Out of Ireland

All of my mother’s grandparents were born in Ireland. She knew that her Leary ancestors came from Kerry and mother’s parents were from Kilkenny and Limerick. Only her paternal grandmother's Bresnahan line had no definite place of origin in Ireland. She was very proud of being Irish and one of the high points of her life was a visit to Ireland to Killarney, Co. Kerry near where her father’s ancestors originated and when she was able to march in the St. Patrick’s Day parade in Dublin.

Much  about her Leary ancestors was hidden in a newspaper clipping from the Boston Herald published in May, 1907 (before she was born) giving a profile of her grandfather James Leary. In it he noted that the family had immigrated together, he his parents and his siblings. It also included his picture and the information that he had worked for over 50 years for the railroad in Concord, NH. Subsequent research and serendipitous discoveries found that the Leary family: John Leary (1798-1893) and Abbie (Gobnait) Callahan (1802-1877) with three of their children: James, Catherine and John Jr. landed in NY at the South Street Seaport on August 29, 1853 on the clipper ship Yorkshire out of Liverpool. Two older girls: Anna and Mary preceded them in landing in Boston Sept 1847 on the ship Bordeaux sailing from Castlemaine, Co. Kerry that summer. Based on census information 1850 John may have come over ahead also and worked at building the railroad in NH while Anna and Mary worked in service and the mills in Concord, and Manchester, NH. 

Subsequent research in the Casey collection (a multi volume source of Irish records extracted from parish and other records in the 1950's) Casey Collection found a link to a small Irish townland called Readrinaugh, Rathmore, Co. Kerry. Two baptism records that fit this family were found - one for daugher Catherine and the other for a child that probably perished in the famine years. The printout of the records showed the townland where the family lived. Another Leary family lived on the same townland and descendants of that family still live there today.  With DNA testing it might be possible to establish a link between the two families. A strong oral tradition on the Leary side was that they were from Cork. Since Rathmore is on the Kerry-Cork border in the Blackwater valley it is very possible that the family originated in Cork which is the ancestral home of the Learys.

View from O Leary farm Readrinaugh, Rathmore, Kerry

How I got started

Kathryn G. Corbett

For over 40 years I have been working on researching my family history but the inspiration for my interest was the influence of my grandmother “Nana” Kate Grace Corbett Leary (1873-1962) who shared with me many family tidbits. She knew her maternal grandparents: Mike Shea (1812-1881) and Mary Agnes Farrell (1815-1888) both born in county Limerick Ireland. She did not remember her father, Dominick Corbett (1837-1877) born in Turkstown, county Kilkenny, who died when she was around 4 nor his mother, Anastasia Grace (1798-1873) who died when Kate was 3 and who probably never saw her granddaughter.

When I was older and studying history I realized that her memory connected me back to the beginning of the 19th century. Although I did not know her husband, as my grandfather died when I was an infant, I did know his sister my aunt Annie, who shared some of that side’s stories with me. A serendipitous discovery of a newspaper clipping from the early 20th century led to more information from his side. Both my mother Mary Margaret Leary and her sister Julia passed down other oral traditions to me.

On my father Elphege Chicoine’s side I did not know his parents, Paul Marcel Chicoine (1870-1921) and Ida Emma Desrosiers (1873-1924) who died before I was born, but from aunts, great aunts and other relatives and from my Dad I collected family memories and histories dating back into the 18th century. I began to understand, especially as I grow older, how many oral cultures consider the story teller an important source of tribal memory and history. From my vantage point here in 2013 I can reach back through the stories and memories to people who lived around the time of the American Revolution.

I do not know how often I will post this blog but I will use some of the research I have collected to highlight the stories of the ordinary people who lived through the larger events of history. Immigration, war, famine swept them up and influenced not only their lives, but those of their descendants. I plan to attach pages for many of the ancestors, the first being one for Nana. I also hope to attach pages for the different locations I have researched where these families lived.

Some of my “brick walls” in research occur in this generation and I do have hope that someone else’s research may shed some light to help me break through them. If in the process I can help another family historian in their search (as others have already helped me) I will be very happy.