Tombstone Tuesday - Roches and Rickerts

When I talked to Betty and John a few weeks ago about my plans to go to Holy Cross and go grave-hunting, John said he thought the Roches and the Rickerts were buried there. He said he wasn't sure, but there was a tombstone for Roches and Rickerts in Holy Cross and he assumed it had to be related to our Roches and Rickerts.

I thought that was weird. He just knew that there happened to be a Roche/Rickert gravestone in Holy Cross? It's not a small cemetery - it's impressive to find a gravestone you weren't looking for, even if, as John told me, he did work there during college.

But then, a week and a half ago, as I pulled into Holy Cross and made a left turn, this stone - placed conveniently on the corner and with the last names in big, bold, block letters - screamed at me! "Roche! Rickert!" it yelled. "We're right here!" I pulled over in a hurry and jumped out of the car. They are, without a doubt, our Roches and Rickerts. The Roches are parents Michael and Bridget, and their children, John Roche, Michael Roche, and Johanna Roche Madigan. (That it's spelled "Joanna" here leads me to believe that potentially, she really did use that spelling.) Not listed is Mary, the younger daughter, who died sometime after age 10, which was her age on the 1880 census. The Rickerts are Johanna's only surviving child, Loretta Madigan Rickert (I never had a date of death for her - this gives it as February 8, 1978) and her husband, Joseph J. Rickert, who, according to this, died August 22, 1961.

The inscription confused me for a few minutes - it seemed to be saying that it marked the burial of the Roches and their "dear parents," the Rickerts. That's actually quite the opposite of what's the case, and in reality - as far as I can tell - the monument was erected by the Rickert children (Elizabeth, Fr. Joseph, and Fr. Gene), thus the reference to their "dear parents."

One other interesting absence is that of Johanna's husband, and Loretta's father, Matthew Madigan. Matthew was buried at Calvary, not Holy Cross. No mention, too, of whether their other (at least) 2 children, Josephine and Matthew, are buried here, or whether they were buried with their father, their deaths being much closer in time to his.

I was surprised, initially, to find that Johanna wasn't buried with Matthew. The more I think about it, though, the more it makes sense. She was married to him for less than 10 years. Probably closer to 5. She never remarried. She lost 3 of her 4 children very young. She lived another 30 years raising her one surviving daughter alone - likely very much with the help of her family, with whom she seems to have been close. I imagine Johanna and Loretta being a little like Lorelei and Rory in the Gilmore Girls. Matthew was dead by the time Loretta was 5. Father and husband though he was, what kind of influence might he have had on their lives in those 30 years after his death?

That was my rambling, discursive Tombstone Tuesday post, that I'll try to squeeze in under the deadline so it still qualifies for Tuesday.

Michael Roche's Obituary, May 23, 1925

ROCHE—On Friday, May 22,
1925, at 321 President St., MICHAEL
F., beloved son of the late Michael
and Bridget Roche and brother 'of
Mrs. Johanna Madigan. Funeral
Monday. 9 a.m. Solemn requiem
mass at-St. Agnes R. C. Church. Interment
Holy Cross Cemetery. Auto
cortege.

At the cool Fulton History website, which has hundreds of years of searchable NYS newspapers, I found the Brooklyn Daily Eagle's announcement of the death of Michael Roche, Johanna Roche Madigan's younger brother. If he died in 1925, he was about 63. From the way his survivors are listed, it appears he never married or had children. It does appear that Johanna lived past 1925, but their other siblings (John and Mary) didn't even though they should have been younger. I don't know what auto cortege means.

I wonder what the F is for. It's in his father's name, too. I bet I could find out by ordering his death certificate, but lately I'm trying to avoid spending money on records I don't need until the compulsive need for more records overtakes me, because I know that when that happens, I'll start ordering things anyway. I just do that sometimes.

Another piece of the housing puzzle

On June 15, 1899, this notice appeared under "Conveyances" for June 14. It lends a little more information for what I consider the unusual circumstance of Matthew Madigan's wife and youngest daughter moving around the corner while Mary and Michael Mulcahy got the family house at 85 Luqueer St. I don't 100% understand the language used, but it seems like Johanna's father and brother sold to her half of the house at 4th place.

Interesting.

Update: On second thought, it occurs to me that what this excerpt might be trying to get across is that Michael F. Roche (Michael Roche Sr.) named his two oldest children as heirs, so they each got 1/2 of the house, and Johanna bought out Michael's share? That's a possibility, I just wish I understood what the wording of this clipping was actually trying to say.

Meet the Roches!

Here is Johanna Roche Madigan, age 20, living with her parents and siblings in 1880. Her parents are Michael and Bridget, age 44, both Irish-born. Michael doesn't have a job. Johanna, 20, is a seamstress, and her brother Michael, 18, is a stone-cutter. The two youngest siblings, John and Mary, and 12 and 10, and both are at school.

530 Clinton St. is literally directly around the corner from 85 Luqueer St.

View Larger Map
Johanna may have known the Madigans well before she married Matthew. She probably wasn't young enough to have been friends with Mary and Margaret, but she's definitely closer in age to her step-daughters than to her husband.

Update: It seems I can't get that map to post so that you can actually see the location of both houses, but if hit the "-" button to zoom out just once, you can get a good idea of the distance between the two.

I've been thinking about the rest of the Madigans lately. . .

Finding the rest of Matthew and Johanna Madigan's family in the 1892 NYS Census got me thinking about that part of the family. I've ignored them a little bit; maybe I'm guilty of stereotyping the "ugly stepmother." I'd never found Johanna Madigan in 1920, though I'd found her, with daughter Loretta, in 1900 and 1910. I assumed that that was because I'd looked and never found her. I don't think I had, because as soon as I typed her name in Ancestry.com's search engine tonight, she popped up, first name on the list, living with her younger brother Michael Roach.

She's 59 and widowed; he's 57 and appears to be married, though his wife isn't in the household. They live at 271 Sackett St. (This appears to be 8 or 9 blocks from where her step-daugher Mary Madigan Mulcahy was living with her family at 85 Luqueer St.) Michael is a watchman at a dock.

I'd found a couple earlier census that I thought might have been Johanna living with her parents' family, but never had any corroborating evidence. (Can you tell I'm watching Law & Order as I type?) With this evidence that her brother was named Michael, I'm more encouraged to think that it's actually her, and I'll post that soon.