Ellen Murphy Family History
Ellen Murphy's Siblings
Ellen’s Family Chart
Patrick Murphy
c. 1848 - 1923
Mary Ann McAloon
1865 - 1926
Thomas
1887 - 1944
James
1890 - 1926
Michael
1893 - 1900
ELLEN
1898 - 1963
John
1902 - ????
Catherine
1889 - 1956
Mary
1892 - 1932
Joseph
1895 - 1900
Patrick
1900 - 1965
Ellen had four brothers and two sisters who lived into adulthood. They were Thomas, James, Patrick, John, Catherine and Mary. Two boys died in childhood – Michael and Joseph.
Thomas
Thomas was the eldest son, born 27th October 1887. Family sources* report that he had measles as a child and was partially deaf as a result. He married Mary Anne McManus from Bunmichael in Roslea church on 2nd February 1913. They had two children, who appear to have been born after 1920, so online records are not yet available for them. One was called Aggie. At the time of writing* a granddaughter lives in the Roslea area. By tradition Thomas should have inherited the farm, but it was handed over to his younger brother Patrick instead. Surviving letters from Thomas say that he was “supposed to get the farm, but then I got married and I was out of it”, suggesting that his family did not approve of the marriage.
The marriage did not last, and he spent his later years around Monaghan town
and died in the county home in Castleblaney, Co. Monaghan. There is a record
for the death of a Thomas Murphy in the home in 1944, which may be Thomas.
Family
sources* report
that he played in Barbour’s band in Monaghan town. Tony Barbour ran
the band, and his daughter Sheila was a friend of Ellen’s daughter Anne.
Displayed alongside is one of their advertisements from 1942.
Catherine
Catherine was born on 10th March 1889. She was known as Kate. She married James P Quigley in Roslea Parish Church on 10th August 1916. The Quigleys lived in the adjacent townland of Greaghawarren. She is listed as a lacemaker in the 1911 census. She had four children who survived to adulthood - Mary Anne (Nan) born 28th February 1917, Elizabeth (Bess) born 1922, Helen and John (Johnny) (1924). Two children who died in infancy are listed on her headstone – Margaret and Patrick.
Nan was a lacemaker who married a man by the name of Caulfield. She was a colourful person who lived near the Murphy family in 14 Glaslough Street in Monaghan. She taught crochet classes and had two children who died in childhood.
Elizabeth (Bess) became a nurse, moved to England and worked in Nottingham General
Hospital. She had one daughter Ann. She married a Marshall (further research
required) and died in Roslea on 22nd February 2000. Her headstone is in Roslea
cemetery. She shares the grave with her brother Johnny.
Helen (Ellie), also a nurse, married a butcher named McMahon and lived in Fivemiletown.
Johnny Quigley (pictured alongside) worked all his life on the Murphy family farm, and old Pat
Murphy was reputed to be a tough man to work for.
He bought the Murphy farm after Pat’s death. He married Mary Teresa Flynn and they
had one daughter Catherine. Catherine Quigley married a Murphy from a different
Murphy family. She had three children and was living in Brookeborough,
Co. Fermanagh in 2019,
when she showed the author the family farm and began assisting with family research.
Her father Johnny died 22nd November 2005.
Ellen’s daughter Anne could remember visiting
Greaghawarren
very well, and Johnny watching out for her as she walked from the bus to the house.
James P Quigley died in 1927 at the age of 47, and Catherine died in 1956 at the
age of 69. Pictured is their headstone in Roslea.
James
James was born on 1st September 1890. He became a teacher and taught in Clones
and Tempo. He married and had two children. He lost his job as a teacher
and family sources*
suggest he may have had an affair with a student. He went down to Limerick to the
Ardnacrusha power station site and got a job there as a clerk. Sadly, when he lost
that job in 1926, he committed suicide at the age of 36. This was reported in the
newspapers at the time.
Drink may have been a contributing factor. His death certificate reports “suicide
by taking Lysol while temporarily insane”. His family remained in the Tempo area. A search of records up to 1923 for a marriage record has not been successful. Family
sources*
report that Ellen claimed she had a vision of James at the time he died. Catherine
Murphy (Johnny Quigley’s daughter) attended James’s son’s funeral in Tempo.
Mary
Mary was born on 4th May 1892. She was very much the middle child of the family, and according to family lore (Helen?) did not get on well with some of her siblings. She lived at home into her early 30s. Mary is listed in the 1911 census as a lacemaker and she was a witness at Catherine’s wedding in 1916.
Notable about Mary was that she was married for a short time in the 1920s and then abandoned by her husband. This happened in a context of interconnected families and emigration.
Four families all lived within a few miles of one another near Roslea, East Fermanagh. Some of the townlands can be seen in this map. The Murphys (our great grandparents) lived in Corragunt. The Quigleys and Beggans farmed adjacent land in the neighbouring townland of Greaghawarren and the Cosgroves lived about a mile to the west in the townland of Corbane. They all had large families typical of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Many of the Beggans and the Cosgroves emigrated to the United States, particularly to Providence, Rhode Island.
The story starts with the emigration of Patrick Beggan in 1893 to Providence. Mary Cosgrove
followed him in 1895 aged 23, and they were married in the USA in 1898. They reared a family and lived
the rest of their lives in Providence. Mary sent money home to pay for the passage of her sister Ellen to join her. Ellen
arrived in 1899 and married Patrick Beggan’s nephew John in Providence in 1905 and lived in the same neighbourhood as
Mary.
Mary also sent money home for her brother John Thomas to join her, and he emigrated in 1900 aged 24,
travelling via Liverpool on the Ivernia. John Thomas stayed in Providence, initially with his sister Mary and later with
his sister Ellen. At the time of the 1920 census he was working in the shipyard in Providence and was a naturalised U.S. citizen.
Meanwhile Catherine Murphy
(Mary’s sister) had married James P Quigley, a next-door neighbour of the Beggans,
and moved into
Greaghawarren.
John Thomas visited Fermanagh in the early 1920s, and probably met Mary while visiting his Beggan in-laws.
They married in 1924 in Roslea church. He was 48 years old and Mary was 32 at the time. She would
have been considered “on the shelf” but their age difference is still striking.
John Thomas appears to have left very soon afterwards and the local view was that he married her for her dowry. This was about £150 which was a significant amount of money in the 1920s. It is not clear where he went at first, but there are records of him returning to the USA in 1929 via Belfast. It appears that he remained in Providence until he retired.
The unfortunate Mary moved in with her sister Catherine Quigley in
Greaghawarren.
So, while John Thomas was living with the
Beggans of Greaghawarren in Providence, his wife was living next door to the Beggans in
Greaghawarren,
most probably
unaware of the connection!
This photo is of Mary in Fermanagh in the late 1920s after she had moved in with Catherine.
She lived at the Quigley home until her death on 22nd April 1932 of chronic kidney disease.
John Thomas must have been kept informed about his wife, because he declares he is widowed in the 1940 U.S. census. He
did not remarry. After he retired, he returned to Ireland to his home place in
Corbane,
less than a mile from where his wife lived and died.
He was looked after by his nephew James Cosgrove until he died in 1961 at the age of 84 and he is
buried in Roslea Cemetery. Since he had retained his U.S. citizenship, the death was noted by the U.S. consular services.
Patrick
Pat Murphy was born on 1st July 1900. He was the son who took over the farm. He married a girl from Kerry called Ellen Dowd in Westland Row, Dublin on 27th November 1940. Jim Murphy (Ellen’s son) was his best man. They had one daughter, Mary. They lived on the family farm until about 1957. Mary reports that her father didn’t want the farm and had wanted to be a teacher. According to Catherine Murphy the house was always very well kept, and Ellen was known to be an excellent cook. Pat was renowned for making poteen and was a good musician, playing the fiddle in the local dancehall in Roslea.
He used to visit his brother John in England. He went to England finally in about 1957. His wife and daughter followed him to Kent and they never returned to Corragunt. The reason for leaving is not entirely clear. Pat was a member of the Ancient Order of Hibernians in Roslea. Smuggling was rife along the border, so the issue could have been related to either politics or smuggling. The house was left empty, although looked after by the Quigleys for many years. It was frequently raided by the army/police and looted by neighbours during the troubles.
Pat Murphy’s family have been documented in Ancestry.com. Ellen was born on 23rd September 1901. She was from Kilcooley, Ballyferriter, Co. Kerry. Her parents were Michael Dowd and Catherine Kennedy. They were married in Ballyferriter on 12th February 1895. Ellen came from a large family. The father was a farmer/fisherman.
Pat and Ellen’s daughter Mary married John Joseph Finnerty (JJ) on
11th May 1967 in Maidstone Kent. He died in Nottinghamshire in 1997. Mary and JJ
had three children – John, Anne and Therese. Therese was born on 20th September
1969, she married Mark Cowley about 2008 and died in an accident in 2013. John is
married and living in Nottingham with two children, and Anne lives with her partner in London.
Pat Murphy died on 3rd September 1965 in Maidstone. This photo from Ancestry is of Pat, Ellen and Eileen about 1965 in England.
John
John was the youngest member of the family, born on 16th May 1902. He had pneumonia as a child, and spent some of his childhood with the Boyle family (Ellen Boyle was Ellen’s maternal aunt) in nearby Derryheanlish on account of his poor health. I have not yet found any additional civil records for John, so the following information is based on family sources*. He attended Master Rooney’s school in Cordoola (Information about the primary school and Cordoola can be found here) and later became a monk in England. He returned to Monaghan around 1939 for a visit. During World War II he was a driver in the Army, and sometime after 1939 got married in England (possibly to Rose), living initially in Barnet. Ellen visited him there about 1958. When his brother Patrick visited during the 1950s they used to spend a few weeks each year in Maidstone, Kent. After Patrick moved to Kent, John and Rose occasionally visited them there. Patrick’s daughter Mary reports that John had beautiful handwriting, and used to send a local newspaper to Patrick.
Michael and Joseph
Michael was born on 13th August 1893 and Joseph was born on 26th June 1895. Tragically both died from scarlet fever in 1900. Michael died on 5th February and Joseph on 31st January.