ANCESTOR NO. 10: MARY KINANE

 My great grandmother was Mary Kinane. My Aunt Mary told me the name is pronounced Kin-ANN. Kinane is not a common Irish name, so the spelling varied in the records.

Mary Kinane was born in Jersey City, New Jersey, on 16 June 1866. She married a younger man and seemed self-conscious about that; every record I found for her made her younger and younger over the years. It wasn’t until I found her baptism record that I discovered when she was really born.

Her parents were William Kinane and Bridget Rourke or O’Rourke; her last name varied with the Irish political climate. Unlike the stereotypical large Irish Catholic family, this one was small. Mary grew up with only one younger brother, John. She did not attend school when she was thirteen and didn’t marry until she was twenty-nine years old.[1] For a while she worked as a clerk, probably in retail since she had so little education.

In those days an unmarried twenty-nine woman was considered an “old maid” and looked down upon. Somehow, Mary met John James Fennessy, a grocer in Brooklyn, New York, also the child of Irish immigrants, and they married at St. Bridget’s Catholic Church in Jersey City on 28 November 1895. That day was Thanksgiving Day.[2] People had much less time off from work than we do today, and that was probably a good day to get married. In fact, Mary’s daughter Agnes also got married at Thanksgiving.

Mary went on to have five children, although only one of them had any children of their own (Agnes). They were:

·       Daniel Joseph, born 5 Feb. 1897, named after John’s father.

·       Agnes, born 5 Aug. 1898, possibly named after Mary’s sister Agnes who died in infancy.

·       Marion, born 15 June 1904

·       James, born between 1905 and 1910.

·       Virginia Alice, born 17 Dec. 1907

We have photos of them.

This studio portrait of Dan Fennessy is dated 1910 on the back, which agrees to a year this photographer was at this address. Confirmation was a rite of passage for Catholic youth, after which a Catholic child could become a godparent or witness a marriage.

This photo of Agnes was probably taken for her confirmation, also about 1910.

 

1915, Marion and Virginia

Virginia was the youngest. Records indicate she never married or had children.

James is a mystery child. There is no baptism record for him, and he is not buried in the same plot as the rest of the family. I thought he was recorded in error on the census. However, a 1912 newspaper story about an accident Mary witnessed in front of their apartment said her husband was afraid it was one of his five children that had been killed by the car. James was not counted with the rest of the family on either the 1915 state census or the 1920 federal census. So, Mary might only have had four children. Her husband worked the night shift his whole career, so she had to keep them quiet during the day, no small task. After she was married, she was not listed in the city directories, so even after her children were grown, she probably never worked outside of the home, which was the norm for married women during her lifetime.

Mary’s daughter Marion, only fourteen years old, died on 21 October 1918, the worst month for deaths during the worldwide flu pandemic in the United States. Mary’s only brother John, age fifty-one, died at the end of the epidemic, on 1 February 1919.

Mary was only sixty-four years old when she died of stomach cancer at home, on 9 November 1930, during the Depression. She’s buried in the family plot at Holy Name Cemetery in Jersey City. The stone merely says “Fennessy.” Although her husband survived her for another thirteen years, he did not remarry.

 

 

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[1] 1880 population schedule, Mary Canann in household of William Canann, 8th Precinct, 2nd District, ED 15, Jersey City, Hudson County, New Jersey, p. 6 (penned), sheet 411B (stamped), line 14, 297 Railroad Avenue, dwelling 22, family 54, image 6 of 57; from NARA roll 782; “1880 United States Federal Census,” database with images, Ancestry (https://www.ancestry.com: accessed 5 October 2020) > New Jersey > Hudson > Jersey City > 015 > image 6 of 57. For occupation, Gopsill’s Jersey City…Directory 1886-1887 (Washington, D.C.: Wm. H. Boyd, 1886), 362, Mary Kinane; “U.S., City Directories, 1822-1995,” database with images, Ancestry (https://www.ancestry.com/imageviewer/collections/2469/images/11144551?pId=588488281: accessed 13 Mar. 2022) > image 176 of 414.

[2] “Thanksgiving Day 1895,” print-a-calendar (https://print-a-calendar.com/holiday/thanksgiving-day/1895 : accessed 1 Sep. 2025). St. Bridget’s Catholic Church, Jersey City, N.J., Marriage Register no. 3, marriage no. 52, 28 November 1895, John Fennessy and Mary Kinane; “Church records, 1870-1942,” images, FamilySearch microfilm no. 1403267, image 848.