Genealogy stuff: the Irish

Sorry. This is really rambly. I started to write one thing and ended up in a completely different place. A well. It's my blog. :-)

I've been going back and filling in some of the data I was missing on some folks. In particular, I was focusing on Jim's Irish ancestors who were in Boston from the mid 1850s. I'm used to having grown up in your basic middle-class household and it's odd for me to be looking into families where the norm was abject poverty. I have a great deal of respect for these people and admire the fact that they just managed to get from day to day.

One was Jim's great-grandfather, John McLaughlin. He was in the first generation of American-born children, his parents, Jeremiah and Catherine (McKeon) McLaughlin, having come from Ireland sometime before 1853. Neither of John's parents could read or write, although Jeremiah may have learned later on in life. At the age of 14, John was finished with school and working as an errand boy. He must have learned his way around the city in that job, because the next time he appears on a census, he was 24 and listed as a "hack driver." I have a very Dickensian sort of image, transplanted to America, of a man in a tall black hat with a frock coat. He first was listed as having that occupation in 1880 and was still driving a carriage forty years later.

John McLaughlin must have done pretty well at his job. He managed to raise eleven children and at one point there were seventeen people living in the house that he owned. There was John, eight unmarried adult children, one married child, her husband and six of John's grandchildren. It must have been a large house, although it would have been incredibly crowded.

The other one that has touched me recently was John's mother-in-law, Ann McKee Vass. I don't know a whole lot about her, except that she came from Newfoundland with her husband William and at least one child Catherine. I stumbled onto a bit of information just by chance the other day. I was trying to find the Vass family in the census, but they just weren't there for some reason. There was a listing for Ann Vass, though. I investigated and found that, when the census was taken in 1870 she was in the "House of Industry" (a prison) on Deer Island in Boston. I contacted the office of the city archives in Boston -- spoke to a very nice young man -- who found the record for poor Ann. She was there from May through August of 1870. She was charged with being a "common drunkard."

Poor Annie. I really feel for her and can imagine how she would try to escape the squalor around her by drinking. I wonder what the precipitating event was that landed her at the "House of Industry." Maybe she refused the advances of the cop on the beat or was involved in some sort of brawl.

She lived for eight more years after she got out of jail, dying in 1878 of "apoplexy." That was the term used for any sudden death that began with a loss of consciousness. It's likely that she had a sudden fatal heart attack or a stroke.

It just occurred to me that there is a real connection between Ann and my brother-in-law, Michael. Of the four boys, Michael was the one who was an alcoholic. He went through a very difficult time. But he came through it. He went to AA and worked the program better than anyone I've ever known. He was the one person who truly had that "serenity to accept the things I cannot change" that is in the AA prayer. I would have long conversations with him on the phone, complaining about all sorts of things. He would understand and never make me feel small for my petty complaints, but yet he managed to pass on just a bit of that serenity to me. And then one day, as he was getting ready to start work (he was a chef at a big hotel in Boston), he suddenly collapsed and died. He was 38 years old. They called the paramedics immediately, but he was just gone. Apoplexy. They said it was a heard defect and there was murmuring that it was caused by all his hard living before he went into AA. It never seemed right, though.

I wonder if there was a genetic connection between the alcoholism and whatever the specific heart problem was. Could there be a linked gene? If there is, then this particular condition would likely been seen in other alcoholics and passed off as being caused by the alcoholism. (Which could lead me into one of my stock tirades about people attributing causality to correlation, but that's a whole 'nother subject.) It makes logical sense. I wonder if there's any way to ever find out.