My maternal grandfather’s grandmother was Mary Kearney. She married Patrick Carroll in La Salle, Illinois in 1866 when she was 20 years old. Her married name then, was Mary Carroll, the same as my own mother’s given name. But finding her origins has been a bit of a journey.
Mary and Patrick’s son, John T Carroll, brother of my 2x great grandfather Henry Carroll, was the editor of the Toluca Star so one would expect her obituary to be more detailed than it is. It tells us she was born in Moorestown New Jersey in 1846. It doesn’t tell us the name of her parents or their origins. The Minonk News Dispatch however did give us one clue in their version of her obituary. It said she was laid to rest in St. Vincent cemetery beside her mother.
I put in a photo request on findagrave for a photo to be taken of Mary’s grave and explained the obit mentions her mother is buried next to her. A very kind volunteer promptly took photos for me of the site of Mary and Margaret’s graves. Margaret’s grave has a death date of 12 April 1892. Her name is spelled Margaret Karney. It’s engraved wife of Patrick. Mary and her husband Henry Carroll have no stone at all.
There is a gravestone for John Karney, whose stone is engraved son of Patrick and Margaret Karney buried in the same plot. He was born about 1854 and died in 1872 at the age of 18 according to the grave stone. This would have to be Mary’s little brother.
Remember the obituary written by her son John tells us she was born in Moorestown, New Jersey in 1846. So looking at the 1850 census in Burlington county where Moorestown township is located, I found a Mary Carney, born in 1846 living in Chester NJ with her father Patrick, Mother Margaret, 11 year old brother Patrick – all born in Ireland, younger sisters Margaret 3 and Catherine 1 all born in New Jersey. Add in John from the graveyard and we have 2 brothers and 2 sisters for our Mary.
Looking up immigration records for a Patrick Kearney I found him arriving May 18th 1842 in Philadelphia. This would have been before the Great Famine due to blight on crops like potatoes that killed a million Irish citizens. But a birth search for Patrick and Margaret’s oldest son Patrick finds he was baptized in the Armagh parish in what is now Northern Ireland. By 1842 the area was hit hard by the Industrial Revolution which decimated small family linen shops. Steam powered spinning mills in Belfast took over the industry forcing many rural producers into the cities where they could only work in the factories for meager wages.
The Armagh workhouse was built in 1841 and was quickly filled to capacity. Then the repeated failed crops starting in 1845 brought the great famine that killed a million Irish and filled the workhouse’s cemetery.
So Patrick and Margaret fled Ireland in 1842 to find a better life but by 1860 the family is no longer together. Mary is 14, living in the town of Eden, LaSalle County, Illinois in a tavern containing 8 adults from places ranging from Maine to NY to Pennsylvania to Indiana and Ohio, in occupations like blacksmith, carpenter, teacher, plasterer and livery stable keeper. Her sister Margaret is listed as 12, also living in Eden, in the house of Mahan and Alice Hanley and 6 other workers from Ireland and Denmark.
There is no sign of Catherine, Patrick (Sr or Jr) or Margaret, yet we know Margaret doesn’t die until 1892 at the age of 79.
A search of death records back in New Jersey turns up a record of death of a Patrick “Kerney” born about 1809 in Ireland who died in Dec 1854 at Berrogen (likely misspelling of Bergen) Hill, Passaic, New Jersey. The man is identified as married, 45 years old and the son of “Patrick Kerney”. This is the next county over from the last known address of the Kearney’s. Bergen Hill is the site of an Irish labor riot in 1857. Many Irish laborers worked on the railroad and canals in the area for meager wages under horrible conditions.
A search of death records in New Jersey find Katherine Kearney died 30 December, 1856. She would have been 7 years old. She’s buried in Belleville, NJ, near Passaic where Patrick died.
So with the father and a daughter dead, the family would likely move to be near family. Is this what brought them to Illinois?
Eden township is home to Tonica, which was incorporated just the year before in 1859. It was a bit of a boomtown due to the railroad coming through in 1853. Thousands of Irish immigrants came to LaSalle County in the mid 19th century to work on infrastructure projects like the Illinois and Michigan Canal (finished in 1848) and the Illinois Central Railroad. Many of the canal workers transitioned to farm laborers. The city of LaSalle saw perhaps the most Irish settlers. The Great Famine in Ireland increased Illinois’s Irish population from 27k in 1850 to 87k in 1860. They were the second largest immigration group in Illinois behind the Germans, though most of them settled in larger cities like Chicago. Coal was also a major employer in LaSalle County. In the census of 1860 in LaSalle entire houses full of laborers list their employment as coal miner.
What family ties to the LaSalle area might have brought my great grandmother there in 1860?
So we return to the Saint Vincent cemetery in LaSalle, Illinois. There we find more Kearneys: Sarah Kearney and her sister Rosanna Kearney Cullen born in 1814 and 1819. They’re likely kin of our Patrick Kearney. Their gravestones tell us they came to America from Armagh, Northern Ireland. This fits. Remember the baptismal record for Mary’s brother Patrick is from the Armagh Diocese.
Armagh was the seat of power for the ancient Ulster High Kings and St. Patrick established his principal church there in the 5th century, making it the ecclesiastical capital of Ireland. In the 17th century County Armagh became part of the Plantation of Ulster, with English and Scottish settlers colonizing much of the land. The city of Armagh is known as the “city of saints and scholars”. I suppose it’s appropriate that the area that was conquered by St. Patrick is the origin of my great great great great grandfather Patrick.
Roseanna Kearney married in Ireland and she and her husband Terence had three daughters, in 1839, 1842 and 1845 baptized in Armagh, Northern Ireland. In 1860 they were living in LaSalle, their oldest daughter, Jane Kearney, already married to Ed Lamb with a son born in 1959. To figure how long they were in Illinois, I looked back to Ed’s origins. He was single, 18 and living in Salibury in LaSalle County in 1850, listing Ireland as his birthplace. But the 1870 census lists their eldest son’s birthplace as Kansas. He was born in 1857, so Jane at least was in America before that. So it is possible Margaret brought her children to LaSalle County to be near the family of her dead husband.
Roseanna’s sister Sarah isn’t found in the 1860 census either, but she does show up in 1870, living with a John Kearney. This is another likely sibling as her findagrave states she never married. John Kearney was born in Northern Ireland and farmed in Will County from at least 1860 until his death in 1889.
While I don’t find any record of Margaret in the 1960 census, it’s likely she was there, with her younger children living somewhere the census missed, possibly with Sarah Kearney who never married. The oldest girls were sent out to Eden to work, in a tavern and a rooming house. I do find Margaret in LaSalle County in 1870, living alone in Hope township, near her daughter Mary.
It seems the oldest son, Patrick, may have stayed behind in New Jersey, there’s no sign of him in Illinois. There is a Patrick Karney that shows up in Scranton Pennsylvania in the 1880 census, married with several children and an elderly Irish mother, called “Ellen” living with him. Could this be our Patrick and Margaret? There’s no census data for Margaret that year in Illinois and this same Patrick in 1912, at the age of 72 marries a widow named Lovina Elizabeth Cawley and on the marriage application he lists his mother’s name as Margaret O’Connor and his father as Patrick Karney. This Patrick then moves to St. Louis where he dies in 1920 at 80 years of age.
Looking through newspaper articles from Minonk and LaSalle mentioning Mary and Henry Carroll I also found mention of another Kearney, Michael.
Looking up records for Michael Kearney born in New Jersey and then living in Illinois I found in the Illinois, U.S., Deaths and Stillbirths Index, 1916-1947 Michael “Karney” born 25 July 1854 in “Morsetown” – likely misspelling of Moorestown, New Jersey who died 4 February 1929 in Chatsworth, Livingston, IL, a retired farmer whose parents were Patrick Karney and Margaret Connors both born in Ireland. He married Mary Ellen Wolf in Dwight in 1875 at 20 years of age. He had 6 children with Mary between 1875 and 1894, farming Ford County (Peach Orchard, Melvin and Lyman and then moving to Dix and ending up in Chatsworth in retirement.
In Patrick Carroll’s obituary in 1937 there is a long list of relatives who came to pay their respects, including some more Kearneys. Mr and Mrs. John Joe Kearney, and Mrs. John Kearney and son. A long list of Shaughnessy’s attended, these are the family of Mary’s sister Margaret. Margaret married David Shaughnessy in 1865 in LaSalle. David farmed in McLean County in places like Chenoa, Yates and Anchor before retiring in Chicago.
Whether they called themselves Karneys or Kearneys or Carneys they all called themselves Americans in the end.
**A fun aside here. Barack Obama is descended from Kearneys in County Offaly, Ireland in the 1700s. Theoretically the Kearney family is descended from Milesius, King of Spain through the line of his son Heber, the first King of Munster in A.D. 177 Cormac Cas and Sabia, daughter of Con of the Hundred Battles, King of Ireland A.D. 148. The ancient name was Cearnach, signifying “Victorius” taken from a chief called Cartharnaigh. This chief was from Counties Meath and Westmeath and designated O’Caharney of the battling arms. This became O’Kearney. Here’s a map showing the location of Kearneys in Armagh in 1864, about 20 years after our Kearneys left.
