In 1900 Kate McMahon switched one crowded Irish neighborhood filled with friends and relatives for another 6700 miles away. Born in this Cork City row house in the Lough neighborhood in 1877, she emigrated to Chelsea, Massachusetts (next to Boston), to live with her uncle Michael Connolly. He worked at the local rubber factory along with other Corconians, including Daniel O’Connor who married Kate within a year. They eventually moved to Providence and raised ten children, many of whom worked at the large US Rubber factory. Kate and Daniel O’Connor were my great-grandparents.
While I know Kate went to the US, it’s difficult to track others in her family, except for her younger brother. Dennis McMahon was three years younger than Kate and became a soldier with the Royal Munster Fusiliers. He ended up in Tralee and raised a large family with his Kerry-born wife, Mary O’Sullivan. Some of their children moved to England and it was through that branch of the family, and their DNA, that I connected with my third cousin Nicola McMahon Kenny, who discovered our relationship through Ancestry. Nicola, now living in Kerry, joined me for lunch on my recent trip to Ireland. To my delight, she had pictures to share of some American relatives of mine who were meeting Tralee relatives of hers decades ago. The people in the photos were curious to her, but I recognized them right away as aunts and uncles of my mother. On that day, far away, distant family branches touched.
Visiting the Relatives 