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