Fr. James - a life cut short by TB.

James Burke was baptised on December 4^th 1876. He received his secondary education at St. Munchin's College, Limerick (the diocesan college) and from there he moved to Carlow College to study for the priesthood. He was ordained a priest at Carlow College on June 14^th 1903 and celebrated his first Mass the following day. The souvenir card of his ordination is below.

 



 At this time Ireland was producing far more priests than it needed at home and many newly-ordained priests went abroad. Fr. James was one of these and he was dispatched to the Diocese of Wichita, Kansas. I’ve managed to find his emigration record. He sailed on the SS Campania on October 4^th 1903 from Queenstown (now Cobh) in Co. Cork arriving in New York on October 10^th. From the passenger lists we can see that he travelled with 4 other clergymen, one of whom was going with him to Kansas. He gives his homeplace as "Ballingarry" - the parish where Kilmacow is situated. He was carrying $50 with him and his sponsor is given as Bishop Hennessy of Wichita. A quick check on Wikipedia reveals that Bishop Hennessy was born in Co. Cork and emigrated to the US as a child after the Great Famine, settling in St. Louis, Missouri. He was ordained a priest and became the first Bishop of the newly-created diocese of Wichita in 1888.

 

Amazingly, I also found his brother, Edward (Ed) on the same ship (more about him later) who was heading to Chicago to stay with their brother Bill.

The 1910 US Census shows Fr. James living with his housekeeper (Mary Roidan,  a widow from Iowa whose parents were Irish) at 412 East 8th Avenue, Winfield, Kansas (same address as Holy Name RC Church).

Unfortunately, Fr. James contracted tuberculosis and died on December 17^th 1910. The death notice below is interesting in that it doesn't mention any of his siblings in Ireland or his mother who was still alive.

 

The funeral notice shows that the funeral left from his brother Jack's (John) house for Corpus Christi Church and then was carried by horse-drawn carriage to the family plot in Mount Olivet Cemetery.

 

 

 

I have a large framed photoraph of Fr. James which came from the old farmhouse in Kilmacow. On the corner it is inscribed "Winfield, Kansas". There were obviously several copies made of this as many years ago one of Joe Burke's (Fr. Jame's brother) sons sent me some family photos, one of which was a copy of the same photo. 

 

 



 

 

Michael Burke - my grandfather

According to his headstone Michael was born in 1874 but baptismal records show he was baptised on October 26th 1867. In the 1901 Cenus he gives his age as 25, knocking a whopping nine years off his age. By the 1911 Census, a guilty conscience has led him to "admit" to being 42, only two years out! Michael inherited the family farm and married Mary Banks from Adare in Co. Limerick. They had six children, John, Ned (my Dad), Mary, Pat, Mick and Willie.

A local poem recalls that he hurled with the local parish of Kilfinny in the 1890s:

"Tim Day in play, sure I must say, was a hurler keen and grand.
Mick Burke today lies in sacred clay, they hailed down from the Strand"

The Strand referred to the road that ran alongside the family farm.

Michael died on Christmas Day, 1928 having suffered a stroke 9 days earlier. According to my Dad, the last job he did before he fell ill was to fix a clip on a bin of flour in the kitchen.

Unfortunately, no pictures of Michael survive. There was a tradition in rural Ireland of naming the first-born son after his paternal grandfather and it is interesting to note that there is a "Michael" or a "Micheal" (Gaelic form) in each family of grand-children.

Jack Burke

Jack Burke was born in 1865 and baptised on June 15th 1865. Jack, like his siblings took a very casual attitude to his age with his birth year being listed as either 1867 or 1868 on the various US Census returns and 1870 on his marriage record. Obviously, there was a little white lie to his new bride there! Bill, his brother used to recall to his daughter, Catherine, going to point-to-point races in Kilfinny near Kilmacow with him. He had a reputation for liking a drink. One evening he was going for a drink but as his mother didn’t like him drinking he went across the fields to avoid her but she spotted him and followed him knowing his destination. He saw her and sat down in the field innocently. She sat down beside him and said nothing. Jack eventually went home. Another evening on his way home from the pub and a bit drunk he lost his way and wondered into the farmyard of a man called Jim Houlihan. Jim gave him directions – "Turn left here, right there etc.”  Jack’s reply was– “Left or right Jack Burke will get home”.

He emigrated to America in either 1893 or 1894. His first wife was called Winnie Melette and they married on June 20th, 1896. Winnie died on February 20th 1931. He visited Ireland in 1932 with his sister, Margaret, for the Eucharistic Congress in Dublin. My father (his brother Mike’s son) remembers that himself and his brothers and sisters all got one pound from him, a princely sum in those days. He stayed at his sister Annie’s place in Limerick city. One morning he received a letter. Having read it he announced “Here’s a letter from a lassie and my wife not cold in the grave”.  On his return to the states he married Mary Finnerty who was a sister-in-law of his brother Tom.   

He worked on the railroads in Chicago all his life being described in various Census returns as a Railroad Clerk (1900), a  Railroad Shipper (1910) and a Railroad Employee (1920). He is described as retired in the 1930 US Census. 

From the census returns we can follow where the couple lived in Chicago over the early years of the twentieth century:

(1900) 390, 25th St. Chicago - Ward 5 - they rented this house.
(1910) 4617, Evans Avenus Chicago - Ward 6 - Jack and Winnie owned this house and had three lodgers all Scottish and working as carpenters.
(1920) 7915, Sangamon St. Chicago - Ward 32 - Jack and Winnie owned this house which was mortaged.
(1930) 8625, South Thirty Street - Ward 19 - they owned this house which was valued at $7,000

Jack died in 1933 at the age of 68 in Chicago. He was buried in Mount Olivet Cemetery, Chicago with his first wife Winnie.

Patrick Burke

John & Mary's second child and first son, Patrick Henry Burke, was born in 1862, being baptised on December 4th in Ballingarry Church. In the various US censuses, however, he gives his year of birth as either 1865 or 1868. This casual relationship with age is common to many of his siblings. Maybe birthdays weren't important then and people just "forgot" when they were born, maybe it was vanity or maybe it was related to their jobs and avoiding having to retire at a certain age.

According to US census returns he emigrated between 1885 and 1890, the first of the Burkes to emigrate. Family lore says that he never met his youngest brother Dan who was born in 1885 so that would lend credence to the 1885 date.  According to his granddaughter, Patricia Scumaci, Pat emigrated to New York and stayed with a man called Dempsey from Croagh, Co. Limerick (the next parish to Ballingarry). As a result of this he met his future wife, Hannah Dempsey, who was this man's niece. Within a short period he had moved to Chicago.

Patrick and Hannah married on October 6th 1892. Patrick was now 30 but gives his age on the marriage certificate as 26! They had 8 children - Alice (1890s - died as a baby), John (1893), Bill (1895), Robert Emmet (1898), Joe (1891), Tom (1902), James (1904) and Ed (1908).

A city directory (which listed residents and their businesses before telephone books came along) from 1891 give his occupation as a bartender. He moved on to run his own saloon and using the city directories I have traced his various saloons. In 1898 he had a saloon (Burke & Riordan) at 1 Edgemont Avenue. In 1905-1907 he had a saloon at 487 W 12th. In 1910–1913 he had a saloon in 4501 West Madison. He lived on this premises as this is listed as his residence in the 1910 Census. However, his saloon was destroyed in a fire and this must have happened between 1913 and 1920 as in the 1920 Census his occupation is listed as a US Post Mail Clerk. According to the 1930 census he was working as a watchman with the Street Repair Department. The various census returns for Patrick and Hannah also contain other titbits of information such as the fact that in 1930 they were renting their home (paying $50 per month) and had no radio! The 1900 census return interestingly shows that Patrick's sister, Kate, was living with them. She had come to the US in 1890 and was working as a book-keeper.

From the city directories and census returns we can follow where the family lived in Chicago over the early years of the twentieth century:
1891 - 284 5th Avenue
1898 - (Ward 9) 381 Loomis Street (Renting)
1900 - (Ward 9) 381 Loomis Street (Renting)
1910 - (Ward 34) 4501 West Madison St. (Renting)
1920 - (Ward 35) 4330 Jackson Boulevard (Renting)
1930 - (Ward 30) 4032 Wilcox Street.

According to Patricia Scumaci his house was always full of books and he spoke very precise and proper English. If any of his brothers wanted to know anything about the old days in Ireland they'd ask Pat. Patrick died on 21 Nov 1943 at the age of 81. He is buried in Mount Olivet cemetery with his wife, Hannah. It was his brother, Fr. James who had bought this plot of 15 graves. His date of birth is given on his headstone as 1865 instead of 1862

Mary-Ann Burke

John and Mary's first child was a girl, Mary-Ann, who was baptised on April 8th 1861.Fast forward to the 1901 census and we have Mary-Ann's age listed as "30", a full 10 years knocked off her age! We can only speculate why at this stage but in those days in rural Ireland a woman's options were limited. There were only two routes to economic independence, marriage or emigration. Otherwise someone like Mary-Ann would end up living in Kilmacow looking after her elderly parents. When they died she would continue to live there but the son who inherited the farm would possibly marry and a new mistress of the househould would move in. Sometimes this arrangement worked out but in many cases misery ensued for everyone involved. Was Mary-Ann deliberately lowering her age to keep herself in the marriage stakes?. Anyway, it worked! Soon after the 1901 census was taken, Mary-Ann married a farmer called Dan O'Gorman from near Charleville, Co. Cork. Dan was a widower who had a young daughter.The "deception" continues on to the 1911 census where Mary-Ann gives her age as 42 (only 8 years out now). Dan's age is given as 39 so I wonder did he know his wife's true age. Catherine Burke told me that her father Bill (Mary-Ann's brother) used to say that Mary-Ann baked delicious Christmas cakes. My Dad used to talk about going to stay at Mary-Ann's for holidays. Dan used to get them to sing his favourite song - "Lament of an Irish Emigrant" (Lady Dunferrin) which earned them a couple of pennies. My aunt, Sr. Maura used to tell the story about when their father died (Michael - Mary-Ann's brother), they were sent to Mary-Ann's for a few days around the funeral. As it was Christmas, Mary-Ann bought Sr. Maura a beautiful red coat which she adored. However, it was then decided it was too bright and the coat was sent back leaving Sr. Maura devastated. Mary-Ann is buried in the family plot in Kilmacow cemetery but is not listed on the gravestone.

A record of Joe Burke's emigration in 1909?

In my last post I mentioned that I hadn't managed to find any record of the Burkes on the passengers lists of ships that crossed the Atlantic. Well, my luck may have turned!

According to the 1910 US Census, Joe Burke (the last of the family to emigrate) arrived in the US in 1909. Using this date I began searching the passenger lists and I've found a Joe Burke who emigrated from Croom (the local town to Kilmacow) to the US in 1909 (above is an image of the first page of the record - Jow Burke is on the second line). While it's impossible to be 100% sure that it's the same person the evidence is pretty convincing.

There is a lot of detail in these passenger lists. Joseph Burke gives his age as 20 -our Joe would have been 25 but many of the Burkes knocked a few years of their age with many of them having incorrect birth years on their gravestones. For the emigrants it may have been to do with making themselves more employable or eligible for certain jobs. Joseph gives his home town as Croom and his next of kin as "Mother - Mrs Mary Burke, Croom, Co. Limerick". In those times I would have expected a son to list his father as next of kin but our Joe's father died in 1908 so this points to us being on the right track. He lists his occupation as "farmer" and his onward destination as "Chicago". He has a ticket for onward travel to Chicago and is joining his brother Thomas Burke who lives at 3431 Butler St. Chicago. Again, this all fits our Joe Burke. He is described as being in good health, 5ft 10inches in height, fair complexion, brown hair and blue eyes.

I've searched the Irish 1901 census and there are only 5 "Joseph Burkes" listed and our Joe is the only one who would have been eemigrating in his twenties in 1909.

Presuming this is the right Joe Burke, he travelled on a ship called the "SS Caronia" which sailed from Queenstown (now called Cobh) on September 15th 1909 arriving a week later in New York on the 22nd. This was a Cunard liner. For someone who more than likely never travelled more than 20 or 30 miles from his home it must have been an amazing experience to step on to an ocean liner and a week later disembark in New York.

Emigration to the US begins

The famine is a defining moment in Irish history not just because of the one million people who lost their lives but because of the wave of emigration that it unleashed, in particular, to the US. Between 1845 and 1859 nearly two million Irish settled there and by 1900 this figure had increased to almost four million. Overall, it is estimated that one out of every two people born in Ireland between 1830 and 1930 left Ireland. Despite being a rural people the majority ended up in the industrial states of Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois and California.

The Burkes of Kilmacow were part of this great migration. Of John and Mary’s thirteen children, nine emigrated to the US. The heartbreak of John and Mary is unimaginable because when someone emigrated to the US in those days they were unlikely to return again. Because of this the party held for the departing emigrant was often termed an “American wake”. (For an account of an American wake visit this link - www.fenagh.com/history/american-wake). Indeed, of the nine who emigrated, only two ever returned, Margaret, who visited in the twenties and again in 1932 when she and Jack came back for the Eucharistic Congress in Dublin. Margaret would have seen her mother before she died in 1930 but Jack or the others never saw their parents again once they emigrated. Mary would have heard of the deaths of three of her children (Fr. James, Kate and Edmond) in the US before she died herself.

I reckon that Patrick Burke (the first to leave Kilmacow) left in 1885. In US Census returns he gives his year of departure as a number of years between 1885 and 1890 but family lore in Ireland was that he left before his brother Dan was born (1885) and that they never met. He went to New York initially and may have stayed with relatives of his future wife, the Dempseys. He then moved to Chicago. What usually happened was that the first emigrant provided the fare of the next sibling and so the cycle of emigration continued.

Family members often lived together until they got on their feet, got a job and got married. In the 1910 census we see Kate Burke who had been in the States for 10 years living with her brother Pat and his wife Hannah. In the same Census we have Tom, Edwin (Edmond), Margaret and Joe living together at 120 East 56th Street.

Unlike many who emigrated the Burkes came from a relatively prosperous background. However, the farm as an economic unit could only support one family so the others had to leave. Ireland at the time provided few opportunities so the only option was to emigrate. While looking through ship passenger lists for the Burkes (unsuccessfully so far!) I was struck at how unskilled the Irish emigrants were at the time. Most of the girls list their occupation as “domestic servants” and the men list theirs as “labourers”. All they had going for them was English as their spoken language, a willingness to work and an unrivalled network of Irish emigrants that they could link in with.

(The statistics quoted in this post are taken from a book called "An Illustrated History of the Irish People" by Kenneth Neill, a very readable overview of Irish history if anyone's interested)