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Annagh, Ballindine, Brady, Clanmorris, Claremorris, Co. Mayo, Crossboyne, emigration, Famine, Jordan, Kennedy, Kilcolman, New York, Prendergast, Reddington, San Francisco, Stafford, Tuam
This blog is mainly about Irish people who settled, at least for a significant period of time, in 19th century Stafford. There were, however, many people for whom Stafford was merely a stopping off point on the way to elsewhere. Before the Famine the local area had become well known to many Irish people from the west as a source of seasonal work on the farms and building sites. During and after the Famine years Stafford therefore became a place of immediate refuge for many of these people or their associates. Some settled permanently but many others moved on. The passage through Stafford of these temporary residents is mostly undocumented and unknown, but in certain cases a little light can be thrown on this migration process. That is the case here.
No. 1, Earl’s Court, Stafford, in 1851
In March 1851, when the census enumerator went up the narrow passage into Earl’s Court, Stafford, he found at No.1 ten people crammed into a little cottage. Head of the household was Bartholomew Jordan.[i] With him was his wife Margaret and their four children, Mary, Bridget, Margaret and Hannah. Mary and Bridget had been born in Ireland, the latter in 1846, but Margaret was born two years later in England and Hannah (Annie) was a baby of nine months. This evidence dates the Jordan family’s arrival in England to the height of the Famine in 1847. At first sight the other four people at No.1 appear to be a scatter of individuals from the mass of refugees fleeing Ireland’s trauma. John Reddington (b. 1821) was a labourer who said he was married. His wife and children, if any, were not with him. Then there was Patrick Kennedy (b. 1825), also a labourer, and Bridget Kennedy (b. 1826), a servant. Bridget claimed to be a widow, so she seemed to be Patrick’s sister-in-law. Finally came James Thompson, another Irish labourer who had been born around 1826.
The 1851 census return offers no clue as to where in Ireland these people originated, but the Jordan family remained in Stafford for a number of decades and Margaret Jordan later stated she had been born in the parish of Kilcolman, or the town of Claremorris, in Co. Mayo. Margaret Jordan’s maiden name was Brady. This was initially discovered from the registers of St Austin’s Church in Stafford where her surname was recorded when baby Margaret was baptised on 3 September 1848.[ii] Fortunately, the record of Bartholomew Jordan and Margaret Brady’s marriage has survived. [iii] It did indeed take place in Kilcolman parish, Co. Mayo, on 21 March 1838. One of their sponsors was a James Prendergast, a surname that recurs a little later in this story. This evidence confirms, therefore, that the family came to Stafford from the Kilcolman area. I have explored the later and rather tragic history of the Jordan family in Stafford in my book Divergent Paths.[iv]
Clanmorris, Co. Mayo, in the Famine: death, eviction and emigration
Kilcolman parish was in the Barony of Clanmorris and immediately adjacent to the parish of Crossboyne to the west (see map). The town of Clare or Claremorris straddled the boundary between the two parishes and the village of Ballindine (shown on the map as Ballynagran) lay next to the Co. Galway boundary four miles to the south. The parishes of Annagh, Bekan and Knock were just over the border in the adjacent barony of Costello and the diocesan centre of Tuam lay close by to the south east in Co. Galway. Even before the Great Hunger many workers from the area were forced to go to England for seasonal work to help pay their rents, and Staffordshire was an attractive place to go. The town of Stafford would have been known already to many of these people and that explains why the Jordan household had been there since 1847.
The people of Kilcolman and Crossboyne suffered badly in the Great Hunger. On 5 December 1846 the parish priest, James Hughes, reported to Dublin Castle that there were 450 poor suffering families in the area, ‘the great majority of whom are starving’. At the end of the month he reinforced the message, saying that ‘the people in this parish are starving in multitudes’.[v] The local landlord was the Hon. Geoffrey Browne of Castlemacgarett House, a member of the extensive aristocratic family that owned 54,000 acres and 13 houses in Cos. Mayo and Galway. Browne was doubtless among those landlords who evicted their destitute tenants during the Famine. It is impossible to distinguish the numbers who died as a direct result of the Famine and those evicted and forced to emigrate, but the results were stark. The Barony of Clanmorris lost over a quarter of its population (27.9%) between 1841 and 1851. Ballindine town and its surrounding townlands suffered even more. Almost half (48.2%) the people had gone by 1851.
Family relationships in Earl’s Court
Amongst the emigrants were the people who were in Jordans’ cottage in 1851. They were not a collection of random individuals as appears at first sight. They were members of interrelated families. No.1 Earl’s Court in fact became a haven for at least for four such families from Kilcolman/Crossboyne in these crisis years, as well as for isolated but probably connected individuals like James Thompson. For all but the Jordans it was, however, merely a temporary staging post before they emigrated overseas.
The genealogy shows these family connections. Margaret Jordan née Brady’s brother was Martin Brady, and he and his wife Bridget Reddington had also arrived in Stafford around 1847. Indeed, they may have come over with the Jordans. We know they were there by 1848 because their son John was baptised at St Austin’s on 11 July 1848. They rapidly moved on and were not at No.1 for the 1851 census.[vi] Bridget’s brother John Reddington was there in 1851, however, although on his own. He and his wife Mary Kennedy had been in Stafford earlier than that because their daughter Mary was baptised in the town on 10 February 1849. But where were Mary and the children in 1851? The answer is: in Manchester. She and her three infants were living in a cellar at No.1 Back Smith Street in the Deansgate area of the city.[vii] They were just four amongst the thirteen people crammed into this dreadful place. The head of the household was Michael Prendergast, and we see here a social connection back to the Prendergast who was a sponsor at the Jordan marriage in Kilcolman in the 1830s. Family networks continued to provide support. Mary had just given birth to baby Jane, and we are left to speculate on why she was in Manchester at such a difficult time. We do know that the Reddington family was reunited back in Stafford by early 1852 because poor Jane died there when less than nine months old.[viii]
Mary Reddington née Kennedy’s sister Bridget was certainly in Stafford by 1850, and probably earlier, because in the summer of that year she married William Commons.[ix] Commons almost certainly came from one of the many families of that name in Crossboyne, so it was a marriage of associates from back home.[x] It proved to be a tragically short marriage. William died of heart failure in the Infirmary on 17 October, about three months after their wedding. [xi] He must have already been an ill man. That explains why Bridget said she was a widow in the 1851 census return, but it also shows that she reverted to her maiden name after William’s death. The surname Commons must have been baggage she wanted to jettison to start a new life. She was in fact Patrick Kennedy’s sister, not his sister-in-law as appears at first sight.
Neither Bridget nor Patrick Kennedy’s subsequent paths have yet been traced, mainly because, with such common Irish names, they cannot be definitely identified amongst their many namesakes. They certainly did not remain in Stafford, and they probably emigrated. The stories of Martin and Bridget Brady and John and Mary Reddington are more clearly documented. They remained connected and it is to them that we now turn.
The Bradys and Reddingtons emigrate to New York
Martin and Bridget Brady took the lead in moving on from Stafford. On 1 May 1849 they arrived in New York aboard the ship Devon from Liverpool.[xii] The family found some sort of accommodation close to the piers in the appalling slums of New York’s Ward 11 on the Lower East Side. This area was densely occupied by immigrants struggling to get a foothold in the USA. Martin continued to work in labouring jobs. On 8 October 1855 he arrived at the New York County Superior Court to present his petition for naturalisation to become an American citizen.[xiii] By 1860 the family had moved up the hill into Ward 17, an area of equally tightly packed tenement property east of The Bowery on the lower East Side where over 60,000 people were living in 1855. The vast majority were recent immigrants like the Bradys, evenly divided between Irish and Germans.[xiv] Most of the Germans worked in the garment trade whereas the Irish were predominantly labourers.
At this point we need to turn back to John and Mary Reddington’s story. John’s later life suggests he had some entrepreneurial ability and Stafford would offer little to such an ambitious but impoverished man. So John spent his three years in the town on labouring jobs to earn enough money to pay for the family’s emigration and settlement. Sometime in late September/early October 1851 he achieved his aim, got the train to Liverpool and booked a passage on the David Cannon to New York. He arrived there on 8 November 1851.[xv] Mary and the two surviving children followed him on the Middlesex exactly a month later.[xvi]
They also faced the challenge of surviving as immigrant Irish in the harsh environment of America, but they had support from the Bradys to do so. Six years later on 20 November 1857 John Reddington made his final petition for US Naturalisation at the New York Common Pleas Court. And his witness was Martin Brady whose address was given as 264 East 14th Street whilst John’s address was 266 East 14th Street. So at that time the two families were either living together or pretty much next door.[xvii] The 1860 census shows that both families were still living close to each other in Ward 17 of New York city, though not as next-door neighbours.[xviii] Their daughter Anne (Annie), now about 13 (though claimed as 15), was working as a servant whilst Mary (Maria) was at school. The children had been joined by a new arrival, Matthew, born in New York around 1858-9. The gap between Mary’s birth in 1849 and Matthew’s around ten years later suggests Mary senior might have had another child during the 1850s but, if so, no record of him/her has been found.[xix]
The Reddingtons and Bradys go west to San Francisco
Life in the slums of New York offered little more to the Reddingtons in the long term than Stafford had, but it gave the opportunity to earn more money to finance their next move. They decided to head west and sometime between 1860 and 1863 they went all the way to San Francisco in California. That was before the final completion of the transcontinental railroad (1869), so the family must either have endured the rigours of the emigrant wagon trains across the Rockies and Sierra Nevada or the long sea voyage round Cape Horn.
We know the Reddingtons had arrived in San Francisco by 1863 because in that year John was recorded as a ‘laborer’ working for the San Francisco Gas Company.[xx] He was still had that occupation in 1869, and the directory of that year identifies the family’s residential address – an apartment (no. 1316) in Sacramento Street.[xxi] That was a reasonable locality on the border of North Beach and Nob Hill and it suggests John Reddington was already more than a gas company labourer. That is borne out by the 1870 Census where he is described as a ‘retail grocer’ with a total real estate value of $5,000. The Census also shows developments in the family as a whole. John and Mary were living in Sacramento Street with their son Matthew, now aged twelve, and their two daughters, Anne and Maria. But the daughters were now married to two brothers, Martin McKenna (Maria) and John McKenna (Anne). Martin, who seems to have been known as Mart or Mark, was described as a painter and John as a tanner.[xxii] The McKennas have been elusive prior to the 1870 census record. They claimed then and normally later to have been born in England in the 1840s, but no census evidence of them has so far been found there. A John McKenna is recorded as arriving in New York in August 1865 from Liverpool, a date agreeing with John’s claimed immigration year in the 1900 US census.[xxiii] The McKennas were almost certainly Irish by descent and Anne and Maria must have married them shortly before 1870.
John Reddington seems to have done reasonably well with his business. In 1875 it was described as ‘groceries and liquors’ and located at the corner of 25th and Columbia Streets. It is uncertain where the business operated from then until 1889 when it was on Bay Street near Larkin Street. The family remained living at 1316 Sacramento Street throughout this period, unusual residential stability in nineteenth century cities. In October 1889 John died, however, when he was no more than 68, perhaps younger – symptomatic of a hard and stressful life.[xxiv] His widow Mary must have been left in rather straitened circumstances and in 1900 we find her living with her adult children Matthew and Maria at 12 Salmon Street, a humble side street in North Beach. She died in January 1901.[xxv]
The Reddingtons’ children
It is worth tracing finally what happened to the Reddingtons’ children in America. Matthew’s story is simple in that he never married and died in 1911 at the early age of 54.[xxvi] His life suggests lack of fulfilment. In the 1870s he was variously described as an apprentice and a clerk (perhaps in his father’s business) but by the 1890s and 1900s he varied between gardener, labourer (normally) and watchman, so his trajectory was downward, and his early death suggests bigger problems which it would take further research to expose.
John and Mary’s daughter Maria also had a tragic life. She must have married Mart McKenna in San Francisco around 1868, though no record has been found. The couple avoided the Census enumerators until 1900 when Maria was listed in Salmon Street. She said she had had five children but that none of them was living. Death records in San Francisco appear to bear out that pitiful story. Between 1869 and 1874 Mary seems to have given birth to five, maybe six, babies, all but one of whom died within a year – indeed, one was stillborn.[xxvii] That was John who was born and died on 8 January 1872; his twin sister Mary Theresa only survived seven months, dying in August 1872. These tragedies all took place at 1316 Sacramento Street where Mart and Marie McKenna were living with their in-laws at least between 1868 and 1878.[xxviii] Also there must have been the couple’s daughter Agnes, born in 1876 and the only offspring to survive childhood.[xxix] But she died in 1895 aged only 19. The couple moved out of Sacramento Street sometime before 1880 and lived in at least three other places in the same general district between then and 1897. All this time Mart was carrying on his trade as a house painter.[xxx] He died in 1898, rather strangely in New York, and Maria then moved in with her brother and mother.[xxxi] She died in San Francisco in 1910.[xxxii]
That left just Anne Reddington to carry on the line of descent from John Reddington and Mary Kennedy. She married John McKenna around 1869. McKenna appears to have had no aspirations that were successful. In 1870 he had been a tanner but in 1880 was a ‘salesman’. The couple had moved in with John, Mary and Martin Reddington at 1316 Sacramento Street, and they already had five children, so the household contained ten people with their in-laws. By 1900 John had sunk back to being a day labourer and the family had moved out of San Francisco to Yount (Yountville) in the Napa Valley. In the 1900s they returned to San Francisco and in 1910 were living with their probable son Henry C. McKenna and his wife Rose. Henry was a yard master on the railroad, but John was now eking out his existence as a watchman at the docks. He died in 1918, whilst Anne predeceased him in 1915.[xxxiii] Anne must have died partly through the exhaustion of childbearing. In the 1900 census she stated she had had an astonishing fourteen children, of whom nine were then still living. There are presumably descendants of this family in America today.
The Bradys in San Francisco – and attachment to Co. Mayo
John and Mary Reddington had been the pathfinders in moving west, and the Bradys followed them to San Francisco. Martin Brady is first recorded in the voters’ register in 1866-7 living a few blocks away from the Reddingtons in Mason Street. They seem to have moved south to Columbia Street in the Mission district in the 1870s.[xxxiv] Martin Brady remained working as a labourer. Unlike John Reddington, therefore, Martin Brady found little advancement in San Francisco, but the family managed an adequate existence. Nevertheless, sometime after 1880 Martin and Bridget Reddington apparently went back east because they were recorded as dying in Brooklyn, New York, in 1885 and 1888 respectively.[xxxv]
It is not clear that all Martin and Bridget Bradys’ children moved with them to San Francisco. But their sons Michael, John and James did go to the west coast city and all three worked as blacksmiths. From the viewpoint of this story the most interesting one was Michael Brady for a reason to be mentioned later. Sometime around 1857 Michael married an Irish woman, Johanna, probably in New York. No record of the marriage has so far been traced so we have no idea who she was, but in 1860 she and Michael were boarding with another family in an apartment in New York’s Ward 17. They were probably still close to their parents Martin and Bridget, and they now had a baby daughter, Margaret.[xxxvi] They moved to San Francisco around 1866 and lived in Nob Hill and later in the Mission district. Johanna died in 1874 but Michael subsequently married an Isabella Johnson and they had at least two children.[xxxvii]
The key point here is that Michael Brady died on 23 December 1887 at the rather early age of 53. And his death notice (see illustration) is very specific that he was the son of Bridget and the late Martin Brady and was a native of Ballindine, Co. Mayo, Ireland. So here we have, at last, the specific place of origin of the Brady family and probably of the other related people we saw back in the cottage in Earl’s Court, Stafford, in 1851. They still had pride in their Co. Mayo origins and wanted to remember them. The Brady and Reddington story is just one example amongst thousands of how Irish people survived the Great Hunger through a geographically staged migration covering, in this case, Manchester, Stafford, New York and San Francisco. It had been a hard road to travel. These survivors of the Famine were people of grit and determination in the face of difficult circumstances. but they were decisively helped by the family networks established back in Ireland.
[i] Jordan’s forename is rather indistinctly listed as ‘Barkley’ but other data shows his name was clearly Bartholomew.
[ii] Birmingham Archdiocesan Archives (BAA), St Austin’s Church, Stafford, Register of Baptisms, P255/1/2.
[iii] National Library of Ireland, Catholic Parish Registers online: 04217/08, Kilcolman Parish, Archdiocese of Tuam, 21 March 1838, Barth-w Jordan and Margt Brady, sponsors Jno Gibbons, James Prendergast.
[iv] John Herson, Divergent Paths; Family Histories of Irish Emigrants in Britain, 1820-1920, (Manchester, Manchester University Press, 2015), pp. 122-126.
[v] Liam Swords, In their Own Words: The Famine in North Connacht, 1845-1849 (Blackrock, The Columba Press, 1999) pp. 99 and 106.
[vi] BAA, St Austin’s Church, Stafford, Register of Baptisms, P255/1/2.
[vii] All the Irish occupants of the cellar at Back Smith Street are shown as having been born in Co. Galway, not Co. Mayo. Kilcolman and Crossboyne are, however, adjacent to the Mayo/Galway boundary and local usage would not have been bothered by the details of administrative history. It is clear from the ages and birthplaces of Mary Reddington’s children that they are John Reddington’s missing family.
[viii] Stafford RD, Deaths, January to March 1851, 6b/10, Jane Reddington.
[ix] Marriages, Stafford Registration District, July-September 1850, 17/180, William Commons and Bridget Kennedy.
[x] In the 1842 Tithe Applotments no less than 26 Commons held land in Crossboyne Parish, of whom four were named William.
[xi] Death certificate (digital), Stafford RD, 19 October 1850, 17/89, William Commons, age 30; Church of England Deaths and Burials, Staffordshire, p. 233, William Commons, buried Stafford 19 October 1850. Born 1820.
[xii] Immigration New York, arriving passengers and crew lists, 1820-1957: 1 May 1849, ship Devon from Liverpool: Martin Brady, 40 yrs, Laborer, Mrs. Brady, 40 yrs, and seven named children.
[xiii] Index of Petitions for Naturalization, New York City, 1792-1989, Superior Court, New York County,8 October 1855, Brady, Martin, Bundle 64, Copy of Record 20, Witness Wm. Nealy, 67 Water St, NYC. No address is given for Martin Brady.
[xiv] F. Wertz, ‘A new look at the demographics of the nineteenth century Lower East Side neighborhood’, 21 August 2017. URL: newyorkfamilyhistory.org/blog/new-look-demographics-19th-century-lower-east-side-neighborhood, accessed 16 June 2022. The Reddington family were not enumerated in Ward 17 in the 1855 New York State census; they may initially have left the city or perhaps they were just missed in the teeming tenements. There were four other adults with the name Redington or Ridington in the area who may have been related to John and Mary.
[xv] Immigration New York, arriving passengers and crew lists, 1820-1957: 8 November 1851, ship David Cannon, arrived New York from Liverpool: John Reddington, age 26, male, labourer.
[xvi] Immigration New York, arriving passengers and crew lists, 1820-1957: 8 December, ship Middlesex, arrived New York from Liverpool: Maria (sic) Redington, born Ireland, age 30, Anne Redington born Ireland, age 5, Mary Redington, born Ireland (sic), age 2. Despite the differences in spelling, it is clear this is John Reddington’s family.
[xvii] Index of Petitions for Naturalization, New York City, 1792-1989, John Reddington, Common Pleas Court, New York County, Date of Naturalization: 20 November 1857, Bundle 199, Record 215. John Reddington’s naturalisation date and place were stated in the San Francisco 6th Ward Voter Registration Lists. I am indebted to Pam Neary for drawing my attention to this data which set me on the track to more about the family’s circumstances in New York.
[xviii] No street addresses are given in the 1860 Census, but the Reddingtons were Family 1802 in District 10, Ward 17 and the Bradys were Family 2088 in the same area.
[xix] No birth record has been found for Matthew Reddington, however.
[xx] San Francisco Directory, compiled by Henry G. Langley, 1863, 1864
[xxi] San Francisco Business Directory, 1869, p. 704.
[xxii] Martin McKenna is listed in the 1870 Census clearly as ‘Martin McKenna’ but all other data, especially Directories, list him as Mark. That could in turn have been been a mishearing of ‘Mart’.
[xxiii] Immigration, New York, arriving passengers and crew lists, 1820-1957: 11 August 1865, ship Virginia, arrived New York from Liverpool: John McKenna, 21, English, b. 1844, laborer.
[xxiv] US Find a Grave Index, John H. Reddington, died 17 October 1889, buried Holy Cross RC Cemetery, Colma, San Mateo Country, Ca.
[xxv] Ibid., Mary Reddington, died 6 January 1901, buried Holy Cross RC Cemetery, Colma, San Mateo Country, Ca.
[xxvi] California Death Indexes, 1905-39 and US Find a Grave Index, Matthew Reddington, death 5 October 1911 and burial 7 October 1911, Holy Cross RC Cemetery, Colma, San Mateo Country, Ca.
[xxvii] California, San Francisco, County Births, Marriages and Deaths records, 1849-1980: John Thomas McKenna, b. 1870, d. 1 March 1871 aged 1; Mary McKenna, b. 1871, d. 5 May 1871 aged 0; John McKenna, b. & d. 8 January 1872 (stillborn); Mary Theresa McKenna, b. 1872, d. 18 August 1872, aged 7 months (probable twin of John McKenna), father M.F. McKenna, mother Mary Ann McKenna; Annie McKenna, b. 1873, d. 20 February 1874, aged 3 months, father Mark McKenna, mother Maria McKenna. Only the final two records give the parents’ names but the inference that the others were Mark and Maria’s children is compelling.
[xxviii] ‘Mark’ McKenna is listed at this address in the 1868 and 1878 Directories.
[xxix] . It was the chance discovery of her death notice in a local newspaper that allowed me to identify correctly this family as opposed to a plausible but erroneous alternative. I am indebted to Pam Neary for finding this death notice and helping to put me on the right track for this elusive family.
[xxx] ‘Mark’ McKenna is listed as a painter or dwelling painter in San Francisco directories from 1868 to 1897.
[xxxi] US Newspapers Obituary Index, 1800s+, Mark B. McKenna, male, New York, obituary San Francisco Chronicle, 8 March 1898, spouse Maria McKenna, siblings John McKenna, Mary J. Brady. The Index entry has been corrupted by digital character recognition but the details clearly refer to Mart McKenna and his family.
[xxxii] US Find a Grave Index, 1600s-current, Marie J McKenna, died 19 January 1910, buried Holy Cross RC Cemetery, Colma, San Mateo Country, Ca.
[xxxiii] US Find a Grave Index, John McKenna, died February 1918; Anna McKenna, died 4 September 1915, both buried at Holy Cross RC Cemetery, Colma, San Mateo Country, Ca.
[xxxiv] California: voters: Great Register, San Francisco County, 1866-7, 1870 and 1880. San Francisco street naming was very confused in the late nineteenth century, but during the 1880s Columbia Street seemed to have been renamed Florida Street. The Bradys are recorded at 1310 Columbia Street in 1880 and 1887 but in the latter year also at 1310 Florida Street. The identical numbers are surely not a coincidence but represent the same apartment.
[xxxv] New York, Index to Death Certificates, 1862-1948, Martin Brady, age 69, death 9 May 1885, address: 180 Jackson Street, Ward 15, Brooklyn, New York; Bridget Brady, widow, age 77, death 21 March 1888, address: 101 Rulledge Street, Ward 19, Brooklyn, New York.
[xxxvi] Federal Census, 1860, New York Ward 17, District 10, family no. 1268, Abigail McNulty, Head, 62, born Ireland, Mary Wilson, 50, born Ireland and the Bradys.
[xxxvii] California County Birth, Marriage and Death Records, Death, 31 May 1874, Johanna Brady, San Francisco, aged 40. The marriage to Isabella Johnson has not been traced.