to reach the overturned jolly boat, but they all perished in the cruel sea. By now the main ship was rapidly disintegrating. The water around her was strewn with wreckage to which people clung desperately even though they were again and again buried beneath tons of water as the colossal waves broke over them. The captain, the first mate and the remaining seven members of the crew eventually succeeded in re-securing the jolly boat using grappling hooks and all safely swam to and (shamefully) boarded the makeshift lifeboat and headed off to shore; only one stranded passenger was collected en route.

By eight a.m. the ship had completely broken up and the worst horror was over. In total, eight women and four men had made their own way to the shore, semi-conscious through exhaustion. Two passed away on the beach and the remainder had to have their hands prised from the wreckage which had saved their lives. News of the disaster spread along the American coastline and by early afternoon the shore was lined with people who worked unsparingly to resuscitate the living and retrieve the dead. The survivors had many stories to tell. Two of the women who had fought their way ashore had each lost three children. The human loss was horrendous. A man called Patrick Sweeney of Galway perished with his wife and nine children. Many of the recovered bodies were badly mutilated by the jagged rocks, yet Sally Sweeney’s features were reportedly “calm and placid as if she were enjoying a quiet and pleasant slumber.” There was one tiny miracle: Mr Lathrop, in whose house the survivors found shelter, waded into the surf to retrieve a parcel of clothing and discovered that he had an infant in his arms. Some days later the baby was said to be in excellent health.

A newspaper report of the time says that forty-six bodies had been taken from the sea by nightfall, and that they were coffined in rough deal wood boxes on the beach. The storm raged on at sea for two more days as religious ceremonies on the shore and in the local cemetery took place. Immigrant family relatives rushed from waiting rooms at Boston Harbor to the scene upon hearing news of the disaster. Irish women howled each time a loved one was recognized in the lines of wooden boxes. Many unclaimed victims were buried in a common grave on Tuesday. The funeral party was headed by the captain and the survivors.

Sixty-five years later a huge granite Celtic Cross was raised over the mass grave, sited on the highest point of Cohasset Central Cemetery so as to command a view of the bay. The cross bears the inscription: “This cross was erected and dedicated May 30, 1914, by the A.O.H. and the I.A.A.O.H. of Massachusetts to mark the final resting place of about forty-five Irish immigrants from a total company of ninety-nine who lost their lives on Grampus Ledge off Cohasset October 7, 1849, in the wreck of the brig St John from Galway, Ireland. R.I.P.“

If you can stomach an even more harrowing version of events, here’s a link to newspaper reports of the time: 1849 St John disaster

During a recent research project, I was shocked to come across an Irish death certificate for a baby girl named Martha aged just under 15 months upon which the Certified Cause of Death was declared by a physician to be “Marasmus.” This is the condition which often claims the lives of very under-nourished infants living in areas of severe famine. We have all seen the haunting images of terrified black children with bloated tummies and heads attached to skeletal frames filmed during recent famines in war-torn African countries. The medical term for the distorted human condition you were witnessing is marasmus.

However, my Irish death cert of concern was not from the Great Famine era of Ireland, namely the late 1840’s. Civil death registration in Ireland did not commence until 1864. This particular death certificate, shown below, dated from 1877 when Ireland had overcome the worst of the economic depression in the post-Famine years. So how could a one year-old baby just starve to death in a West of Ireland family home at this time? This was a scenario which troubled me, especially when my research revealed that baby Martha had six older siblings who all appeared to survive childhood with relative and commendable ease.

The death of Martha occurred on 28th February 1877 in the County Galway village of Kilchreest. The baby’s parents were Patrick & Margaret. On first viewing the certificate I noted that Margaret reported the death, and this was a common but tragic duty for the mothers of infants who died very young, but usually as a result of fever or generally sub-standard living conditions. MARASMUS though! This diagnosis bothered me.

It was not until my client commissioned me to investigate more fully the background of her Irish ancestors that I discovered the whole sorry tale of poor Martha’s last few weeks on earth. The story was more tragic than I could have imagined.

In being asked to compile complete Family Trees, it was one of my tasks to find out when Martha’s parents died. All of her surviving older siblings emigrated to America, but Martha’s parents never crossed the Atlantic Ocean to join them, and they were also absent from the 1901 Irish census. Logically, both of Martha’s parents must have died before April 1901 and after youngest child Martha’s conception in 1875. I eventually found a matching death record for Martha’s father, Patrick; he died in the year 1900 as a widower. For days after, I struggled to locate any reference at all to the demise of Martha’s mother, Margaret. She was dead by 1900, and she reported baby Martha’s death in February 1877, yet there was no matching death record in the intervening years in County Galway, or the whole of Ireland, or anywhere in the civilized world for that matter. I was stumped – until I made an accidental discovery.

For some reason I cannot recall, I carried out my search for Margaret’s death record one more time. On this occasion, I must have left the span of years for my database search engine to interrogate as Martha’s DOB (in 1875) up until 1900. Up popped mother Margaret’s death registration …. in November 1876 …. so mother Margaret had died three months before her baby Martha. Ugh? So who was the female with the same name as Martha’s mother who registered the baby’s death. It took a while before the truth dawned on me.

Earlier research had determined that Martha’s father, Patrick, was most likely an illegitimate child. Patrick could not name his father when he married Margaret, in spite of the fact that this was a normal legal obligation prior to a marriage being recognized by the British state. So Patrick had no family network to step in when his wife tragically died and left him with seven children to raise single-handedly. Patrick worked on a country estate looking after the land and domestic animals on behalf of wealthy employers, and I reckon that he felt forced to carry on with his work in order to keep his family fed, after Feb 1877. Then it HIT me! Patrick’s eldest daughter was Margaret, born in 1864. This girl was aged just 12 years when her mother died …. and 12 year-old Margaret then became the surrogate mother for her six tiny siblings. Somehow, she managed to keep them all alive as her father Patrick spent long hours away from the family’s cottage in Kilchreest village …. but baby Martha needed a proper biological mother.

12 year-old Margaret toiled as best she could, but eventually Martha could not retain nourishment. After three months in Margaret’s care, baby Martha gave up the will to live as an underfed deformed human soul, in front of Margaret’s eyes, and probably in front of a traumatized group of young siblings. Martha’s death certificate confirms that “Margaret” was “Present at Death.”

Having absorbed these facts, it then became apparent that little Margaret suffered the final indignity of having to formally report the death of her baby sister to the local Registrar. Technically, Margaret was under the legal age to carry out such a sad task – and where was her father Patrick when this matter was reported on 14th March 1877? In fact, where was any neighbourhood support in these days before Social Workers stepped in to ease the burden on dysfunctional families? Shame on them all.

Perhaps the worst castigation should be spared for the family’s local physician. This man calmly advised the Registrar that poor Martha’s condition of Marasmus had been certified for eight weeks prior to death! In other words, this so-called doctor was aware of Martha’s drastic under-nourishment by early January 1877 at the latest, yet he left a dying baby in the care of her 12 year-old sister …. and just walked away from the evolving tragedy.

The only good news is that Martha’s siblings all escaped the Irish poverty trap and all eventually settled in various parts of America. Amazingly, one of Martha’s sisters lived to the grand old age of 103 years and retained a computer-like memory right up until her dying day. When this day came in 1972, she could still recount the story of her baby sister who died back in the Galway cottage homestead …. where no-one seemed to care about fatal circumstances which scarred young minds forever.

I am not sure why the brave rebels hoarded women’s dresses in their underground bunker, alongside 200 rounds of ammunition. For disguise, I suppose – but it must have been quite a sight to see armed ladies with whiskers sneaking over the Ox Mountains.

Published 2013-08-30 by Smashwords.