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.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

AMANDA FUSON

Image
  One of the ancestors we have a photo of is Amanda Fuson. It shows a young woman with blue eyes and brown hair. I include here a cleaned-up, closeup version of the original shown at the end of this blog. She was my husband’s great-grandmother on the Jobe side of the family. Having a photo is fortunate since we don’t know much about her. She lived in a time and place where few records survived, and even fewer were about women, since it was rare that a woman owned anything in her own name or had any occupation other than housework and childrearing. Her life was short, and she experienced loss and upheaval. Amanda’s family lived in the area where the borders of Alabama, Mississippi and Tennessee come together. Her father William Fuson lived in Wayne County, Tennessee (due north of Lauderdale County, Alabama) in the 1830s and 1840s, but by the 1850s he was living in the northeast corner of Mississippi, in Tishomingo County. [1] The horizontal dashed line on the map is the Tennessee-Missi
Read more

Matthias Ludlow (1802-1879)

  There were so many men in New Jersey named Matthias Ludlow! But this post is about our most recent ancestor of that name. This Matthias was the father of William Todd Ludlow, my grandfather’s grandfather, about whom I blogged on July 29, 2023. I remember when I was about eleven or twelve, my grandparents displayed a daguerreotype of a man on the mantel. When I asked my grandmother who the man was, she said it was one of my grandfather’s ancestors, but she didn’t know which one. Unfortunately, my grandfather was not at home, and although I spent a lot of time with them, I never saw that old photo again, and no one else in the family I’ve asked recalled seeing it. Since Matthias was the wealthiest by far of all that side of the family, I believe it must have been an image of him. I remember my grandfather saying “Matthias Ludlow” in a very dramatic way. Matthias was born in 1802 in New York City, where his father, Ebenezer Ludlum, worked as a mason. [1] From the late 1700s to th
Read more

WHAT WAS REID DOSS’ REAL NAME AND WHEN WAS HE REALLY BORN?: THE MYSTERY OF REID DOSS

Image
  Although Reid has passed away, his birthday is coming up. Curtis remembers his Dad telling him that his name was originally Elster Reid Doss, but when he went into the Army, he changed it to Reid E. Doss so people wouldn’t make fun of him. Also, his wife and children always celebrated his birthday on August 25 th . So, I was surprised when Maye Doss gave me some old papers that included Reid’s birth certificate. I saw that it said he was born on August 26 th and called him Reid E. Doss. I asked her why they always said his birthday was the 25 th . She laughed and said, “I guess we just liked that day better!” Also, Reid was counted in the federal census at age 6 and age 16. Both times, he was called Reid E. Doss. However, when he registered for the draft in 1942, he signed his name as Reid Elster Doss AND he said his birthday was the 25 th . Could the person who filed the birth certificate have been confused about what day it was? It happens to all of us.  Here are a few docu
Read more