'Tis Never Enough

I’m about to talk about something lovely and historical and simply wonderful that I discovered, but before I get into all that, I’m going to say something decidedly less intellectually dazzling and offer the sentiment that genealogy is like a bag of potato chips to me.  I can’t eat just one potato chip. And I can’t be satisfied with just one incredibly important record find either.

The photo below is the stunning interior of the Basilica of St. Patrick’s Old Cathedral in Manhattan, New York.  It’s the “Old Cathedral” because after the initial build (between 1809 and 1815), more land was purchased for a new cathedral to be erected, construction of which began in 1859 and ended in 1888.  Gutted by fire in 1866, the renovated Old Cathedral still stands at 260 Mulberry Street, in the Chinatown/Little Italy neighborhood of Manhattan.  

The cathedral was built to support the huge Irish immigrant population that was erupting in NYC at the time, offering spiritual, social, and political guidance to the newly arriving, mostly poor and working-class, population.  It was the first church in the United States to be dedicated to Ireland’s patron saint, St. Patrick. In case that doesn’t give you a sufficient picture of its parish, think of the film “Gangs of New York.” In fact, Martin Scorcese, who was an altar boy at the Old Cathedral in his youth, placed it in multiple scenes of “Gangs” (and it was also used for the baptism scene of Coppola’s “The Godfather”).  

Now, envision two young Irish immigrants named Timothy Riordan and Johanna “Hannah” O’Connell during the 1830s in this place.  These would be the 3rd great-grandparents of my husband, Tim. You don’t know from which county in Ireland Timothy and Hannah hailed, nor do you know if they knew each other in Ireland, if they met sailing on the same ship, or if they first bumped into each other at Mass one Sunday.  You only know as much as I do now, having found the parish marriage registry entry for Timothy and Hannah, finally, when earlier this year Findmypast made available online, for the first time, a TON of New York Catholic genealogy records.  These records include the marriage and baptism records from hundreds of parishes across the Archdiocese of New York.  

Because of these records being published, I now know that Timothy and Hannah were married in this gorgeous cathedral on February 13, 1836, smack dab in the middle of a vibrant, if violent and tumultuous, period of New York City’s history.

In the marriage record above, Reardon is actually spelled the way my husband’s family currently spells it, but I have come across other records in which it is spelled Riordan.  I will take the misspelling of O’Connell for Connell - it’s pretty common for the “O” to be omitted. 

I also found the baptism records of Timothy and Hannah’s first two sons, Thomas and James, in 1837 and 1840, respectively (last name is spelled Riordan in these records).  Although the boys were baptized in St. Paul’s parish (a church still standing in East Harlem), I see no reason to question that Timothy and Hannah moved uptown during their first year of marriage.  Names and dates all check out with what I know from other records.

Which brings me to what I actually know from finally finding these extremely important records….  

The marriage record answered a crucial question for me, which was whether they traveled from Ireland together as a married couple or whether they arrived separately.  I was really happy to be able to check the box next to that question on my list. Yet, the larger question about Timothy and Hannah remains: from which county in Ireland did they emigrate?  

Before you say “it’s probably from Cork,” with common names such as theirs, “probably” doesn’t pay the genealogy bills. 

So, as thrilled as I was to learn a few specifics about their early lives together, I am still stuck.  I am still hungry for more genealogical potato chips!  

The transcription of the record is just that: a transcription.  I would love to be able to take a look at the original record to see if there is anything that was omitted from the transcription.  Additionally, I have sponsors’ names from the baptism records, which unfortunately have led me nowhere, but I can’t complain too loudly about having more information than I did prior to February of this year.

But as perhaps Timothy and Hannah would agree, ‘tis never enough.