52 Ancestors - MULTIPLES: Twice a Widow

During the month of March, I will be shining the light on my Irish roots.

Mary Theresa Sheehan 
1869-1939

I cannot imagine what it was like for a woman to be widowed twice before the age of 50. And with 8 children. That was the life my great-grandmother Mary Theresa Sheehan faced.

At the age of 17, Mary Theresa emigrated by herself from County Limerick, Ireland in 1886 to New York City. In the 1892 New York State census, she reported living on Clinton Avenue in Brooklyn earning a living as a cook. 

John Joseph Killeen
1866 - 1905

Somewhere, somehow, she met John Joseph Killeen, also an Irishman who had arrived from County Limerick in 1886. In the 1892 census, he was working as a porter.

The 1900 census indicates that John Joseph and Mary Theresa had been married 7 years. They were living in an apartment on 3^rd Avenue in the Bronx. John worked as a railroad guard while Mary Theresa was at home caring for three children: Lillie age 6, Matthew age 5, and Mary (better known to our family as Mae) age 1. Sadly, the Killeens reported that there had been 4 children with just the 3 living.

When New York conducted its State census in June 1905, 36-year-old Mary Theresa had been a widow for 2 months with 5 children to take care of: Elizabeth (Lillie) age 11, Matthew 10, Mae 6, Margaret 4, and Helen 2.

At the encouragement of her sister-in-law, Bridget Killeen Glynn, Mary Theresa packed up her five children and moved to Portsmouth, Virginia “to be with family.” While that sounds like a reasonable thing to do, Mary Theresa was moving to be with her deceased husband’s family while she had her own four sisters and their families right there in New York City.

I don’t get it.

Nevertheless, move she did and by June 1906, she was married to John Fleming Walsh. 

John Fleming Walsh
1868-1918

A news article indicates they married in a Methodist church on either June 12 or 13. 

Newport News Daily Press 14 Jun 1906

Yet there is also an entry in St. Paul’s Catholic Church records that they were married by Father Thomas Brady on June 17. I wonder why they married twice. At any rate, they married and settled into life on Charlestown Avenue in Portsmouth.

Together they had three more children: Julia (my paternal grandmother), Catherine (Cat), and Teresa Mary (Tate).

Walsh worked as an ordnance man for the Norfolk Naval Shipyard. When he died in October 1918, the cause of death was officially recorded as pulmonary tuberculosis. Given the timing, though, it is just as likely he had contracted the Spanish flu.

Because Walsh had served as a private in the US Marines, Mary Theresa and the three Walsh daughters qualified for a pension.  

Walsh pension - payable quarterly

Mary Theresa spent the rest of her days as a widow. It is doubtful she had time for a third husband because several of her children were a handful, to say the least. Alcoholism, job insecurity, a baby out-of-wedlock in a good Catholic family, no less, and people moving out then coming back were probably all the issues she could manage. My father used to say she was the only stable force in the family.  

Amy Johnson Crow continues to challenge genealogy bloggers and non-bloggers alike to think about our ancestors and share a story or photo about them. The challenge is “52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks.”

Wendy

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