Mary Cusick: From County Cavan, Ireland to Jersey City, New Jersey

 This month I’ve been researching one of my great great grandmothers. She was born Mary Cusick or Cusack in County Cavan, Ireland, in 1846. She didn’t even know her exact birthdate. Apparently, the family never celebrated birthdays. She never learned to read or write, and I’ve seen her last name spelled both ways. County Cavan is a county with no coastline, but it has many lakes. It’s in the northern part of Ireland, near Northern Ireland. I was able to visit it in 2015 and it is a rural area with lush green hills, and reminded me of times I visited Pennsylvania.

Mary was a baby and toddler during the Great Famine, but her family must have had the means to find food. When she was a child, she came to America with her mother Mary Smith Cusick and her sister Ellen Cusick.[1] I haven’t yet found out if she had more immediate family making the journey, but I do know her mother’s sister Bridget Smith Flood also emigrated with her husband Peter Flood and son Charles. Charles was Mary Cusick’s cousin, and he witnessed several pension requests and baptisms of Mary’s children.

Mary was only about 16 when she married Jeremiah Quinlan in Manhattan, and about 17 when she became the mother of my great-grandmother Mary Ellen Quinlan in Staten Island. When she was only 18, Jeremiah was killed in the Civil War (more about that in another blog post). She had to petition the U.S. government several times for a pension, which was her right as a soldier’s widow. It took years to get anything. In 1869 she married John F. McCormack. She was only 23, and they moved to Jersey City, New Jersey, where they lived in apartments for the rest of their lives. He was a laborer, sometimes a gardener. They had Kate, James, Ellen, John, Elizabeth, and Grace. All but Elizabeth grew up. McCormack was also a name that could be spelled two ways: McCormack/McCormick.

If all those troubles weren’t enough, they lost some or all of their belongings on July 8, 1888, when a fire started at a neighbor’s apartment and spread to theirs.[2]

Out of all this family, I have only seen photos of Mary’s two eldest children, Mary Ellen, and Kate. Mary Ellen grew up to have six sons;[3] Kate didn’t have children.[4]

Both of these photos are of the daughters in middle age.

Mary Ellen


Kate McCormack


Note: Many of these details can be found in the Civil War pension file number 102136, viewable online at Fold3.com.


[1] For time she came to America, 1915 New Jersey state census, Hudson County, Jersey City, District 10, Ward 8, sheet 2B, dwelling 28, family 44, 784 Ocean Ave., Mary McCormack; “New Jersey, U.S., State Census, 1915,” database and images, Ancestry (ancestry.com: downloaded 15 April 2023) > Hudson  > Jersey City Ward 8 – Jersey City Ward 9 > image 314 of 1137; from New Jersey State Archives, film 34. For relationship to mother, “1880 United States Federal Census,” database with images, Ancestry (https://www.ancestry.com: downloaded 14 June 2021) > New Jersey > Hudson > Jersey City > 037 > image 17; entry for Mary McCormack and Mary Cusack, p. 17 (penned), sheet 92A (stamped), line 31, house no. 101, dwelling 124, family 161; from NARA publication T9, roll 784.

[2] “Defective Chimneys, The Jersey Journal, 9 July 1888, p. 1, col. 1; images, GenealogyBank.com.

[3] 1900 U.S. Census, Hudson County, New Jersey, population schedule, Ward 7, Jersey City, ED 145, p. 5B (penned), 44 Woodlawn Ave., dwelling 74, family 122, Mary E. Kirner; digital images, Ancestry (https://www.ancestry.com: accessed 20 December 2017); from National Archives microfilm publication T624, roll 890.

[4] 1915 N.J. state census cited above.

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