Old Guard

The second oldest Catholic Church in Manhattan is where my earliest Irish immigrant ancestors were married in 1866. Ellen Shea, who had escaped the Irish Potato Famine in Kilgarvan, Kerry, with her mother and sister, arrived in 1851 with many of her extended family and neighbors. James O’Dea came around 1865, but I’m not able

Pleasing Characteristics

My immigrant great-great-grandmother Mary Sullivan Lynch lived in this house for a year in 1903 with her son Timothy. She was a widow at the time. I’m confident that she had little or nothing to do with the church next door which was built in 1890 because she was a Catholic and belonged to St.