Mulvaney Family, 1875

When I visited the NYPL several weeks ago, this was one of the 1875 NYS Census records that I found, the record of the Mulvaney Family. It's hard to tell, because the addresses are cut off in the image, but I believe that across the margin is written the word "King" and next to that the number "121." If that's so, it's a couple doors down from 127 King, the address where John Mulvaney was living when his father died in 1885. It's a further few doors away from 135 King, where Bridget Rothwell Mulvaney died in 1883, and a couple blocks from 197 King, where the family was enumerated in 1880. They apparently spent at least a decade just moving up and down the street. 

The family is enumerated as James Mulvaney, 48, an Irish-born carpenter and naturalized voter; Bridget, 43, his wife; Thomas, 20; John, 18; Patrick, 15; and Mary A., 13. The children are all Brooklyn-born, and none of them have occupations listed, although 5 years ago, at age 15, Thomas had already been listed as an "Ap. Carpenter." I'd imagine that certainly Thomas and John, and maybe Patrick, were working by this point in time. Looking up the page, however, it seems that only heads of households and other verifiably adult males - men in their 30s and 40s - had their occupations noted. They live in a brick house worth $5,000.

The Best Resource I'd Overlooked

I got a real surprise when I noticed last night that the Kings County Estate Files database on FamilySearch allows you to "log in to view image." How had I missed that?! I'd used the collection before, but mostly just as an index, not realizing I could see the documents themselves. Well, last night, I logged in, and what a treasure trove I found! A few of the documents I'd already seen, having visited the Kings County Surrogate Court in person, but others were new to me - and had so much information!

The first estate file I found was that of James Mulvaney, my great-great-great-grandfather, who, I learned, died 17 Nov 1885. We'd long had a general timeframe for his death - mid-1880s, and we knew he had survived his wife Bridget, who died in 1883, but this was the first actual date of death I'd found. The list of survivors was more exciting, though. James left "no widow, but three children, to wit John Mulvaney, Patrick Mulvaney, and Mary Ann Mulvaney, all of full age, also James Mulvaney, about 5 years of age, and Thomas Mulvaney, about 3 years of age, children of Thomas Mulvaney, a dec'd son of said dec't."

Everything fits perfectly with what we knew of James's descendants, except that there's much more information about Thomas than ever we'd had before. Knowing he'd died in his 20s and was buried in his birth family's plot, I'd assumed he'd died unmarried and childless, but that appears not to be the case. We had, however, been lead to believe, by Holy Cross Cemetery in Brooklyn, that Thomas had died in 1889, which is incompatible with his already having been deceased in 1885. My initial thought is that it's possible that a handwritten "1884" was misread or mistranscribed at some point as "1889," but this is a point that's going to need further research. Maybe the Thomas in the family plot isn't even the same Thomas! The existence of these two sons, James and Thomas, is an exciting lead to follow, too. I'm a descendant of Patrick, I'm in contact with descendants of John, and we're trying to find out what happened to Mary Ann. I didn't even know Thomas's descendants were another avenue to research, but now I'm looking forward to it.

I also found a useful file on the estate of James Madigan, brother of my great-great-grandmother Mary. I'd never had any idea what happened to him, but now I know he died, leaving no wife or children, as a young man in 1894.

Tombstone Tuesday: Mulvaney Family Gravesite

Last year, I took a trip to Holy Cross Cemetery in Brooklyn to see a variety of family graves.

This is the stone on the grave of my great grandparents, Veronica Mulvaney (d. 1982) and Joseph Mulcahy (d. 1970), as well as my great-great-grandparents, Julia Toner (d. 1938) and Patrick Mulvaney (d. 1919). Also listed on the stone are several of Julia and Patrick's sons, William and Harold (d. 1933, both of them).

My information on the grave had come courtesy of my uncle, John Griffin, who had requested information on the plot a number of years ago. 

There's additional information in this letter. The plot was purchased by Patrick Mulvaney and his brother John, and I believe that the Gertrude Mulvaney, who died in 1890 at 1 year old, was John's daughter. (John later had another daughter named Gertrude, this one living to adulthood.) Mary Hughes is a mystery; no one has any idea who she was. Raymond Mulvaney was Julia and Patrick's young son, who died as a toddler. (He shows up on the 1905 NYS Census.) I believe Patrick's entire body is buried here, not just his leg. The date of burial corresponds with his date of death, and it's been suggested that he went into the hospital to have his gangrenous foot amputated, but the surgery ended up killing him. Arrangements would have been made to have his leg buried, but, sadly, his entire body needed to be buried instead.

Recently, though, one of my new Mulvaney cousins called Holy Cross, and got information that indicated that neither the gravestone nor the letter pictured above is complete. Holy Cross told her that there are four additional bodies interred in the plot, as well. These, it seems, were initially interred elsewhere, and were moved to this plot after John and Patrick bought it c. 1890. Thus, the information on most of them is spottier, but they were listed as:

Bridget Mulvaney, 53
James Mulvaney, 60
Thomas Mulvaney, 27 (3-1-1889)
James Mulvaney, 8

We've yet to find death certificates for anyone besides Bridget, although I'm looking.

Marriage of James Mulvaney and Florence Goggin, 3 September 1922

Another of the documents Maureen sent me was this marriage certificate of her grandparents, James J. Mulvaney and Florence M. Goggin. They were married at St. Stephen's Church on 3 September 1922. The officiant was Fr. William A. Fogarty, and their witnesses were Thomas P. Mulvaney, James's brother, and Helen M. Goggin, likely a relative of Florence's. This certificate was dated 28 January 1927.

Update: I heard from Maureen today. She confirms that Helen was in fact her grandmother Florence's sister. Florence and Helen also had sisters named Edna and Violet. What beautiful names for sisters!

136 Images Later . . .

. . . I've finally found the Mulvaneys! I was expecting to come across them living much closer to the John Mulvaneys than they actually were, though, as addresses aren't listed in the 1865 NYS Census, I don't actually know how far they were away, geographically, just that they were many pages away. The writing on these pages are very faint, so I'll tell you that the Mulvaneys are the second family on the right side of the page. James is listed as 46 and Bridget as 50. Thomas is 11, John is 8, Patrick is 6, Mary Ann is 3, and James is a month old. Bridget says she's the mother of 5 children, so it appears that all of her children are still living at the time. Both parents have been married only once, and James is still a carpenter. He has been naturalized, but Bridget is still an alien. (I'm going to have to do some research on naturalization laws in the nineteenth century; a wife was apparently not automatically naturalized by the fact of her being married to a citizen.)

This was from page 136 of the 12th Ward of Brooklyn in the 1865 NYS Census on the FamilySearch Pilot Site.

Harold Mulvaney's Obituary

I found a site that searches PDF versions of later editions of the Eagle than are available at the Brooklyn Public Library's digitized site. Because they're PDFs, I can't post the actual images, but here's the text of Harold Mulvaney's obituary from 1933:

MULVANEY—On Aug. 25, 1933,
HAROLD, beloved son of Julia
Toner Mulvaney; brother of Mrs.
Stephen Kessell, Mrs. John Daniels,
Mrs. Joseph Mulcahy, James, captain
New York Fire Department,
Hook and'Ladder Company, No. 20;
Thomas, fireman attached to Hook
and Ladder, No. 109. Funeral Tuesday
at 9:30 a.m. from his residence,
270 Van Brunt St.; thence to the
R. C. Church of the Visitation,
where a requiem mass will be
offered. Interment Holy Cross
Cemetery.

Mulvany Immigration Papers?

I started looking into the Mulvaney/Rothwell side of the family again, after spending a while concentrating on the Toners. When I asked Betty and John what they knew about the Bridget Rothwell, the answer was essentially "not much." However, they did mention that Nana used to say that she was from "the only poor Rothschilds," which seems to be an ironic reference to Bridget's family. We can't be sure, though, whether she was mistaken about the name, or just commenting on a well-known name similar to her grandmother's name, or whether, perhaps, Bridget's name really was Rothchild or Rothschild. It would be an unusual name for a Irishman, sure.

So anyway, I went looking for our Bridget Mulvany, searching Ancestry.com on her married, not her disputed maiden name. And I found this immigration record, from November 13, 1851, from the ship the John Hancock:

I know it's small, but it should enlarge when you click on it, I hope. Line 143 reads Jas. Mulvany, 25. Line 144 reads Bridget --, 22. Line 145 reads Thomas Mulvany, 16. And, most interestingly, line 146 reads Jas. Bothwell, 16.

There's not much information here, other than ages (which generally but not exactly match the ages James and Bridget provided census takers over the years). They tell us that all of these passengers are coming from Ireland, to the US. Unlike later ships' manifests, there's not detailed information about whence came the immigrants, who they were meeting and where, and their nearest relatives at home.

It would not be unusual for 16-year-old Thomas Mulvany to be the younger brother - or even, I suppose, a cousin - of James. After all, one of his sons was named Thomas.

But what I think is potentially most important - though also potentially a completely irrelevant coincidence - is the next name on the list, James Bothwell, which gives me a little more ammunition for the belief that this is, in fact, the correct record. Is this Bridget's younger brother? Is Bridget's real last name actually Bothwell? Is this a misspelling of Rothwell? It does give me a little additional evidence that the suffix of Bridget's maiden is -well, although it does potentially call into question the Roth- part.