Tierney family treasure: Patrick's naturalization papers, 1876

It was one-hundred years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence.  It was the year that the Sioux and Cheyenne defeated Custer and his troops at Little Big Horn.  It was the year that baseball's National League was founded, and that prominent Boston resident Alexander Graham Bell patented the telephone.

The year 1876 was also of personal importance for another Boston resident, my great-great-grandfather Patrick Tierney. On September 14, 1876 Patrick Tierney (and his wife Catherine by virtue of their marriage two years previous) became citizens of the United States.

Patrick's Declaration of Intent to become a citizen and Petition for Citizenship, which I obtained from the National Archives,  are both very special family treasures for several reasons.  One of those reasons is the mention of Patrick's birth in County Tipperary, Ireland.  I find it very interesting to compare Patrick's naturalization papers with those belonging to my grandfather (on another branch of my family tree) who attained his citizenship in the early 20th-century.

Probably my favorite part of Patrick's documents is his signature. We have no photographic image of my great-great-grandfather, and no written description of what he looked like. His signature is the closest that we can get to an "image" of him. Here it is as it appears on his citizenship papers:

Patrick Tierney's Declaration of Intent and Petition for Citizenship are shown below followed by their transcriptions.

The document reads:

U.S. District Court
Boston, Mass. Vol 95 Page 5 5

United States of America
55

To the Honorable Judges of the Circuit Court of the United States, begun and holden at Boston, within and for the District of Massachusetts.

Respectfully represents Patrick Tierney of Boston in said District Laborer an Alien and a free white person; that he was born in County Tipperary, Ireland the 14th day of March in the year of our Lord eighteen hundred and forty-one and is now about thirty-five years of age; that he arrived at Buffalo, NY in the District of New York in the United States of America, on or about the tenth day of April in the year of our Lord eighteen hundred and fifty-eight being then a minor under the age of eighteen years; that it then was, and still is, his bona fide intention to reside in and become a citizen of the United States of America, and to renounce all allegiance and fidelity to every foreign Prince, State, Potentate and Sovereignty whatsoever – more especially to Victoria, Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland,

whose subject he has heretofore been. [Struck out: All of which appears in the record of the Honorable…Court,…to wit, on the…day of…A.D. 18…]

And the said petitioner further represents that he has ever since continued to reside within the jurisdiction of said United States; that he has never borne any hereditary title, or been any of the orders of nobility; that he is ready to renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to every foreign Prince, Potentate, State or Sovereignty whatsoever; and particularly to Victoria, Queen of the United Kingdom and Great Britain and Ireland,

whose subject he has heretofore been; that he is attached to the principles of the Constitution of the United States of America, and well disposed towards the good order and happiness of the same.
[Struck out: And the said petitioner further represents that he enlisted in the Armies of the United States, and was honorably discharged therefrom.]

Wherefore, your petitioner prays that he may be admitted to become a citizen of the said United States of America, according to the forms of the Statutes in such case made and provided.

x Patrick . Tierney
[Signature of Patrick Tierney]

187 Sworn to by said Petitioner,
Before me,
John G. Stetson,
Clerk.

Key to Transcription

Black = pre-printed on form
Blue = handwritten
Green = stamped on record
Red = not in record; my notes

~

Below is Patrick's Petition for Citizenship.



The document reads:

U.S. District Court
Boston, Mass. Vol 95 Page 5 5 A

United States of America

Massachusetts District, to wit: City of Boston, Sept. 14th 1876.
We Austin Quigley and John Mitchell All of Boston
and both citizens of said United States, severally depose and say, that we have known the foregoing petitioner for five years last past, during which time he has resided in said
Boston
and that he has resided within the State of Massachusetts one year at least; and has conducted himself and behaved as a man of good moral character, attached to the principles of the Constitution of the United States, and well disposed towards the good order and happiness of the same.

Sept 14, 1876 Sworn to by Austin Quigley
the above named witnesses, John Mitchell
Before me,
John G. Stetson
Clerk.

Oath Taken by Petitioner

I, Patrick Tierney do solemnly swear, that I do absolutely and entirely renounce and adjure all allegiance and fidelity to every Foreign Prince, Potenate, State or Sovereignty whatsoever, - particularly to Victoria, Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland,

whose subject I have heretofore been; and that I will support the Constitution of the United States of America, - so help me God.

United States of America

District of Massachusetts, to wit:
At a Circuit Court of the United States, begun and holden at said Boston, on the fifteenth day of May in the year of our Lord 1876, to wit, on the 14th day of September A.D. 1876, the said Patrick Tierney took the aforesaid oath and was admitted to become a citizen of the United States of America; and the Court ordered that record thereof by made accordingly.

Attest:
John G. Stetson Clerk.

Key to Transcription

Black = pre-printed on form
Blue = handwritten
Green = stamped on record
Red = not in record; my notes

~

This article originally appeared here at A light that shines again.  I have republished it as part of the 17th edition of the Carnival of Irish Heritage & Culture on "Irish genealogy treasures".

"A fairyland of gold and glitter to feast the eyes of a country child" (Advent Calendar: Grab Bag)

Christmas 1858 must have been a time of joy and sadness for Patrick Tierney. Just eighteen years old, I'm sure that memories of childhood Christmases in Ireland were fresh on his mind as he celebrated the season with the hope of a new young immigrant to America.

Wondering what his memories of Ireland might have been like, I was happy to find an account written in the 1920's by Consiglio Murphy. She wrote her memories of Christmas in East Cork "sixty years ago" - which would have been around the 1860's, a few short years after Patrick Tierney had arrived in America from the neighboring County Tipperary.

I enjoyed reading her memories about the pre-Christmas plum pudding process, and how each family member was required to stir the pudding to prevent a death in the family in the new year.

Visits with gifts of fresh milk to neighbors "with many children" ended up with she and her siblings returning filled with rich cake or plum pudding and a chide from their mother, "You took more from those poor people than you gave."

She also tells about her memories of riding into town with her parents in the "pony and trap" to "bring home the Christmas". On the way back in the dark of the Irish late winter afternoon, she remembers enjoying the sights of the lit gas lamps, "a fairyland of gold and glitter to feast the eyes of a country child, who only had an oil lamp and candles at home."

I can't help but wonder what young Patrick Tierney, a country child from Tipperary, feasted his eyes on during his first Christmas in Boston in 1858.

You can read the rest of Consiglio Murphy's memories of mid-19th-century East Cork Christmas at this Irish Culture & Customs webpage or in the book No Shoes in Summer by Merlin Press.

This article is part of a series written in celebration of the Advent and Christmas seasons. It will be included as part of the GeneaBloggers Advent Calendar of Christmas Memories 2009 Day 17: Grab Bag. Make a visit to Thomas MacEntee's GeneaBloggers website for some additional inspiration to get yourself in the holiday spirit!

The article originally appeared here at A light that shines again and was included in Thomas MacEntee's Advent Calendar of Christmas Memories 2007.

Irish Geography 101

Want to do genealogy in Ireland? First you need to brush up on your Irish geography - and I don't mean modern day cities and villages. Genealogical research in Ireland requires a familiarity with not only present day geographical names, but administrative divisions from various periods in the past history of the country. Consider the fact that not only are there provinces and counties to become familiar with, but townlands, civil parishes, baronies and even poor law unions.

Photograph of Lough Cowey by Jordan McClements of Irish Views

I remember the moment very well when I learned that my great-great-grandfather Patrick Tierney hailed from County Tipperary. It was a thrill be able to say, "He was from Tipperary!" as opposed to just knowing that I had Irish ancestry.
After the excitement died down from the news, I realized that this fact opened up more questions for me than I might have imagined. Not only was it the largest county in Ireland but it was actually made up of two parts: North Tipperary and South Tipperary. My realization: If I was serious about tracing my roots back to Ireland, my work had just begun.

You may be feeling the same way. Here is a good place to start: a review of the basics and some further resources to get you familiar with Irish geography. Hopefully this little course will give you an advantage when it comes to searching for your roots in the Emerald Isle.

Before you start, you may want to check out The Family History Library's Ireland, How to Find a Place Name and Ireland, How to Find Information About the Place Where Your Ancestor Lived. These webpages offer some suggestions on narrowing down your search to a specific locale in Ireland and then using the microfilm gazetteers in their collection to learn more about the specific area.

Also see my series of articles at Small-leaved Shamrock on how to find your ancestors' places of origin. Getting to the roots of your Irish family tree: Part 1 provides suggestions on how to locate your ancestors' counties, and Getting to the roots of your Irish family tree: Part 2 offers help for finding the more specific areas where they originated.

Once you know at least the county of origin, it's necessary to familiarize yourself with Irish geography. You can't get much further into Irish research without understanding how Irish records are organized geographically.

Irish records can be broken down into various divisions:

Provinces & Counties - The four provinces of Ireland are the largest divisions of land in the country and may be the ones you are most familiar with. The counties date back to the 12th-century with the last one being added in the early 17th-century.

• Ulster lies in the northeast, and is made up of counties Antrim, Arnagh, Cavan, Donegal, Down, Fernanagh, Londonderry, Monaghan and Tyrone. (Cavan, Donegal and Monaghan became part of the Irish Free State in 1922 and the Republic of Ireland in 1949. Antrim, Arnagh, Down, Fernanagh, Londonderry and Tyrone are today part of the United Kingdom's Northern Ireland.)
• Connaught in the middle western part of the country includes Galway, Leitrim, Mayo, Roscommon and Sligo.
  
• Leinster in the southeast is made up of counties Carlow, Dublin, Kildare, Kilkenny, Laois, Longford, Louth, Meath, Offaly, West Meath, Wexford and Wicklow.
• Munster in the southwest includes Clare, Cork, Kerry, Limerick, Tipperary and Waterford.

Poor Law Unions - Established in 1838, these areas were typically named after a local town and were used for tax purposes to support the local poor.

Baronies - An old administrative division no longer in use, a barony is made up of a group of civil parishes within a county, although their boundaries do not always match. There are 273 baronies in Ireland.
Church Parishes - This term usually refers to Roman Catholic parishes, since the Church of Ireland parishes most often conform to civil parish boundaries. The Roman Catholic church parishes are usually larger than the civil parishes.
Civil Parishes - Not the same as church parishes, these divisions normally contain a couple dozen townlands and are important to know when searching for records in Ireland. There are more than 2,000 civil parishes in Ireland. Civil parishes often cross over county and barony boundaries.

Townlands - The smallest of Irish land divisions, these do not necessarily contain towns or residents at all. There are thousands of townlands in Ireland.

When I first started looking to understand the geographic regions of Ireland, I was excited to find Brian Mitchell's A New Genealogical Atlas of Ireland, 2nd Edition. Not only does his book explain the various administrative divisions of the land, but it provides an extensive assortment of maps covering each county. Large counties, such as Tipperary, are broken down into two sections. The maps break the county down into baronies, civil parishes, church parishes/dioceses and poor law unions. This is a true treasure of a book for those of us who appreciate visual aids.
A nice companion resource to place on your desk along with Mitchell's atlas is James Ryan's Irish Records: Sources for Family & Local History, Revised Edition. Ryan's book is a sort of encyclopedia of source listings for Irish records, arranged county by county. Take your county of interest and you can use this book to learn what records are available, where they are held, and even what dates the records cover. Listings include census and census substitutes, church records, commercial and social directories, family histories, gravestone inscriptions, newspapers, wills and more.
Found the name of the townland your ancestor may have come from but wondering about its corresponding barony, civil parish and poor law union? Try a search using the IreAtlas Townland Database. A similarly helpful online resource is this Irish Times search page for the 1851 General Alphabetical Index to the Townlands and Towns, Parishes and Baronies of Ireland.
Digging deeply into places, maps and records can get tiring after awhile. A nice break might be to take some time to read up on the interesting backgrounds of Irish placenames. Ever wondered what a bally, dún, croagh or lough is? This page has a nice listing of the original Gaelic meanings in common elements in Irish placenames. The list is taken from the book Handbook of Irish Genealogy: How to Trace Your Ancestors & Relatives in Ireland. Another online assortment of Gaelic place meanings can be found here. If you want to look for a familiar location in particular, try looking it up within this alphabetical list.
I hope that my little introductory course in Irish geography and the recommended resources above will help to get you further into your search for roots so that you can make an A+ in Irish family history!
The image of Lough Cowey above is courtesy of Jordan McClements.
Map of Irish provinces and counties courtesy of mike.eire.ca.
This article originally appeared here at A light that shines again on December 27, 2007. I've reposted it here in honor of Geography Awareness Week.

In search of Irish roots: A long and winding road

I have known that I was Irish for as long as I can remember. As an American kid who enjoyed "dressing the part" on holidays in school (red and pink for Valentine's Day, red and green for the Christmas season, a special dress for my birthday...), I looked forward to St. Patrick's Day. I proudly wore my green. At one point I received a T-shirt that boldly proclaimed, "Proud to be Irish". It was only the beginning of my collection of "greenwear". Today I have many more appropriate St. Patrick's Day articles of clothing and accessories, particularly because St. Patrick's Day celebrations go on for such a long time for Irish dancing families such as mine.

Having a knowledge of my Irish heritage was one thing. Having specific information about it was another thing entirely. I began seeking details about my Irish ancestry as a young lady in the form of questions to my grandparents. Later my research became more formal and serious - I wanted to learn the details about my family's history.

One particular piece of information that I sought was the specific locality in Ireland of my ancestral villages. Where in Ireland was I from? I wasn't content just to continue researching my family on this side of the Atlantic, I wanted to know where in Ireland I would need to visit when I finally planned my long-awaited trip.

It was many years after my initial queries to my grandparents that I finally learned the county of origin of one of the branches of my family. My great-great-grandfather Patrick Tierney's name had been lost to our family for at least two generations. After discovering his name and piecing together data from census records, city directories, vital records and newspaper clippings, I was able to gain an overview of his life - from young boy living through the Great Famine, to Irish immigrant, to husband, father and laborer in Boston's North End. It was the Declaration of Intent within his naturalization papers, which I received from the National Archives in Boston, that gave me the clue to his Irish county of origin. Handwritten clearly on this document was the phrase "County Tipperary, Ireland".

Learning this news was very exciting to me - now I could at least hone in on one county in Ireland. No matter that it was a very large county: it was my family's ancestral home.

After learning this exciting news our family had a little celebration of sorts, complete with the singing of a round of the favorite: "It's a long way to Tipperary". It certainly had been a long way to Tipperary. I had been in search of specific knowledge about my family's origins in Ireland for so long, and now I was finally able to hone in on one county. Well, for at least one branch, that is. Now to narrow down my roots within Tipperary, and start working to confirm the Cowhey family's roots in Cork and/or Limerick, starting with my immigrant ancestor Patrick Cowhey. Then I've got work to do on my Donnelly, Foley, McGonigle/McGonigal, Graham, McCue, Rogers, Kennedy and O'Neill lines. I detailed my research plans for a few of my family's branches during an earlier edition of the Carnival of Irish Heritage & Culture.

So many avenues for this one Irish genealogist to pursue! Now to find some cousins interested in working along with me. Just imagine once I find all of these ancestral villages, what a long and wonderful trip I'll be taking to the homeland of my ancestors!

Return to your Tipperary roots: August 2008

Back in the 16th and 17th-centuries, Ireland's County Tipperary was a much different place than it is today. The county had come into existence under the reign of King John as far back as 1210 A.D. Its name is Tiobraid Árann in Irish, meaning the "well of Árann" (Árann was an adjoining territory).

Four-hundred years ago Irish chiefs and chieftains still ruled as overlords in Tipperary. The O'Kennedys, in particular, were a powerful military clan and ruled over underchieftans such as the O'Tierney clan, who paid a fee to receive protection from the O'Kennedys while they ruled their own small territory.

This summer that time period in Tipperary's history will be remembered by a reunion of the various clans mentioned in the several hundred year-old Ormond Deeds, a set of documents which sheds light on the lives of those who lived in Tipperary so many centuries ago.

According to the webpage of the Clan Gathering 2008 on the website of the Tierney Clans Society (Cumann na gClann Ui Thighearnaigh):

This time we are departing from the ‘traditional’ format and are hosting a ‘joint venture’ Gathering with a number of Ormond Clans who are linked in history by references in an historic body of documents titled ‘The Ormond Deeds’. These documents describe transactions and contain transcripts of deeds and agreements between the leading families of the Baronies of Upper and Lower Ormond. They were maintained in Kilkenny Castle by the Earls of Ormond. The documents contain transactions between The O’Tierney, O’Kennedy and O’Meara Clans and are witnessed by members of the MacEgan and O’Meagher Clans. It is these Clans that are now cooperating in the organising of this great Gathering.

The Clan Rally will take place August 22-24, 2008 in the Nenagh area of County Tipperary, Ireland.

For more info go to the Clan Gathering 2008 webpage. You may register to participate via this registration form.

A St. Patrick's Day celebration in Tipperary

Want to get a glimpse at the St. Patrick's Day fireworks lighting up the Rock of Cashel, County Tipperary yesterday?

Visit the Irish Family History blog to see the sparks of Irish pride flying!

Image of the Rock of Cashel courtesy of Irish Typepad via Wikimedia Commons.

The poverty-stricken Irish: Why did they pick Boston?

Boston, Massachusetts was not the destination of choice for most immigrants arriving in America in the 19th-century.

According to Oscar Handlin's Boston's Immigrants: A Study in Acculturation:

"Certainly, prospective settlers who could be at all selective would pass Boston by in favor of its younger and relatively more flourishing sisters. For in this community there was no room for strangers; its atmosphere of cultural homogeneity, familiar and comforting to self-contained Bostonians, seemed
rigidly forbidding to aliens. And above all, space was lacking. Boston offered few attractions in either agriculture or industry. Its commercial ranks were not broad enough to absorb the sons of its own merchant class, and the fields of retail trading and handicraft artisanry were limited. The constricted social and economic life of the city and the far greater opportunities elsewhere, combined to sweep the currents of migration in other directions."

All "currents of migration" that is, except one: the poorest of the poor, the Catholic Irish.

As I mentioned in my earlier post Boston was a place where, according to Thomas O'Connor's The Boston Irish: A Political History, "an Irish Catholic, under any circumstance, should never, ever, [have] set foot."

But no other major immigrating group in the history of Boston, or even possibly the nation, arrived with such urgency, desperation and poverty as the Irish exiles forced from their homes during the time of the Great Famine.

In the words of the Cork Examiner, March 10, 1847:

"The emigrants of this year are not like those of former ones; they are now actually running away from fever and disease and hunger, with money scarcely sufficient to pay passage for and find food for the voyage."

As Oscar Handlin's book describes, "At the port of embarkation emigrant funds were inevitably depleted by weary weeks of waiting for passage, and any residue was used up during the long crossing. In New York and Boston the penniless newcomer arrived with no alternative but to stay where he was."

That is most likely the way in which my 17-year-old great-great-grandfather Patrick Tierney made his arrival in Boston in 1857. The son of Michael & Mary (O'Neill) Tierney of County Tipperary, Patrick had been born just a few days shy of the feast of St. Patrick in the year 1841. He was born just four short years before the most devastating famine in the history of Ireland. In 1857, after surviving what must have been an incredibly traumatic childhood, he stood on the threshold of a new hope for his future as a penniless new American immigrant.

Patrick lived most of the rest of his life in Boston's North End doing odd jobs - laborer, grocer, trader, peddler. He married and he and his wife Catherine Kennedy Tierney raised at least seven children in the North End before their move to Quincy just a few short years before Patrick's death in 1900.

It was a hard life where the struggle for daily bread was probably never far from this father's mind. Yet his move to Boston had saved Patrick from what might have been certain death had he remained in his homeland wracked by severe overlords and horrible famine.

If Patrick Tierney felt as his wife Catherine did, he was happy to have chosen the life of a poor Irish laborer in Boston's impoverished North End as opposed to remaining in the depravity of the land of his birth.

Patrick surely could relate to the feeling of the poet who penned these words to The Emigrant's Farewell published in the Boston Pilot on August 16, 1862:

Farewell to thee, Erin mavourneen,
Thy valleys I'll tread never more;
This heart that now bleeds for thy sorrows,
Will waste on a far distant shore.
Thy green sods lie cold on my parents,
A cross marks the place of their rest, -
The wind that moans sadly above them,
Will waft their poor child to the West.

For more information about the Irish Immigration postage stamp pictured above see this U.S. Postal Service webpage.

Irish Geography 101

Want to do genealogy in Ireland? First you need to brush up on your Irish geography - and I don't mean modern day cities and villages. Genealogical research in Ireland requires a familiarity with not only present day geographical names, but administrative divisions from various periods in the past history of the country. Consider the fact that not only are there provinces and counties to become familiar with, but townlands, civil parishes, baronies and even poor law unions.

I remember the moment very well when I learned that my great-great-grandfather Patrick Tierney hailed from County Tipperary. It was a thrill be able to say, "He was from Tipperary!" as opposed to just knowing that I had Irish ancestry.

After the excitement died down from the news, I realized that this fact opened up more questions for me than I might have imagined. Not only was it the largest county in Ireland but it was actually made up of two parts: North Tipperary and South Tipperary. My realization: If I was serious about tracing my roots back to Ireland, my work had just begun.

You may be feeling the same way. Here is a good place to start: a review of the basics and some further resources to get you familiar with Irish geography. Hopefully this little course will give you an advantage when it comes to searching for your roots in the Emerald Isle.

Before you start, you may want to check out The Family History Library's Ireland, How to Find a Place Name and Ireland, How to Find Information About the Place Where Your Ancestor Lived. These webpages offer some suggestions on narrowing down your search to a specific locale in Ireland and then using the microfilm gazetteers in their collection to learn more about the specific area.

Also see my series of articles at Small-leaved Shamrock on how to find your ancestors' places of origin. Getting to the roots of your Irish family tree: Part 1 provides suggestions on how to locate your ancestors' counties, and Getting to the roots of your Irish family tree: Part 2 offers help for finding the more specific areas where they originated.

Once you know at least the county of origin, it's necessary to familiarize yourself with Irish geography. You can't get much further into Irish research without understanding how Irish records are organized geographically.

Irish records can be broken down into various divisions:

Provinces & Counties - The four provinces of Ireland are the largest divisions of land in the country and may be the ones you are most familiar with. The counties date back to the 12th-century with the last one being added in the early 17th-century.

• Ulster lies in the northeast, and is made up of counties Antrim, Arnagh, Cavan, Donegal, Down, Fernanagh, Londonderry, Monaghan and Tyrone. (Cavan, Donegal and Monaghan became part of the Irish Free State in 1922 and the Republic of Ireland in 1949. Antrim, Arnagh, Down, Fernanagh, Londonderry and Tyrone are today part of the United Kingdom's Northern Ireland.)
  
  
• Connaught in the middle western part of the country includes Galway, Leitrim, Mayo, Roscommon and Sligo.
  
  
• Leinster in the southeast is made up of counties Carlow, Dublin, Kildare, Kilkenny, Laois, Longford, Louth, Meath, Offaly, West Meath, Wexford and Wicklow.
  
  
• Munster in the southwest includes Clare, Cork, Kerry, Limerick, Tipperary and Waterford.

Poor Law Unions - Established in 1838, these areas were typically named after a local town and were used for tax purposes to support the local poor.

Baronies - An old administrative division no longer in use, a barony is made up of a group of civil parishes within a county, although their boundaries do not always match. There are 273 baronies in Ireland.

Church Parishes - This term usually refers to Roman Catholic parishes, since the Church of Ireland parishes most often conform to civil parish boundaries. The Roman Catholic church parishes are usually larger than the civil parishes.

Civil Parishes - Not the same as church parishes, these divisions normally contain a couple dozen townlands and are important to know when searching for records in Ireland. There are more than 2,000 civil parishes in Ireland. Civil parishes often cross over county and barony boundaries.

Townlands - The smallest of Irish land divisions, these do not necessarily contain towns or residents at all. There are thousands of townlands in Ireland.

When I first started looking to understand the geographic regions of Ireland, I was excited to find Brian Mitchell's A New Genealogical Atlas of Ireland, 2nd Edition. Not only does his book explain the various administrative divisions of the land, but it provides an extensive assortment of maps covering each county. Large counties, such as Tipperary, are broken down into two sections. The maps break the county down into baronies, civil parishes, church parishes/dioceses and poor law unions. This is a true treasure of a book for those of us who appreciate visual aids.

A nice companion resource to place on your desk along with Mitchell's atlas is James Ryan's Irish Records: Sources for Family & Local History, Revised Edition. Ryan's book is a sort of encyclopedia of source listings for Irish records, arranged county by county. Take your county of interest and you can use this book to learn what records are available, where they are held, and even what dates the records cover. Listings include census and census substitutes, church records, commercial and social directories, family histories, gravestone inscriptions, newspapers, wills and more.

Found the name of the townland your ancestor may have come from but wondering about its corresponding barony, civil parish and poor law union? Try a search using the IreAtlas Townland Database. A similarly helpful online resource is this Irish Times search page for the 1851 General Alphabetical Index to the Townlands and Towns, Parishes and Baronies of Ireland.

Digging deeply into places, maps and records can get tiring after awhile. A nice break might be to take some time to read up on the interesting backgrounds of Irish placenames. Ever wondered what a bally, dún, croagh or lough is? This page has a nice listing of the original Gaelic meanings in common elements in Irish placenames. The list is taken from the book Handbook of Irish Genealogy: How to Trace Your Ancestors & Relatives in Ireland. Another online assortment of Gaelic place meanings can be found here. If you want to look for a familiar location in particular, try looking it up within this alphabetical list.

I hope that my little introductory course in Irish geography and the recommended resources above will help to get you further into your search for roots so that you can make an A+ in Irish family history!

The image of Lough Cowey above is courtesy of Jordan McClements.

Map of Irish provinces and counties courtesy of mike.eire.ca.

"A fairyland of gold and glitter to feast the eyes of a country child"

Christmas 1858 must have been a time of joy and sadness for Patrick Tierney. Just eighteen years old, I'm sure that memories of childhood Christmases in Ireland were fresh on his mind as he celebrated the season with the hope of a new young immigrant to America.

Wondering what his memories of Ireland might have been like, I was happy to find an account written in the 1920's by Consiglio Murphy. She wrote her memories of Christmas in East Cork "sixty years ago" - which would have been around the 1860's, a few short years after Patrick Tierney had arrived in America from the neighboring County Tipperary.

I enjoyed reading her memories about the pre-Christmas plum pudding process, and how each family member was required to stir the pudding to prevent a death in the family in the new year.

Visits with gifts of fresh milk to neighbors "with many children" ended up with she and her siblings returning filled with rich cake or plum pudding and a chide from their mother, "You took more from those poor people than you gave."

She also tells about her memories of riding into town with her parents in the "pony and trap" to "bring home the Christmas". On the way back in the dark of the Irish late winter afternoon, she remembers enjoying the sights of the lit gas lamps, "a fairyland of gold and glitter to feast the eyes of a country child, who only had an oil lamp and candles at home."

I can't help but wonder what young Patrick Tierney, a country child from Tipperary, feasted his eyes on during his first Christmas in Boston in 1858.

You can read the rest of Consiglio Murphy's memories of mid-19th-century East Cork Christmas at this Irish Culture & Customs webpage or in the book No Shoes in Summer by Merlin Press.

The topic for this post was inspired by Thomas MacEntee's Advent Calendar of Christmas Memories at Destination: Austin Family. Check out his calendar daily this month for some good mini-memoirs of this nostalgic season. This post will be listed under Christmas Grab Bag on December 15.

The vintage postcard image above (circa early 1900's) is courtesy of twogatos.com. Visit the website to view more beautiful postcards.

Your Irish ancestors are online

...or they may be soon.

The Irish Times has announced the National Archives of Ireland's digitization of the 1911 census for Dublin, and is working to add all counties of Ireland for both the 1911 and 1901 censuses.

This is great news for Irish genealogists! Particularly interesting is the fact that, unlike census returns of the U.S. and other English-speaking countries, the records are actually the forms filled out and signed by the head of household, not the census enumerator.

Had your ancestors all emigrated before 1901? You may still find the project relevant to your search for family history. As mentioned by Megan of Roots Television, siblings and other family members often remained behind. Personally, I'm looking forward to searching for Patrick Tierney's family in Tipperary. Unfortunately, it is one of the last counties on the planned digitization schedule, but I'll wait happily. Thanks to the National Archives of Ireland for making research easier on us long-distance cousins!

Thanks to Chris Denham at The Genealogue for announcing this exciting Irish genealogy news in such a timely manner.

A little Ó Tighearnaigh history for you

Above is the coat of arms of the Ó Tighearnaigh family (anglicized to Tierney). According to Irish Families: Their Names, Arms & Origins by Edward MacLysaght (1957), this coat of arms has a long history. It was confirmed in 1748 to a County Limerick branch of the Tierney family. The patent of that date for the coat of arms states that the family was a "long user thereof".

The name Tierney originated from the Gaelic word tighearna, meaning "lord". Different branches of the Tierney family appear to be quite widespread throughout Ireland, although it is most common in Galway, Limerick and Tipperary, where our branch of the family lived.

In fact, the Ó Tighearnaighs, according to MacLysaght, were "undoubtedly firmly established as a territorial family, if not an indigenous sept, in Upper Ormond, for in the Ormond Deeds Fearnan O'Tyernie (i.e. O'Tierney's country) is several times mentioned." See more information on the records in the Ormond Deeds at the Tierney Clan Society webpage on the subject.

Ó Tighearnaigh - the name looks so much prettier written in Gaelic, don't you think? I've always been pretty good at spelling, but these Gaelic spellings are a bit more challenging. If I'm serious about researching my family's Irish history, I'll have to dedicate more time to working on my Gaelic...

(Note: the current edition of MacLysaght's book is pictured above. The link to purchase the book is on the Related Reading sidebar.)

"The hill remains..."

From the fields of Tipperary to the crowded streets of Boston's North End, Patrick Tierney's two worlds were different yet very much the same. The struggle for daily bread was a part of every day of his short 63-year life.

Probably looking toward a better life, he and his family moved around 1895 to the town of Quincy (along with many other Irish immigrant families).

Quincy, Massachusetts (pronounced Quin-zee, if you want to say it like a native) is seven miles southeast of downtown Boston. Known as the home of John & Abigail Adams (John was our nation's 2nd president) and their son John Quincy (our 6th president), the "city of presidents" gave way to the city of the Irish: Patrick and his family among them.

The Seal of City of Quincy includes these dates:

1625: Settlement at Mount Wollaston by Captain Wollaston.
1640: Separation from Boston "to be a town called Braintree."
1792: Incorporation of the North Precinct of Braintree as the Town of Quincy.
1888: Incorporation of the Town of Quincy as the City of Quincy.

The Manet on the seal is explained as follows:
"The hill remains, connecting the present with the past,
The city remains, continuous in its history and development,
The free spirit of it remains,
The fame of it remains, and will remain forever."

The move to Quincy was a good one for the Tierney family. Although they lost Patrick only about five years after their move to Quincy, the family resided there for many years, finding work in the famed Fore River Shipyard and in other local Quincy industries.

Patrick's two daughters, Margaret and Betty, both were still living in Quincy at the time of their deaths in 1963 and 1964, when the city of Quincy was thriving.

There may still be Tierney family descendants living in the area. If you are one or you know of one, please let me know.

As I mentioned here, the last of the homes of the Patrick & Catherine Tierney family in Quincy is still standing. Although no longer in possession of the family, it is good to know that a place where our family members spent so much of their lives is still there "...connecting the present with the past...".

Tierney family treasure: Patrick's naturalization papers, 1876

It was one-hundred years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence.  It was the year that the Sioux and Cheyenne defeated Custer and his troops at Little Big Horn.  It was the year that baseball's National League was founded, and that prominent Boston resident Alexander Graham Bell patented the telephone.

The year 1876 was also of personal importance for another Boston resident, my great-great-grandfather Patrick Tierney. On September 14, 1876 Patrick Tierney (and his wife Catherine by virtue of their marriage two years previous) became citizens of the United States.

Patrick's Declaration of Intent to become a citizen and Petition for Citizenship, which I obtained from the National Archives,  are both very special family treasures for several reasons.  One of those reasons is the mention of Patrick's birth in County Tipperary, Ireland.  I find it very interesting to compare Patrick's naturalization papers with those belonging to my grandfather (on another branch of my family tree) who attained his citizenship in the early 20th-century.

Probably my favorite part of Patrick's documents is his signature. We have no photographic image of my great-great-grandfather, and no written description of what he looked like. His signature is the closest that we can get to an "image" of him. Here it is as it appears on his citizenship papers:

Patrick Tierney's Declaration of Intent and Petition for Citizenship are shown below followed by their transcriptions.

The document reads:

U.S. District Court
Boston, Mass. Vol 95 Page 5 5

United States of America
55

To the Honorable Judges of the Circuit Court of the United States, begun and holden at Boston, within and for the District of Massachusetts.

Respectfully represents Patrick Tierney of Boston in said District Laborer an Alien and a free white person; that he was born in County Tipperary, Ireland the 14th day of March in the year of our Lord eighteen hundred and forty-one and is now about thirty-five years of age; that he arrived at Buffalo, NY in the District of New York in the United States of America, on or about the tenth day of April in the year of our Lord eighteen hundred and fifty-eight being then a minor under the age of eighteen years; that it then was, and still is, his bona fide intention to reside in and become a citizen of the United States of America, and to renounce all allegiance and fidelity to every foreign Prince, State, Potentate and Sovereignty whatsoever – more especially to Victoria, Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland,

whose subject he has heretofore been. [Struck out: All of which appears in the record of the Honorable…Court,…to wit, on the…day of…A.D. 18…]

And the said petitioner further represents that he has ever since continued to reside within the jurisdiction of said United States; that he has never borne any hereditary title, or been any of the orders of nobility; that he is ready to renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to every foreign Prince, Potentate, State or Sovereignty whatsoever; and particularly to Victoria, Queen of the United Kingdom and Great Britain and Ireland,

whose subject he has heretofore been; that he is attached to the principles of the Constitution of the United States of America, and well disposed towards the good order and happiness of the same.
[Struck out: And the said petitioner further represents that he enlisted in the Armies of the United States, and was honorably discharged therefrom.]

Wherefore, your petitioner prays that he may be admitted to become a citizen of the said United States of America, according to the forms of the Statutes in such case made and provided.

x Patrick . Tierney
[Signature of Patrick Tierney]

187 Sworn to by said Petitioner,
Before me,
John G. Stetson,
Clerk.

Key to Transcription

Black = pre-printed on form
Blue = handwritten
Green = stamped on record
Red = not in record; my notes

~

Below is Patrick's Petition for Citizenship.



The document reads:

U.S. District Court
Boston, Mass. Vol 95 Page 5 5 A

United States of America

Massachusetts District, to wit: City of Boston, Sept. 14th 1876.
We Austin Quigley and John Mitchell All of Boston
and both citizens of said United States, severally depose and say, that we have known the foregoing petitioner for five years last past, during which time he has resided in said
Boston
and that he has resided within the State of Massachusetts one year at least; and has conducted himself and behaved as a man of good moral character, attached to the principles of the Constitution of the United States, and well disposed towards the good order and happiness of the same.

Sept 14, 1876 Sworn to by Austin Quigley
the above named witnesses, John Mitchell
Before me,
John G. Stetson
Clerk.

Oath Taken by Petitioner

I, Patrick Tierney do solemnly swear, that I do absolutely and entirely renounce and adjure all allegiance and fidelity to every Foreign Prince, Potenate, State or Sovereignty whatsoever, - particularly to Victoria, Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland,

whose subject I have heretofore been; and that I will support the Constitution of the United States of America, - so help me God.

United States of America

District of Massachusetts, to wit:
At a Circuit Court of the United States, begun and holden at said Boston, on the fifteenth day of May in the year of our Lord 1876, to wit, on the 14th day of September A.D. 1876, the said Patrick Tierney took the aforesaid oath and was admitted to become a citizen of the United States of America; and the Court ordered that record thereof by made accordingly.

Attest:
John G. Stetson Clerk.

Key to Transcription

Black = pre-printed on form
Blue = handwritten
Green = stamped on record
Red = not in record; my notes

A new life in Boston

In the early 1800s, the Irish began to migrate to the North End of Boston in huge numbers. They dominated the neighborhood until approximately 1900.

Our very own Patrick Tierney (1841-1900) emigrated from County Tipperary to Buffalo, New York. He arrived there on April 10, 1858. (This information is recorded on his application to become a naturalized citizen of the United States.)

Patrick was a young 17 years of age when he arrived in Buffalo. He must have arrived soon thereafter in Boston, but I have not yet found records to specify the date.

It is understandable that Patrick and other Irish immigrants would have chosen Boston as their final destination.

According to this website which explains much of the history of Boston's North End neighborhood:

...over the 40-year period, from 1815 to 1855, over 1 million Irish emigrated to America. Boston was a major destination, the North End neighborhood its poor haven. In an almost arithmetic progression: 2000 Irish were living in Boston in 1820, 5000 in 1825, 7000 in 1830, and between 1846 and 1855, 37,000 more Irish had fled Ireland for Boston. In 1847 alone 13,235 Irish emigrated to Boston. This was the year known as "Black 47" and was the most deadly year of Ireland's Great Potato Famine or, as it was called in Gaelic, An Górta Mor or The Great Hunger.

Arriving in Boston, many Irish immigrants initially settled in the North End and along its waterfront - impoverished and in despair. Disease became so endemic to the overcrowded neighborhood that by 1845 the neighborhood suffered a communicable disease rate twice that of the rest of Boston. "Children in the Irish district [North End]," wrote Bostonian Lemuel Shattuck, "seemed literally born to die." By 1850, the Irish comprised over half of the North End population of 23,000 and five years later 14,000 of the 26,000 North Enders were Irish born. Families were packed together in one-room decrepit apartments and run-down boarding houses - all in a neighborhood comprising less than 70 acres traditionally used for housing (the remaining 30 acres comprised waterfront warehouses and wharves). Moreover, as Thomas H. O'Connor has written: "Native Bostonians might have been willing to send money and food to aid the starving Irish as long as they remained in Ireland, but they certainly didn't want them coming to America." Thus began the long saga of incessant suffering and discrimination.

This is a photo of Boston's North End today:


This was the world that Patrick Tierney entered into when he left the suffering of Ireland. And there's more...

Unlike the subsequent waves of immigrants that followed over the next half-century - the Portuguese, European Jews and the Italians - the Irish had neither the resources nor the competitive skills to adjust easily. Employment opportunities were limited and anti-Irish job discrimination was rampant: "No Irish Need Apply" signs seemed to be everywhere. The Irish were forced to take only the lowliest, most menial jobs - as domestics, laborers and unskilled factory workers. And most of these jobs were outside the North End. Much of the work force employed for Boston's land reclamation projects, such as the filling in of the City's Back Bay, were Irish laborers from the North End. They also helped build Boston's transit system and the bridges and highways to the suburbs.

Patrick Tierney, my great-great-grandfather, was one of those hard-working Irishmen. This is what his resume might have looked like:

Patrick Tierney
1874-1876 Laborer
1877-1881 Peddler (of tea and other items)
1884 Trader
1888-1891 Grocer
1897-1898 Laborer

We know the jobs that Patrick held because of various records that have listed his occupation: he and his wife's marriage license, his naturalization application, his children's birth records and several Boston city directories.

His must not have been an easy life, but his decision to immigrate to America allowed him the opportunity to find work, and to feed himself and his wife and family in a way that might not have been possible had he remained in Ireland.

Thanks for all your hard work, great-great-grandfather. You must not have felt much pride in yourself being a poor Irish laborer in Boston in the 19th century. But I'm proud to be your great-great-grandaughter and inspired by the story of your life.

It's a long way to Tipperary

It was a thrill to get the large envelope in the mail a few years ago from the National Archives in Boston. Inside I expected to find the naturalization application for my great-great-grandfather, Patrick Tierney. I had learned the year that he probably became a U.S. citizen by reading his U.S. census records. Now here were copies of the original documents that had helped to make him a citizen of his new country.

That was exciting enough. Little did I know what information I would find in the application.

I learned (drumroll, please) that Patrick Tierney was originally from County Tipperary, Ireland! Exciting news! After knowing my entire life that I had Irish heritage and being proud of that heritage, finally I knew where one of my ancestors had actually lived in Ireland!

Well, the county, at least.

I know.

It's a large county.

But to be able to look at a map of Ireland and actually zone in on a county and be able to say: "My family lived there!" What joy!

Now if I could only get past the county level and learn the actual town where he lived. Then I can plan my long-awaited trip to Ireland.

A rough start in Ireland

On March 14, 1841 a baby boy named Patrick was born to Michael & Mary (O'Neil) Tierney in County Tipperary, Ireland. Little did this family know what would transpire in their homeland in the near future.

Their lives, which were probably not too easy to begin with, would become tried beyond the imagination.

With the potato being the main food of the rural Irish, the failure of the potato crops in 1845-49 resulted in the disastrous Great Famine. Starvation and famine fever spread through the land; its greatest impact was in those communities on marginal lands. During the last part of the Famine, grain continued to be exported from Ireland to the markets of England, and Indian corn was prohibited by tariffs from entering Ireland (or England).

Government policies were criminally slow to react to the disaster. Workhouses, established under the Poor Law Act of 1838 for the relief of the destitute poor, were overwhelmed. At the height of the Famine, 3,000 per week were dying in the workhouses of Ireland. One million people perished due to the famine and within a decade or two, a further two million emigrated from Ireland.

Tipperary was relatively badly affected by the
Famine. Almost 70,000 people died in the county between 1845 and 1850 particularly in the years 1849 and 1850. The county population fell from
435,000 in 1841, to 331,000 in 1851 and to
249,000 in 1861. The rural population declined by two-thirds in that period and the town population by nearly one-half.

Read more about Tipperary history here.

Living a childhood in this kind of world, it is a miracle that young Patrick Tierney survived and went on to live to age 59, passing away in 1900.

In brief: Summary of the life of Patrick Tierney 1841-1900

The August 7, 1900 edition of the Quincy Daily Ledger newspaper published a City Brevities section. The fourteenth "brevity" down the page is as follows:

J.P. Tiery of Quincy avenue passed away yesterday after an illness of several years. A widow and seven children survive him.

A brevity, to be sure. I was struck with amazement when I read this little obituary.

This was a man (my great-great-grandfather Patrick J. Tierney) who had been born in 1841 in County Tipperary, just prior to the Great Famine in Ireland. He survived and at age 17 immigrated to the United States, married, became a United States citizen at age 35, made a life for himself with various odd jobs, and left seven children.

Most people will never overcome the odds that Patrick Tierney had to overcome in his lifetime. Most people will never need half the courage that he must have had to muster to face each day of his childhood during the Great Hunger, his trip over the ocean to a new land, and his daily work as a laborer, trader, peddler and grocer struggling to make ends meet in Boston's Irish north end during the late 19th-century.

And the newspaper didn't even get his name right.

Source: “City Brevities: J.P. Tiery…,” Quincy Daily Ledger, 7 August 1900, p. 3.

Let's never forget

This famine memorial in Boston, Massachusetts remembers the lives of those who suffered during such a sad time in Irish history and calls us to look toward those in the world today who may be experiencing similar suffering.

This blog is dedicated to the memory of my great-great-grandparents Patrick Tierney of County Tipperary, Ireland and his wife Catherine (Kennedy) Tierney, who survived the Great Famine and came to Boston in search of a better life.

Their humble lives are remembered here with fondness and appreciation. It is our hope that the little that we learn about their lives will strengthen us for our own times.