Part 1

Names and dates need to be verified and additional information inserted.

 

 

It wouldn’t have occurred to me to begin this undertaking if Leslie had not asked me, repeatedly, about our ancestry. In each instance I told her I would write about it, and then I would proceed to let the promise slip my mind. One reason I would conveniently forget my promise is my aversion to writing in the first person. The previous four sentences serve to illustrate that. Seven mentions of myself in four lines is too much.

 

However that is where I have to begin. I will deal with the Durkin family side (Gallagher, O’Donnell, Durkin, Gilmartin) since I feel safer in that area and rely on my wife to do the same with the Spatz (Coughlin, McLaughlin) side. And since I must begin with the Durkin I know best, start with myself.

 

I was born at Montefiore Hospital in New York on October 23, 1932. Herbert Hoover was serving his last days as President, though he didn’t know it, and New York’s Mayor Jimmy Walker had vacated his scandal ridden office in favor of Jimmy O’Brien, whom I believe was his nephew. That first day I was known as Male Durkin and both my parents were listed on my birth certificate as “housewives.” The certificate also showed that both housewives were born in Ireland. Later on, before I left the hospital, I became known as Thomas Michael: Thomas, after my maternal grandfather, and Michael, after my father. The housewives, who turned out to be my parents were Mary Theresa Gallagher Durkin and Michael Joseph Durkin. I’m not sure when they came to America, but I am trying to find out via Immigration records. They met in New York and were married at Corpus Christi Roman Catholic Church on October 14, 1928. They then spent a four-month honeymoon in Ireland. Mary Theresa who, through all my childhood and adulthood, was known as Mamie or Mame, was born in Glanduff, County Maigh Eo (Mayo) Ireland on January 14, 1901, and Michael, known as Mike, was born in Knockbrack, County Sligo, adjacent to County Mayo, on March 25, 1901. Mamie and Mike had two other children, both girls, one older than me, and of course, one younger than me. Mary Durkin was born in Montefiore Hospital on February 26, 1931 and Catherine (Kathleen) was born in the same hospital on August 15, 1935. At the time of my birth, the Durkin family resided at 69 LaSalle Street on the West Side of New York just below 125^th Street and between Amsterdam Avenue and Broadway.

 

My mother was a Gallagher, one of 10 children of Thomas Gallagher and Maria O’Donnell Gallagher, both of Glanduff. My father was one of 8 children of John James Durkin and Catherine Gilmartin (also identified as Gillmartin and Kilmartin). I don’t know where they were born. I know very little of Thomas Gallagher except that he was known as a gentle man. My grandmother Maria had sisters Catherine (Kitty) Elizabeth, Eleanor, Beatrice (Beesy) and brothers Andrew, Patrick, John and James. They were the children of James O’Donnell and _____.

 

I don’t know much about my grandfather, John James Durkin, except that he was a farmer and a finished carpenter. He had two brothers that I have heard of – Michael and Patrick- and that’s all I know about them. In 1912 my grandfather built a house near Inniscrone, County Sligo, and the family moved there from Knockbrack. John James and Catherine had several children: Patrick, Michael, John Tom, Peter, Marion, Margaret, Nora and Anne. When John James died, the house and the farm went to Patrick the oldest and he in turn sold it to his cousin Martin Langan. Martin and his wife Dorrie and their son, Michael, still live in the house. I’m not sure when my grandmother or my grandfather died, nor where they are buried.

 

Mamie Gallagher had nine brothers and sisters: Hubert, Beatrice, Thomas, Eileen, Elizabeth, Patrick, Anne, Michael and James (Seamus)

 

Of my father’s siblings, only he, Marion, Anne and Nora had children. John Tom died of asthma in his 20s and had been a courser, a dog racer. Peter did not marry and hasn’t been heard of since 1957. Patrick married Margaret Howley and both died childless. Margaret married Jack Quinn and were childless.

 

Marion married Gerhard Eitig (born in Berlin and arrived in the US in 1918 from London to escape conscription into the German army. He was married at the time of his departure from London and had a daughter who now lives in California. I don’t know her name but she is now 85 years old). In 1929 he met and married my a8unt and had a son Gerry (Gerald) in 1930. With the early Hitler rumblings Eitig changed their name to Faye. Marion and Gerhard divorced in the early to mid 1930’s and she married an extremely wealthy man, Robert Clark, president of Eastern Oil Corporation. EOC had a chain of 250 some odd gas stations which Bob eventually sold to J. Paul Getty (Getty Oil)-making himself even more wealthy. Gerry continued to live with his mother after her marriage and resided in Westhampton Beach, Long Island and then Florida. Marion died in 1956 in Philadelphia. Gerry lives in West Bloomfield, Michigan, and teaches Political Science at Oakland Community College

 

Anne married Joseph (Joe) Tobin in the early 1930’s and had two children: Joseph (Joey) six months older than me, and Anne, six months younger than me. Aunt Anne connived to get Joe into the Army at the outbreak of World War II and after the war, divorced him for good reason. She married Gus Maurer, a decent man, and he died on her. She then married Freddy Popp. When young Anne and her second husband Harry Hermann moved to Oklahoma in the 1960s or 1970s, Aunt Anne and Freddy soon followed. Aunt Anne died last year. Harry Hermann was one of the leaders of the American Quarter Horse Association and the founder of the American Cutting Horse Association. He died in the 1980s of asthma. My cousin Anne still has a horse farm in Skiatook, Oklahoma, and I have visited her there several times. She breeds and trains mostly Quarter Horses. Joey died a few years back at his home in California. I had an enjoyable telephone conversation with him about a year before he died.

 

Nora (she was also called Honora) was a registered nurse in Ireland and while working in England in the early 1930s, met and married John Burfoot. John Burfoot was conscripted into the British army as the war broke out and for safety, the Burfoots placed their only son, my cousin John, with my Grandfather, John James, until the war was over. Nora died in Dorset, England, her home, in the early 1990s. A few years ago, John Burfoot, my cousin, moved back to Castletown, County Sligo, after completing a career in the British military. John is about three years younger than me and I hope to get around to visiting him by mail in the very near future to learn more about my grandparents.

 

Of my mothers siblings, only Patrick, Michael and Eileen were childless.

Eileen bought a “place”, a farm in Dooneen, County Sligo, not too far along the Quay Road from Ballina, so she would have a dowry (property that would make her a better prospect for marriage) in the 1920s. She did this with the counsel of her oldest brother, Hubert. Eileen came to the United States to stay. and then sold the property to my mother. The property was known in the family as Dooneen, which comes up later. She died in September 1940 from cancer in New York. She lost an eye (I don’t know how) and wore a glass eye.

 

Patrick was a small man in physique, but a man with a good sense of humor and a fighting heart. He came to the US in 1949 and worked in construction and landscaping. He suffered from crippling arthritis so working was painful. He amassed an amount of money and returned to Mayo, married a woman I never met, and opened a bar in Foxford. He died in the 1970s. When he arrived in this country he moved in with us on La Salle Street and was assigned to live in my room. It was a logical choice at the time but I saw it as a terrible intrusion on my privacy and my congenital sloppiness.

 

Michael was a fair skinned, blond man with blue eyes. He came to the US shortly after Patrick. Michael was married to Annie Kate Sheeran. They worked around New York for a time then moved to Cleveland where they, like Patrick amassed enough money to go back to Ireland. Mike died around the time Patrick did and I don’t know what happened to Annie Kate.

 

Hubert was my mother’s oldest brother. He was a farmer and farmed the Gallagher farm in Glanduff. He married Mary ______ and the couple had sons Thomas, and Joseph, and a daughter _________. Thomas married Helen _________ and had two sons Hubert and Kilian. Hubert died at the age of 19 in 1992. Thomas died in the later 1990s. Joseph married _____________ and fathered Shiobhan, Ronan and _________. All are alive. Hubert and Mary’s daughgter,__________, married John Norton and live in Dublin. They have________________________________________.

 

Beatrice came to this country in the 1910s and married Patrick Daniels. They had four children, all daughters, Mary, Helen, Beatrice and Innisfail. Innisfail was burned to death in 1926 in a tragic Christmas tree fire. Mary married Jackie Quill and had ? children;__________________________. Helen married Robbie Hickey and had ? children____________________________. Beatie married Eddie Murphy and had ? children. Beatrice died in the l980s?. Jacky Quill and Robert Hickey, both of whom I really liked, died leaving Mary and Helen widows. All three Daniels girls now live in Rockaway Beach as does Eddie Murphy, whom I also enjoy..

 

Thomas Gallagher came to the US in the 1930s and married Mary Ford. They had one daughter, Mary, who entered the Sisters of Mercy in the 1960s.

 

Elizabeth married Bill Collins during WWII and they had two daughters, Eileen and Patricia. Bill died from cancer in 1949 and is buried in the same grave as Eileen Gallagher in Calvary, Queens. Eileen married Gary Golinski and had two daughters, Tara and Patricia, and a son Greg. She moved to Hampton Beach, New Hampshire because her husband was working out of a company in Boston, Massachusetts. She divorced Gary in the 1980s and has not remarried. Her daughter Tara married a career U.S. Marine officer, Sal, and have a son,__________. Greg married Anita Powers, I believer they met at Catholic University in Washington, D.C. and have three children. Patsy, as charming a young lady as you would ever want to meet, is still single and living at home.

 

Anne married Raymond Shoenwandt during the war and had two sons, Thomas and Raymond, and a daughter Maureen –to whom I am Godfather.. Shoenwandt took off in the 1950s and was not heard of again until his death. At that time a woman in Florida called Anne and told her Raymond, the older, had died. She asked if Anne wanted the body back. Anne asked “For what?” Anne died in 1992 of a heart attack, a month after my mother.

 

James s (Seamus) married Bridget(Biddie) Wicklow and had five children; Thomas, James, Beatrice, Katherine and Margaret. All but Margaret live in Glanduff. Margaret lives in Kilkenney. At a later time, I’’ include the names of their children. I visited these cousins in Ireland in 1991 and again in 1994 and entertained Margaret, Beatrice and Katherine in our home in Center Valley in the late 1990s.

 

I include this information since I knew, or knew of. all these people growing up. My rearing was not as isolated or insulated as it would be for someone growing up today with so much electronic distraction and self-absorption. I felt part of a big family—an extended family as it would be called today, and to a large extent, that helped shape the person I am. A look at the family tree my sister Mary has compiled would give you an even larger picture since it includes the other descendants of my great grandfather James (Da) O’Donnell, who was quite a character.

 

Though my family, as suggested above ,stems from Sligo and Mayo, my O’Donnell-Gallagher line come from County Donegal. In Ireland Donegal is known as “The land of the O’Donnells and the home of the Gallaghers.” The O’Donnells were large landowners in Donegal until they were driven from their land by the British when they would not forsake their church and their nationality. They would not become Protestants and they would not recognize the British Crown. At the time of Oliver Cromwell, (following Henry VIII) they escaped to Mayo, in the Province of Connaught, the only province Cromwell failed to conquer. Jefferson Faye, the son of my cousin Gerry, who teaches literature at the University of Michigan, Lansing, did his doctorate in Irish studies and literature. He has found references to the Durkins as early as 1280 AD in the Sligo area. I expect to learn more about this from Gerry and his son.

As a final note to this section, I want to point out that, by law, I am an Irish citizen by the fact of my birth.(de jure and de facto) Since one of my parents (actually both) was born in Ireland, I am a citizen of that nation, no matter where in the world I was born.

 

The Early Years

 

One bond I share with my sisters and my children is that we were all born in New York City.

 

I grew up in New York , at least for my first three years. From what I have been told, my father worked as a grocer for James Butler, who had a chain of stores in New York’s better neighborhoods. My father was also co-owner, with his brother Patrick, of the Sligo Ballroom on 127thStreet and Lenox Avenue. Irish immigrants were not thought of too highly in New York, sometimes with good reason. In Ireland, the dance was their major social outlet and when they came to the US they were drawn to the Irish dancehalls. The dancehalls provided an opportunity to meet other Irish immigrants and have some semblance of a social life. In those days men worked six days a week with Sunday off. Women working as domestics had one Sunday a month off and those working as waitresses had Sunday off. Even bankers worked five and a half days a week. Against this scenario the dancehall or ballroom was a prominent aspect of immigrant life. My father and his brother had a falling out over the way the Sligo Ballroom was being run and my father sold his interest in the partnership to Patrick in 1935, about the time my sister Kathleen was born.

 

By February of the next year, the family and my grandmother Durkin set sail on the S.S. Manhattan for Cobh, Ireland. I remember leaving New York on that ship. I can still see my father in a dark suit, black overcoat and derby, holding me in one arm and Mary in the other, with my mother holding Kathleen, and all of us waving to people on the pier. Someone had given us a chocolate horseshoe, for good luck I suppose, and my father placed it over the door of our stateroom. During the trip the chocolate horseshoe fell from its perch and we simply devoured it. We went to Ireland because the Great Depression was still in full bloom and descent work was hard to come by. We moved to Dooneen, the farm in Sligo my mother bought from her sister, and my father farmed it for the next two years. My father was born about ten miles, at the most, from Dooneen, but when he returned in 1936, the other farmers thought of him as” the Yank.” They found it humorous to see him work like a horse while they went about their business at a more leisurely pace. When the harvest came, he outproduced them, made more money than they did, and no one laughed at the Yank again. My grandfather, John James Durkin, was a frequent visitor at our house. He would come down from Inniscrone in his horse and cart, always with a pocketful of “sweets” – candy. I did not remember this on my own. I was reminded of it by my sister, Mary, one day when she saw me distributing lollypops to children at one of the family weddings. While we lived there he built us a “press,” a piece of furniture for the kitchen that looked like a four drawer bureau with three shelves for dishes and such above the bureau top. He built it back at his house and delivered it to us in finished condition. He could do that without power tools, and he did it well. By contrast, my father owned a small hammer, a screwdriver and I never saw him use either of them.

 

We had a horse, some cows, some chickens and a pig. The pig came to us as a bonnoe, a piglet, and we watched him grow to full adulthood while we were there. My father slaughtered the pig when it was fully grown and it fed us for months. So much for farm pets. We also had a dog, Carlo. Mary started school there and I remember riding her to school on the horse and then waiting in the classroom for her until school was over. We then went home the same way. The horse’s primary function was to pull the plow. We did not have a tractor. Just the horse, the plow and my father. It’s hard to believe today but we had the barest of necessities and the best of family lives. There was no running water, we used a well. There was no electricity, we used oil lamps. In Ireland, though, it stays light until after ten in the summertime. In winter, it got dark early. Heat and cooking was done with turf. Each farmer or family had to “save” the turf the family would need. Saving meant going to the bog and with a slale, cut the turf and dry it out for use as fuel. If you didn’t “save” enough heat, you suffered. There was a single fireplace that heated the whole house. And there was a turf stove for preparing food. Of course there was no radio. The “whole house” consisted of a kitchen with a fireplace, a small one window parlor, two bedrooms, a loft, and a dairy. The dairy was a small area under the loft where my parents would store fresh milk and churn butter. Immediately in front of the dairy was a hatchery, although I remember the chickens in the barn as well.

 

When you walked out the front door you could see the River Moy across a meadow. I have a lot of fragmented memories of the time I lived in Ireland, memories of some of the people I met, events that took place and some of the children I played with. Cecil Ormsby, for example, was the son of Major Ormsby, an Ascendancy Irishman who lived nearby on the Quay Road. I knew nothing of Irish history at the time, had no idea what Ascendancy Irish was, and besides my parents were friendly with the Orsbys. By the time I returned to New York in 1938, I had a brogue. When we left, my uncle Seamus Gallagher had recently married Bridget (Biddie) Wicklow and fathered his first child, Thomas. He asked if he could farm Dooneen. Hubert, I believe, had the farm in Glanduff, and Seamus had no farm of his own. My mother agreed that he could live there if he kept the farm up and paid the taxes. With that, we returned to the United States.