We have several photographs in our collection that were taken in Manchester, England. These fall into the “Your Grandpa’s People” and remain, to this day, mostly unidentified.
Over the weekend I was working on my Ancestry.com family tree and took another look at our Manchester photos. Frustrated by all the “unknowns” in the captions, I decided to put my best guess IDs on the photos. We will see if they stick.
I will start with one I am fairly certain about. This is my great-grandmother Annie Hill Regan’s only brother, John Hill. John was born on April 7, 1870, near Kill, County Kildare, Ireland. He was baptized two days later on April 9th. John was five years older than Annie.
John and his wife, Clara lived in Broughton, Manchester, England.
Clara and John Hill (Private Family Collection)
John’s youngest sister, Bridget “Delia” Hill Reynolds, and her husband John and family also lived in Broughton. I connected with a DNA match cousin whose grandma was Delia. He shared with me that her brother John lived with the Reynolds family.
Youngest Reynolds son, John Hill, John and Delia Reynolds (Private Family Collection)
There is one problem. Mary Hill O’Brien’s daughter Mamie had an album with a photo of the trio (minus John Hill) labeled, “Aunt Maggie and family.” I am pretty sure it is Delia. For a number of reasons, it just makes sense to me. I know nothing about Maggie. Once the Hill girls hit age fifty, they look very similar. I have positive IDs on Mary, Katie, and Annie, so I’ll just keep digging…
Recently I submitted my great-grandmother Annie Hill Regan to Rachael Flynn’s Irish Women of our Past – Book of Namesproject. Here’s how Rachael describes her very exciting project:
The BOOK OF NAMES is a project which aims to recognise the women in our past who have made the journey from Ireland to other lands.
Artist-researcher Rachael Flynn is currently working on an arts project through which people will be able to submit the names of their female Irish ancestors in order to build up a record that seeks to pay honour to their struggles and successes.
By adding the names of their Irish mothers, grandmothers, great grandmothers, aunts, cousins… the people who add names to this collection will have the chance to effectively ‘light a candle’ in memory of these relatives.
Rachael asks for some basic information in order to add a female Irish relative to the Book of Names: name, date and port of departure, destination, and your contact information. Very simple.
I had the data about my great-grandmother’s emigration, but I wanted to revisit the passenger list I had copied from Ancestry.com ages ago. I remembered how exciting it was to locate this information because I knew for certain it was my Annie. I struggle with genealogy at times, becoming distracted and discouraged quite easily. It always seems to me that it shouldn’t be so difficult to find the information you are looking for…
I had spent hours looking for other relatives, so I prepared myself for a long search. There was the question of her first name – would she be listed as Annie, Anne, Anna, or Ann? It had appeared in each form in some official document or anther. Then her surname – Hill can be English, Irish, Swedish, German, etc. And she emigrated to the United States around 1900, along with hundreds of thousands of other people!
I lucked out and found Annie on a passenger list not long after I began the search. I had not expected the departure port to be Glasgow, and I was a bit surprised that the list said Annie came from Kilkenny (Kildare was her home county) but I was certain I had located the right Annie when I read that her passage was paid by her brother-in-law Mr. O’Brien of Clontarf, Minnesota and her final destination was also Clontarf. Clontarf was a tiny town, this had to be my great-grandmother.
This morning I came across the following posting on a RootsWeb message board from 2008:
From the London Times of April 21, 1899 comes this ad:
ANCHOR LINE.–GLASGOW to NEW YORK.
Furnesia, 5,495 tons, April 27; Ethiopia, 4,001 tons, May 11.
Excellent accommodation. Cabin fares from £9 9s.; second cabin,
from £6.–A.H. Groves, 14, Rue du Helder, Paris; T. Cook and
Son, Paris and London; Henderson Brothers, 18, Leadenhall st. E.C.
The following comes from the NY Times shipping news:
May 13: “SS Ethiopia. (Br.,) Capt. Wadsworth.
(from Glasgow.) sld. from Moville for New York to-day.”
For days the NY Times lists her as expected on
Sunday, May 21. On May 22, however, she is listed
as expected that day. On May 23, “SS Ethiopia,
(Br.,) Wadsworth, Glasgow May 11 and Moville 12,
with mdse. and passengers to Henderson Bros.
Southest of Fire Island at 5:35 P.M.
– submitted by Marj Kohli
S.S. Ethiopia
Thank you Marj Kohli of Canada! I wonder where Annie boarded the S.S. Ethiopia? In Glasgow (she had sisters living in Manchester, England) or did she make the journey up to Moville on Donegal’s Inishowen Peninsula? I don’t believe it says on the passenger list, but I will check it again.
I also wonder what held the Ethiopia up? It was supposed to arrive in New York on May 21st, but didn’t make it until May 23rd. Adventure on the high seas? Too bad Annie didn’t keep a travel diary (or if she did, too bad it didn’t survive!)
I am honored to have her name included in Rachael’s Book of Names along with all of the other incredible Irish women who made the journey to a new life. I encourage all of you with an Irish mother, grandmother, great-grandmother, cousin, or auntie to submit their name and their story to Rachael’s project. Visit her website here and follow her on Twitter for all the latest information. It is really a very easy process – take a few minutes and honor your Irish relatives!
Who will you submit? I have some more Irish ladies to get to – a couple more great-grandmothers, some great-great-grandmothers, and a few great-grand-aunts. I better get busy!
Annie and her chickens on her farm in Tara Township, near Clontarf, Minnesota
The “mystery” from last time was actually solved a few years back. My mom reminded me that we confirmed the identity of the priest when we compared the photo-pin to a photograph of Father John J. Molloy that we found in the book Meet Shieldsville, by Mary L. Hagerty. I spaced this discovery out, and I must admit that this was not entirely an accident. At times I become overwhelmed with my own family history research, and when a discovery opens up a new can of worms and I don’t have the time or energy to deal with it, I will slip the cover back on and vow to deal with it at a later date. This is precisely what happened with good old Father Molloy.
Priest Pin
Above is a reproduction of the photo of Father Molloy. It is not of the highest quality, but I think you can appreciate the resemblance to the photo-pin on the right. My great-grandmother worked as Father Molloy’s housekeeper (1905-1910) before she was married. While I was pleased to learn the identity of the priest, it meant that there was even more to learn about Father Molloy. The first thing I wanted to know was how Annie came to know Father Molloy.
John J. Molloy was born in County Mayo, Ireland and educated at St. Patrick’s College Maynooth, County Kildare. He was ordained in 1891 and arrived in Minnesota later that year. Father Molloy served as an assistant pastor for a number of parishes throughout Minnesota before settling at St. Patrick’s in Shieldsville. He served the community for fifty-two years.
All of that was well and good, but I couldn’t find anything in the biographical information on Father Molloy that could point to a connection to my great-grandmother. That was until I read in his obituary that he was survived by one sister named Delia in Manchester, England. Immediately I thought of the dozen or so photographs taken in the studios of Manchester, England that Annie had saved. Of course, none of the photographs were identified, but I assumed they were of family members. Annie had one sister who moved to Manchester and raised a family (Bridget) and another sister who lived there for a few years before returning home to Kildare (Catherine, who I have mentioned before.) Manchester could be the connection, but it made my head hurt and I told myself I would tackle this another day.
I believe the day has come. It is time to dust off my Manchester file and see if I can’t figure this one out. A wonderful book, The Reynolds Letters, provides considerable insight into the lives of Irish emigrants living and working in Manchester during the 19th and early-20th centuries. I will use the resources available on ancestry.com and elsewhere on the internet to see if I can learn anything more about a possible Molloy-Hill connection in Manchester.
Here are some of my of mystery Manchester photographs…
Probably one of the Hill girls...
Unknown Couple from Manchester
Perhaps Annie's sister and family?
The Hill sisters that I believe spent time in Manchester are:
Margaret (Maggie)
b. 1866
Catherine (Katie)
b. 1872
m. John Howe
Bridget (Delia)
b. 1876
If anyone has experience researching Irish emigrants in England, specifically Manchester, please let me know. I will keep you posted…
To one of my favorite Irish American couples…my great-grandparents Annie Hill and Cornelius Regan. They were married 100 years ago today, February 21st, at St. Malachy Catholic Church in Clontarf, Minnesota. Annie came from Kill Parish in County Kildare in 1899 and settled in Clontarf, Minnesota. Neil was born in Fisherville, New Hampshire, his parents were Mary Quinn from County Clare and John Regan of Kilmichael, County Cork.
Annie Hill and Cornelius Regan - February 21, 1911
The Irish in America 