In commenting on the previous blog on German families coming to America and, in particular, her German ancestors establishing themselves in Buffalo around mid-century in the 1800’s, Maura Madden wrote:
“It is pretty interesting to think about the makeup of the city a century ago when my grandparents were teens. It was definitely segregated (still is very much). Black people were on the east side, Italians on the west side, and polish in North Buffalo. Germans and Irish (who were the oldest immigrants and thought they were above the other groups, even the polish and Italians) were in the central part of the city (the fruit belt).“
As Maura implies, the Irish were the other major ethnic group to impact the county through immigration in the 1800’s. As with German immigrants, there had been people coming to the American shores from Ireland since colonial times. In the Northen family, for example, Dennis McCarty had come from Dublin to Virginia in the 1670’s and his son Daniel went on to become a member of the Virginia House of Burgesses, colonial Virginia’s first elected government. But Irish immigrants prior to 1800 were the exception.
As almost everyone with Irish ancestors knows, the major force driving people of Ireland to the United States was the infamous “Irish Potato Famine” that occurred in 1842. Starvation was coupled with the oppression of Irish citizens by Great Britain during that time. For many families, coming to the United States was a matter of survival.
Unlike German immigrants, most people from Ireland (depending upon the county they came from) spoke English, but, along with a number of other negative stereotypes, there was another huge source of prejudice – their religion. Other than those coming from Ulster County (now Northern Ireland), most Irish immigrants were Catholic. The United States at the time was overwhelmingly Protestant, and anti-Catholicism, especially in states south of the Mason Dixon line, was ubiquitous. Nevertheless, many people today claim Irish ancestry. Pat, Maura and Melissa can claim some Irish ancestry from the Schroeder side of their family and four of the Northen spouses: John, Dan, Mary Beth and Rita can claim at least one Irish ancestor. In fact, John’s and Dan’s last name ( Cotter and Madden, respectively) telegraph that the Irish ancestry on their paternal side.
As with German immigrants, many Irish families moved into the city. This was the case with Pat, Maura and Melissa’s ancestor, Thomas Hughes. Thomas Hughes first shows up in the 1850 census living in Buffalo, New York. He is listed as 30 years old and his profession, an engineer. He is married to Elizabeth (Eliza) Curran (age 20) and has two children, Mary (3) and James (2). There is no indication when they came to the United States; however, Mary was born in the U.S. There is a further clue in the census since most heads of the families in the neighborhood were Irish laborers and one of those was Eliza’s father, James Curran. James and his wife Mary are listed as having four children with a four year gap between their son James (15) who was born in Ireland and their daughter Sarah (5) who was born in New York. This means that Thomas Hughes’ wife Eliza must have been in the United States from at least 1835 when she would have been 15 and probably married Thomas when she was no older than 17. This would have been a normal marrying age for immigrant women during this time period and one could speculate that Thomas was probably looked at as a “good catch” for his daughter by James Curran since an engineer among a neighborhood of laborers would have been a definite step up.
Thomas Hughes died in 1892. The last census in which he appears is 1880, where he is still listed as an engineer. His oldest daughter Mary, now 26, still lived at home as did her three younger sisters, ages 24, 21 and 18. This strengthens the common conception that girls lived at home with their parents until they were married. It is nice to speculate that the ability for women to remain at home was actually a social advantage since Eliza herself probably needed to marry young as matter of economic necessity. The 1910 census shows Eliza living with her son Edgar Hughes – Pat, Maura and Melissa’s great-grandfather. She died in an an astonishingly modern way in 1913,being hit by a street car. An interesting footnote is that Melissa’s son Liam carries on the Hughes legacy in his middle name Liam Hughes Cotter, a bout as Irish as one can get.
The Cotter family was also drawn to the city when they immigrated, but to Philadelphia rather than Buffalo. The first family member named Cotter to come to the United States appears to have been Jeremiah Cotter. Little is known about him other than his being listed on the death certificate of Joseph J. Cotter as his father. Similarly, there is little information about Joseph Cotter himself. According to his death certificate, he was born in Ireland in December of 1868 and died at Bryn Mawr Hospital in Pennsylvania. At the time of his death he was employed as a gardener and lived in Haverford, New Jersey just west of Philadelphia. Joseph’s death results from his having fractured his skull after a fall from a bicycle. His birth date is contradicted by the 1900 census which lists him as having been born in 1873, but the latter is complicated by the fact that his date of immigration was 1872 and his having been in the country for 28 years. His wife Margaret (Maggie) was also born in Ireland, but is listed as immigrating in 1884 and having been here for 16 years. The numbers indicating her age in 1900, however, do not add up. She is listed as being 34 years old but having been born in 1876. While it may seem that poor subtraction has added a decade and she is actually 24, this seems unlikely since she and Joseph have been married for ten years and marriage at 12, though possible, is unlikely. In any case, in 1900 there are three children in the family, one of whom is John, the first in the line of John Robert Cotters who lead down to John Robert (Jack) Cotter V of the current generation.
The Cotters were not the only family members to come to Philadelphia. Rita’s 3rd great grandfather Hugh B. Hart, who had been born in Roscommon, Ireland in 1811 also made his home there. Little is known about him other than that he died in in 1887 and is buried in Old Cathedral Cemetery in Philly. It is quite possible though that he arrived in 1871 with his son Peter, who was 29 at the time. Two years after arriving, Peter married Bridget Agnes Gilbride who had arrived just a year after him. Six years later, by 1880 they had five children, thus living up to the reputation of large Irish Catholic families. At that time, Peter was a laborer, so times could not have been easy economically. They lived on N. 52 a number of other first generation Irish heads of families, also laborers, but there were other ethnicities in the neighborhood, too – primarily English. Bridget (known as Agnes) would go on to have 16 children, only ten of whom would survive.
By 1880, the Hart family had moved to Gerard Ave. (which today is primarily a Black neighborhood), and Peter was employed as a watchman at a paper mill. This was a job that he kept at least until 1910, when he was 70 years old, but by 2020, he was retired. It is interesting that in 1920 four of his unmarried sons, ages 27 to 41 were still living at home. The four sons had a variety of jobs: watchman, roofer, police sergeant, and shipping clerk. None simply listed themselves as a laborer. It is possible that the sons were helping to support the family since also in the house lived a widowed daughter and four grandchildren. All of Peter and Bridget’s other daughters were out of the house and, given the times, one assumes were married. One of those who was not still in the household at that point was Rita’s great grandfather Hugh Joseph Hart, who was married with a family and working as steward in a club. Bridget died of heart issues in 1926, a year after her husband.
Another of Rita’s ancestors, Bridget (Biddy) Devlin, arrived in U. S. Oct. 10, 1883. She had been born May 3,1867 in Crossmaglin, County Armagh, Ireland and attended school there for six years. According to American Line Crew List, she traveled on the Lord Clive that departed from Liverpool, Engiand. No family was with her and though, she is only 16, ironically, she is listed as a spinster (not a child). How she survived the first few years or made her way to Philadelphia is not recorded but by 1902 she was married to Samuel Richardson. Samuel J. Richardson appears to have also arrived in this country during the 1880’s. How he and Biddy met is unknown, but two years prior to their marriage he was a boarder in the home of another family and working as a laborer. By 1910, however, Biddy and Samuel were renting their own place on Stiles Street in Philadelphia. Samuel was working as a laborer in a machine shop. Though they have had two children only one, Samuel Jr., has survived. A nephew lives with them. Samuel has applied for his naturalization papers, but Biddy has not.
Interestingly, the same year that Biddy and Samuel were married, another family marriage occurred. Peter Hart’s son Hugh married Catherine Bradley. Kate, as she was known, was a second generation American born woman, whose own father John had also been born in Pennsylvania. Though, John’s father was likely born in Ireland, clearly Kate did not see herself as an Irish immigrant and it is likely Hugh did not either.
While one cannot generalize even from the families described above, it is clear that for many Irish immigrants coming to the United States in the 1800’s did not have easy lives. Most men in Ireland had been farmers, but landing in the city had to find other means of employment – principally as laborers. Women worked primarily in the home, often taken care of large families. It was not unusual for children to die young.
Immigration from Ireland did not stop with the coming of the 1900’s nor were the places those immigrants settled always rural. The next post will take a look at examples from Dan’s and Mary Beth’s families.
Northen History 