Chasing Irish Hometowns

Spoiler alert:  Irish hometowns not discovered (yet).

I am trying to discover where in Ireland Patrick Joyce (1830-1905) and Margaret Campbell (1835-1870) were from.  They were my maternal grandmother's great grandparents.  Their first appearance in the United States was in the 1860 Federal Census in Patterson, Putnam County, New York.

Ancestry.com Family Tree of Jody's mother.
I recently figured out how to change the background color to purple.

We start with Patrick and Margaret themselves.  I do not know if they married in New York or Ireland.  I have found no church records for the Patterson, Putnam County area circa 1860 and no mention in a newspaper, which is not unusual.  Patrick's death certificate from 1905 in Pawling, Dutchess County, lists his birthplace as "Ireland" and names one parent, his father, Richard, of Ireland.  Margaret's death in 1870 was recorded on the federal census mortality schedule and in newspapers without mention of her town of origin or her parents.  Deaths were infrequently reported to the state at this time.

So next we turn to the records of their children.  My direct line is through Patrick and Margaret's daughter, Delia Joyce (1862-1929), who married Patrick ODonnell (1856-1931) in Bayonne, Hudson County, New Jersey in 1887.  I cannot find a record of this marriage filed with the states of New Jersey or New York.  Saint Mary's Church in Bayonne, New Jersey has a record of this marriage.  Delia's parents are listed without a place of birth.

Even if a marriage record surfaces for this couple in the New Jersey State Archives from 1887, the certificates in this time period asked for the country of birth of the parent, so the answer could be merely "Ireland."

You can view this digitized microfilm at a Family History Library.
John Joyce was a brother of Delia Joyce.
Rose Kenny was a sister of Patrick ODonnell.  She married James Kenny in 1883 in Bayonne.

Delia died in 1929 in Bayonne.  Her parents were listed as Patrick Joyce of Ireland and Cannot Learn of Ireland.  (Sixty years after Delia's mother's tragic death, her name had been forgotten.)

So next we turn to Delia's siblings, the other children of Patrick Joyce and Margaret Campbell.  There were three:
Mary, born about 1861, last seen in the 1870 census
John, born about 1867, married Mary Delaney
James, born about 1869, married Ellen [-]

After Margaret died in 1870, Patrick Joyce remarried to Bridget Cortney (1850-1910) and had several more children.

The problem with finding records for the siblings of Delia Joyce is that they are in New York.  For New Jersey records, I can go to the Archives in Trenton and retrieve the records myself and copy what I need.  For New York records, you need to place an order via postal mail and pay at least $22 (US Dollars) and then wait.

The more time that passed, the less likely Patrick Joyce's children and grandchildren would remember the ancestral Irish hometowns, if this information was even requested.

Obituaries for these siblings were not difficult to track down thanks to FultonHistory.com.  (This site is a free resource of digitized newspapers, mostly from New York.)  Still no Irish hometowns.

I ordered the marriage certificate for John Joyce (1867-1934) and Mary Delaney (1866-1941).  They were married in Pawling, Dutchess County, New York on October 28, 1888 by Reverend Daniel J McCormick of Saint John's Church.  Only the names of the parents were requested; not the birth place.

The bride's parents were Edward Delaney and Catherine McCue.

The witnesses were John Delaney and Mary Ann Walsh.  Delaney was likely for the bride.  I don't know who Mary Ann Walsh could be.  Maybe the lost older sister of John Joyce?  More research needed!  Always investigate the witnesses.


The records kept by Saint John's Church in Pawling may be a great help.  This family was also buried in the church cemetery.  If anyone has a way for me to look at these records, please reach out to me.  Thank you.

Finding Entries using a Flawed Index

When you cannot locate someone in an index, try searching with only a first name or view every name in the entire location.  Depending on the commonality of the name and the size of the potential search area, this may be a cumbersome task, but when a thorough researcher needs a record, this is the technique.

Patrick Joyce and his first wife and children were finally located in the 1865 New York State Census without using their last name.

The criteria was to search Pawling, Dutchess County, New York for this family:
- father Patrick
- mother Mary or Margaret
- and at least two children, Mary and Adelia or Delia.

The index at Ancestry.com produced only 1,694 people living in Pawling in 1865.  I forwarded to the J surnames in hopes that at least the first letter was recorded correctly.

Found them!

The Joyce surname was transcribed for the index as JAIN.  When you view the actual record (always look at the record, not just the index!), the name was probably spelled JOICE, a variant of Joyce.

It is great to get another glimpse of Margaret Campbell, wife of Patrick Joyce.  She died in 1870  when her skirt was caught as she stepped from a moving train to not be separated from her child.

Adelia was listed as Cordelia.  In the 1870 federal census, she was Adelia.  In the 1875 New York State census, she was Delia.  My grandmother referred to her as Delia Joyce, her paternal grandmother.

Additional Details for a Family Story

One of the family stories of my maternal grandmother was that her grandmother, Delia Joyce (1862-1929), was a baby when her mother threw her to safety just as she was dragged to her death by a train.

The 1870 federal census has an accompanying mortality schedule that listed people who died in the year 1870 before the census commenced on June 1st.  Mary Joyce was on this mortality schedule in Pawling, Dutchess County, New York, as being killed by "cars" in May of 1870.  Her widower, Patrick Joyce, and four children, Mary, Adelia (Delia), John, and James were enumerated on the actual census.

Absent a death certificate, additional information was sought from newspapers.  The accident was in Katonah, south of Pawling in Westchester County, New York.  One article did not mention a child and another mentioned an infant child.  Delia was about seven years old at the time of the accident, so the focus was on one of her younger brothers as the baby who was saved.

I just found some more newspaper articles about this tragedy that clarify that the child was female, though she is not named and could have been Delia or her older sister Mary.  The articles appeared June 21st in the New York Herald and June 22nd in the Rochester Daily Union and Advertiser.

The key to finding these articles was by not using Mary's name as a search term.  Instead, I looked for articles containing Katonah (where the accident occurred) and Pawling (where Mary lived) with the narrow date of May or June of 1870.

Two newspapers carried the article about "a respectable married woman" from Pawling, not named, whose leg was "almost sever[ed]" by the train as she attempted to disembark when the train started to depart so that she did not leave her daughter who was already safely on the platform.

According to another article, Mary lived a few hours.

Mary (who was born as Mary or Margaret Campbell in Ireland, according to the records of her children), should not have been on the 1870 mortality schedule if she died after June 1st.  Perhaps her husband could not recall the exact date of death and the census recorder noted her information for the month of May.  Good thing this rule was bent because I may have never found any information on this sad story if Mary had not appeared on that mortality schedule.

Finding the Baby

Another component of a family story mentioned in a newspaper!

A few years back, I wrote of a family story:  Delia Joyce's mother's skirts were caught by a passing train; as she was dragged to her death, she threw the infant Delia safely to a man on the platform.

When I uncovered Delia's hometown as Pawling in Dutchess County, New York, I was able to locate the family in the census starting in 1860.  Delia's parents were Patrick Joyce and Margaret or Mary Campbell.  The train accident happened in 1870.  Delia was born around 1862, making her too old and big to have been the baby in her mother's arms when she died.  Delia's younger brothers, John and James, were more likely candidates.

I located one newspaper article about the accident, which happened in Katonah Station, Westchester County, New York.  The accounting took up all but four lines of the paper.  No mention of a baby.

Well, I found another newspaper article that mentioned the baby.  (Thank you FultonHistory.com again!)  The search terms I used included "cars," not "train" or "railroad," as this is more consistent with terminology in use at the time.  Margaret's first name is not in this article.  The mention of the baby is consistent with the family story.

"Her infant child, which she was carrying in her arms, she had previously passed off the car."

We cannot tell from this account if the train had already started to move, so she handed off the baby first and then tried to jump by herself.  Maybe the train was stopped when she got the baby off first, but then started to move, so she jumped so as to not be separated from the baby.

1870 United States Federal Census: Pawling, Dutchess County, New York
Ancestry.com
The newly widowed Patrick Joyce and his four children.  Mary Joyce appears on the Mortality Schedule.

In the 1870 census, James Joyce's age is listed as one year.  His entry at FindAGrave shows a gravestone with a date of birth May 20, 1870.  He qualifies as an infant for this train accident in June of 1870.  He may have been only a few weeks old.

Adding an Irish Leaf

An inquiry from Ireland has helped me expand a branch of my Joyce tree.

Someone contacted me, trying to discover what had become of a grandaunt, Helen Beston.  The information was that Helen was born in Tipperary in 1892 and married John Joyce in New York City in 1920.

I looked for men named John Joyce in my tree and found only one.  John Joyce was born around 1867 in Pawling, Dutchess County, New York, United States to Patrick Joyce and Margaret (or Mary) Campbell, both of Ireland.  John was a brother to my grandmother's grandmother, Delia Joyce, and he witnessed Delia's marriage in 1887 in Bayonne, Hudson County, New Jersey, to Patrick Francis O'Donnell.  John and Delia's mother was killed in 1870 after being hit by a train at Katonah Station.

John Joyce married Mary Delaney and had two sons.  John worked as a police officer in White Plains [Westchester County, New York], eventually becoming Chief of Police.  The historian for the police department kindly located some pictures of John.

John died in 1934 and his wife in 1941, so he could not have been the John Joyce who married Helen Beston in 1920.

ItalianGen.org offers an index of New York City marriages.  Helen Beston appears in the index as marrying James Joyce on July 4, 1920.  This date struck me because the New York State birth index has a John J Joyce born July 4, 1889 in Pawling.

The oldest son of John Joyce and Margaret Delaney used the name "James" or "James Lawrence" Joyce on all the records I found for him, though it appears that he may have been given the name "John" at birth.

In the 1910 census, James and his brother Edward were single and living with their parents in White Plains.

In the 1920 census, James was still living with his parents, but listed as "wd," the abbreviation for widowed.  Also in this household was James Joyce, Jr, age 7.

The 1915 New York State census allows us a glimpse at James Joyce's first marriage to Catherine.

James Joyce's first wife, Catherine, must have died in between the 1915 state census and the 1920 federal census.  On July 4, 1920, James Joyce remarried to Helen Beston.

The White Plains city directory from 1928 contains this branch of Joyces:  father and mother, John J Joyce, Chief of Police, and Mary.  Their sons, James and Edward, both with wives named Helen.  Edward Joyce was a police officer.  James was working in dairy at this time.

James Lawrence (or John) Joyce and Helen Beston had several children.  The 1930 census illustrates a household of children from both of James' marriages and the census taker's attempt to make the numbers fit so that all children were a product of the current marriage.

Notice the gap in the age of the oldest child (16) and the second oldest (8).  This is a clue that we could be dealing with two different wives.

Lillian was not Helen's daughter.  The census taker made Helen's age at marriage seventeen, so that James and Helen were married 21 years ago- in an attempt to show that Helen and James were married when Lillian was born 16 years ago.

Lillian would fit as a daughter from James' prior marriage.  However, Lillian was not living with her parents and brother in the 1915 state census, nor was she living with her father, brother, and paternal grandparents in the 1920 census.  Where was she?

If the descendants of James Lawrence John Joyce could come forward, that would be great!

Double enumeration in the census

Sometimes people can't be found at all in the census.  Others have two entries for the same census, called a double enumeration.

Adelia "Delia" Joyce was born about 1863 in Pawling, Dutchess County, New York.  Her mother, Margaret Campbell, died in 1870 after a train hit her.  Adelia is listed with her father, Patrick Joyce, and her step-mother, Bridget Cortney, in the 1880 census in Pawling, occupation "out at service."

1880 United States census
Pawling, Dutchess County, New York
Household of Patrick Joyce
Retrieved from Ancestry.com

I looked into this "out at service."  I figured it meant that Delia was working and living somewhere else, probably as a servant.  If she were living elsewhere, she could also be listed on the census at her place of employment.

Indeed I found her again in the 1880 census, still in Pawling, working as a domestic servant for the widow Margaret Craft, age 70.

1880 United States census
Pawling, Dutchess County, New York
Household of Margaret Craft
Retrieved from Ancestry.com

This finding sheds some more light on Delia's early life.  She was sent away from her home- was this a blessing or a curse- to live and work with a nearby family.  We don't know at what age she was sent to start working as a domestic, and if she was able to earn any money to keep for herself.  This also provides us with some more people to explore.  Was Margaret Craft related to the Joyce family?  What about the other worker, Francis Cullum?

To get to this point, I first had to figure out that the name was Craft.  In the 1880 index, Margaret is actually listed as "Carzt."

Index at Ancestry.com for household of Margaret Craft in the 1880 United States census,
Pawling, Dutchess County, New York.
I submitted an alternate spelling.

The name "Carzt" looked bizarre for this time and place so I had to find a more normal-looking spelling.  Neighbors tend to not move much when we're dealing with farmland, so I searched for all the women named Margaret or Mary in the 1870 census in Pawling.  And here she is, this time more clearly as "Craft."

1870 United States census
Pawling, Dutchess County, New York
Household of Margaret Craft
Retrieved from Ancestry.com

Margaret Craft and daughter Mary aged beautifully from 1870 to 1880.  But this is not the only way we know we have the same family.  Look at the neighbors.  You can see that the census taker in 1880 approached in the opposite direction from the route followed in 1870.

With a more reasonable spelling, we can explore the Craft family more easily.  Margaret Toffey Craft's grave was posted on FindAGrave (by a Fallen Graver) and there is so much more to explore.

Albany Research Trip: Sorting through the Finds

The research trip to Albany, New York lasted three days.  I found a lot of useful information.  I was unable to post because Internet service was spotty.  I refueled the car in Albany and set out for home, where electric service was coming back after Hurricane Sandy.  I was wise to stop in Albany for gasoline.  The entire way back home was dotted with lines at gas stations, growing larger and with more police cars as I approached Northeastern New Jersey.  My home suffered no real damage and the electric and heat had returned Saturday morning after going out on Monday.  The food stores were slowly receiving new shipments of perishables.  Schools were closed because they either had no electricity or were too damaged.  More people were out riding bikes or walking to their destinations.  Traffic lights were out at many intersections and large trees blocked roadways.  At this moment, many blocks in town are still without power, heat, and water- while the first snowfall, Winter Storm Athena, is blanketing last week's destruction.

One of my goals in Albany was to uncover more information about Mary or Margaret Campbell, wife of Patrick Joyce.  I have not found either of them in the 1860 census and the earliest child I can find was born in 1861.  In the 1870 census in Pawling, Dutchess County, New York, Patrick Joyce is head of a household of four children under the age of ten; no wife.  Mary Joyce is listed on the Mortality Schedule, having died in May of 1870, "Railroad run over by cars."  She is a tail in my family tree- I do not know her parents.  Growing up, I heard the story often about how the train caught her skirts and dragged her to her death- after she threw a baby from her arms to safety.

At Albany, the index of deaths for New York State begins in 1881, or eleven years after Mary's death.  No luck there. A consultation with a researcher from the New York Genealogical and Biographical Society raised an important point:  A death by train could have occurred anywhere there was a railroad- not just in Pawling.

I expanded my search of digitized newspapers at GenealogyBank (you can access from home for a subscription or use Ancestry.com) and found a small article about the incident.

According to The New York Herald-Tribune [actually called the New York Herald in 1870], Margaret Joyce died in June of 1870, not May.  The researcher was right:  She was not killed in Pawling, but about 25 miles south, in Katonah, Westchester County, New York.  She was not killed instantly, probably lingering a few days after the train severed her leg.  I can only hope she was unconscious for those last days.

It is interesting (and fortunate) that she appeared on the Mortality Schedule because only deaths before May 31st of that year should be listed.  The newspaper article places her death in June.  So we have two dates of death.

My plan of action:
Contact St. John's Cemetery in Pawling where her husband was buried in 1905.
Contact the local historical society and town clerk for records they may hold for this family.
Search through more online newspapers using keywords of "Katonah" and "Harlem Railroad."