• Back to page
• Front page
• Contents
• Back to page

The Saga of the McAloon Family from Corragunt

This is the story of the children of Joseph and Catherine McAloon from Corragunt, Co Fermanagh. Catherine died in 1917 at the young age of 27, on the birth of her ninth child. As a result, her children were shared out to relatives to be cared for. Ultimately five of the children emigrated to the United States, and some family contact was lost. This is the story of the children reconstructed from available records.

Context - the McAloon Family

Joseph McAloon (Joe) lived in Corragunt and ran shops at either side of the Fermanagh Monaghan border at Knockatallan from the early 1900s until his death in 1947, and thrived on the business opportunities (smuggling!) that this presented.

He married Catherine Murphy in 1907. She was just 17 and Joe was 27 years old. During the following decade Catherine had nine children and died on the birth of her youngest child, Daniel, in 1917. One child, John, had died in 1914, so Joe was left with eight children under the age of nine when Catherine died. Several of children were brought up by relatives in Fermanagh and Monaghan.

The Murphy Connection

Catherine was Ellen’s paternal first cousin, and Joseph McAloon was her maternal second cousin once removed. So, although there were family connections, there was no direct family link between Catherine and Joseph.

Joe and Catherine’s Children

James Patrick

James Patrick was the eldest child, just nine years old when his mother died. He married Mary Bridget McAleer in 1947 from nearby Cornaguillagh and lived in Corragunt. Life for them was very difficult during the “troubles”. James Patrick took over the shop on the North side of the border from his father. Smuggling went on, mostly in the middle of the night, cigarettes from the South and flour and butter from the North. Their house was almost at the border crossing and the bridge nearby was regularly blown up by the British Army. When this happened the windows in the house and shop would be broken. Many attempts were made to re-build the bridge, but each time this happened the Army would blow it up again and the windows would be blown in once more. The shop no longer exists.

James Patrick and Bridget had 5 children – Brigid, James Joseph, Katherine, Gerald and Ann. Brigid married Michael Robinson and they live in Northamptonshire today. Katherine also lives in Northampton. Gerald and Ann are both married, still live locally near Corragunt and each have three children. James Joseph died and is buried in Roslea with a Munday headstone (The McAloons were often known locally as the Mundays).

Joseph

Joseph was eight years old when his mother died. We don’t know which relative cared of him as a child. In 1930, when he was 21, he set off with his sister Mary (known as May) for the USA. They probably had never been away from the home area before they set off on this major voyage! Their father paid for their passage and their second cousin, Ellen Maguire from Derrygellia, travelled with them.

They embarked on the Cedric on 26th April 1930 from Liverpool, Here is a photo of the Cedric from that time. A 21,000-ton ship operated by the White Star Line, it was getting to the end of its service in 1930, so it may have been fairly basic. It was scrapped in 1932. Joseph arrived in New York on 6th May 1930, and his initial destination in the USA was to a cousin, Michael Connolly, in E 124th Street in New York.

He made his way to Providence, Rhode Island, before 1935. There appear to be strong family connections with Providence. In 1935 he is recorded living at 34 Tanner St, an address shared with some other family connections (discussed below). Initially Joseph worked as a porter in department store, but by 1940 both he and May had positions working together in the Catholic seminary in Providence.

Joseph applied for naturalisation as an American citizen on 13 July 1934. The photo is from his application.

We also know from the application that he was 5’7” tall with blue eyes.

Joseph married Mary Ann McCafferky in 1941. Mary Ann was originally from Roscommon and was living in the Pond St area with her sister before marrying Joseph. The photo is from her naturalisation application in 1930.

He probably had to leave the job in the seminary when he got married. He remained living in Providence, Rhode Island for the rest of his life and worked in the steel industry as a sheet metal work worker or smelter.

Joseph and Mary Ann had nine children. Mary Ann died 1965 and Joseph in 1985 and they are buried in St Anne’s cemetery in Providence.

John

John was born on 4 December 1910, although the birth was not registered until June 1911. He is recorded on the McAloon headstone. No other records have been found.

Hugh

Hugh was born on 9 December 1911. He died from an intestinal obstruction at the age of only 14 on 11 March 1926. He is also remembered on the family headstone.

Mary Anne

Mary (May) was 4 years old when her mother died, and just 17 when she emigrated with Joseph to the USA in 1930. She initially went to stay with a cousin, Margaret Cassley, who lived in New York (the address is difficult to decipher in the records). She moved with Joseph to Providence, and worked with him in the seminary there until he got married in 1941. She married Harrison (Harry) Allwine in 1951. Just before her marriage May took a trip back to Europe with her younger sister Ellen. They departed New York on 7th September 1950 on the QE2 and stayed in Europe for 6 weeks, returning via Southampton on 17 October 1950. It is possible/likely they visited home around that time.

May’s husband Harry was from a family that go back many generations in Ohio. He attended a Catholic school and here is a photo from his school yearbook.

He was drafted in 1940 and enlisted in the Navy in 1942. He remained in the Navy until he retired in 1961. May and Harry moved to Baltimore, Maryland and had two children, Francis and Florence. They remained in Maryland until Harry died in 1997. May lived until 2007 and is buried with her husband in Cedar Hill Cemetery in Pennsylvania. Francis died in 1993, Florence is married and still living in 2020(??).

Ellen

Ellen was only three when her mother died. Joseph and May organised a position for her in the seminary in Providence, Rhode Island so when she was 23 years old she departed from Belfast on the Cameronia arriving in New York on 6th December 1937. Her immigration record shows she was going directly to join May and Joseph in the seminary in Providence.

She worked as a cook at the seminary. Ellen applied for U.S. citizenship on 28 February 1944, so we know she was 4’11” with blue eyes and brown hair, but, sadly, we don’t have a photo! Ellen did not get married. She remained in Providence until 1949 at least. When she travelled to Europe with her sister May in 1950, she used May’s address in Baltimore, Maryland and the next record we have is her death on 9th December 1991 in Far Rockaway, Queens, New York.

Peter

Peter was just two years old when his mother died in 1917. Peter grew up with his Aunt Mary Anne and Uncle James McCaffrey, and their children, in Corcloghey, Co. Tyrone. Some of the McCaffrey children emigrated to the USA in the early 1930s and Peter’s Aunt and Uncle followed their children to New York in 1935. Peter then joined them, at the age of 22, departing Belfast on 15 March 1937, just 9 months before his sister Ellen. His passage was paid for by his uncle James.

The 1940 census records show Peter living with his the McCaffrey family in New York and working as a bartender. His brother Joseph organised a position for him in the seminary in Providence, so he moved there later in 1940.

He became a U.S. citizen and we know from his application that he was 5’5” tall with blue eyes and fair hair. Peter married Mary Gorman in Providence in 1949. They had five daughters. The family moved to Baltimore, Maryland sometime after 1952. Mary died in 1972 at the relatively young age of 56. Peter remarried Dorothy Davies, (herself a widow) sometime later.

Dorothy died in 1980. Peter clearly didn’t like living alone, because when he died on 6 August 1988, he was accompanied by his “beloved companion Inez diPaolo”! He is buried in Baltimore Maryland with his first wife. His death notice and obituary appeared in the Baltimore newspapers on 9th August 1988.

Thomas

Thomas was a baby of 15 months when his mother died. We don’t know a lot about him. We don’t know where he lived or what he worked at before he emigrated in 1950, at the age of 33. He departed from Cobh on 8 January 1950 on the Cunard liner Franconia. His initial address in the USA was with the rest of the family at Pond Street, in Providence. He appears to have settled in New York because he applied for naturalisation there in 1955. He married Catherine Monaghan from Tattymoyle, Co. Tyrone in New York in 1957. We don’t know much more about Thomas until his death in 1989 in New York. Here is his obituary.

Daniel

Daniel was the youngest child. He remained in Ireland and married Mary Deery, and they had three children Joseph, Daniel and James. Daniel took over the shop at the south side of the border, which is still in operation. Daniel Jr’s son John Tom runs the shop today.

The Providence Connection

It is interesting to see through the records that the family stayed together and made a new home for themselves, mainly in Providence, Rhode Island. Further research is needed to identify all the connections that made them choose Providence, but it is clear that previous generations of the McAloons and Murphys were already settled there by 1900. From initial research we can verify that Joseph stayed at 34 Tanner St in 1935, an address shared with a niece of a Mrs Catherine Beggan nee Murphy from Fermanagh. We know that Catherine Murphy of Corragunt married Patrick Beggan in 1884. More research is needed to confirm the exact links with the family, but it is highly probable they are cousins.

Some background on Providence from Wikipedia...

Pond Street (pointed to by the orange arrow in this map from 1968, and of which only a stub now remains) was a neighborhood in the West End, very close to the cathedral and had its heyday in the 19th Century, as a home for immigrant labor. “Urban renewal” programs, dramatically reshaped and displaced the largely immigrant, undercapitalized neighborhood during the 20th century. Currently the Pond Street area is still home to a workforce of immigrants — but a very insecure home, given the potential future development of the city.