Johanna and Loretta Madigan, 1900 and 1910

The other day, when I realized I had to correct this post to make sure it reflected an accurate understanding of who died first - Margaret Sullivan Madigan or Matthew Madigan - I also realized that I had never searched for evidence of Matthew Madigan's second wife or the children of that marriage. And they have such beautifully unique names! Johannas and Lorettas are much rarer - and thus much easier to identify - than Margarets and Marys. So I went looking, and sure enough, they popped up easily on the first pages of my ancestry.com search. I'm having trouble uploading the census records of them in 1900 and 1910, so I'll add those to this post at a later date. Johanna is listed as a widow by 1900, so we do know that Matthew Madigan had died by then, and since Loretta was born around 1888, we know that Margaret Sullivan Madigan had died by then. Their birthdates are listed, in 1900, as November 1860 and February 1888, and Johanna is listed as having given birth to 4 children, only one of whom was still living. I wonder whether they were Matthew Madigan's children, or whether she, too, had been married previously. In neither of these censuses are these Madigans living at 85 Luqueer St. They live around the corner, at 75 Fourth Place, which they owned without a mortgage. (So we still have no idea why there were no Madigans or Mulcahys at 85 Luqueer in 1900.) You have to wonder what the relationship of the Mary Ann Madigan Mulcahy to her father's "new family," who lived around the corner. At some point they'd also lived in the same house, I believe, since there are Brooklyn City Directory records of Matthew Madigan at 85 Luqueer in between 1888 and 1900, but Loretta and Johanna apparently moved out when Matthew died, unless he and they had moved out earlier when he decided to give the house to Mary Ann and Michael, which seems more likely to me. When a man dies, his wife doesn't get displaced at the expense of his kids. In 1910, at age 22, Loretta was working as a clerk at an "office." In 1900, when she's 12, neither of them is working.