An Irish Immigrant Family

May 20, 1993

By Isabel Morse Maresh

Today we think of our Irish immigrant ancestors to be a romantic lot, but their struggles were intense. The decision to pull up all their roots, sell what they owned to countrymen as poor as they, and take their families and whatever meager belongs they owned to set out upon a long journey on a crowded ship to an unknown land must have been devasting. It must have been sad to say goodbye to relatives at the port knowing you probably would never see them again.

So it was with Patrick and Julia O'Neil and their four daughters, Mary Jane, Cathrine, Cecelia, and Julia. Patrick's wife was expecting her fifth child when they left Ireland. There are several reasons given for their departure. One is that the crops failed (probably not just one season) making a potato famine. A descendant has related that England was going to send soldiers to Southern Ireland. They did not want their children brought up in a militant atmosphere, so they left for America. The O'Neil family was of the Catholic faith.

Patrick O'Neil was the son of James and Ellen O'Neil. Julia was born circa 1820 near Parish Tullaroon in Kilkenney, Ireland, the daughter of Richard and Mary (McGinnis) Delaney.

After their arrival in Montreal, Canada, Patrick left his wife while he and his four daughters went on to Florence, a village near Northampton, Mass., to look for work and a place to live. During that time, Julia's fifth daughter, Ellen, was born, about 1856.

The family was in Northhampton, Mass., in 1860, according to the census. Two sons, John and Richard, were born there. By the time the 1870 census was taken, Patrick O-Neil had died, apparently on May 5, 1864, aged 57, in Florence, Mass., the same year that Rose was born. Julia was the head of the family in the 1870 census. The older girls were working in a button shop. According to the report of the Estate and Personal assessment, the family was doing well for itself.

By the time the 1900 census was taken, Julia O'Neil, a widow, owned her own home with no mortgage in Leeds. Mass. She died Dec. 1, 1908, aged 84. She and Patric are buried in the huge St. Mary's Cemetery in Easthampton, Mass., with no monument or gravestone.

The daughters married and migrated from the area. Mary Jane married George W. Lermond in 1866. After living briefly in Connecticut, Mary and George moved to Rockland, Maine, and then on to Lincolnville. Mary once wrote to one of her sisters that because she was Catholic in a Protestant town of Lincolnville, she was ostracized by her neighbors until her children were grown.

Catherine O'Neil married William Hamilton; Bridget married John Clancy; Julia married Patrick Devine; Ellen married James Sullivan; John Married Mary Lawler; Richard married Anne Moran; and Rose Anna married Dennis Carten, a golf pro in the early days of golf.

Rose and Dennis moved about wherever the work was with their two daughters, Virginia and Julia. Virginia wrote that she and Julia had attended 13 grammar schools.

Thus is the story of one Irish family's migration to America.