December 4, 2012 must be a lucky number combination. Our last stop after St John’s cemetery and and an impromptu invitation inside Michael Doran’s residence then took us onto more investigation back on the other side of town before we headed home. We return to concluding our research (for now) of Great Grandfather 3 John Horan and family. This house is 484 Beach St. in Fall River. We had attempted to locate the residences of John and Catherine Horan over the years by pinpointing their addresses in Fall River in the 1800’s. As mentioned in a prior entry, our previous trip in November was a bit futile as the number addresses from hundred+ year documents didn’t easily match up to today’s street addresses. Tenements built for the thousands of factory workers back then are in amazingly decent shape today and appear to still be multiple family residences, but obviously revising the building numeration made the task of identification a great challenge. However, we had another small sucess in the late afternoon. This nicely maintained little blue house was the last home we found belonging to Mark Shay and Ellen Horan Shay, the only daughter of John and Catherine. Perhaps GGF 3 John Horan moved here after his wife passed away in 1894. The family seemed to reside around Beach St and within blocks of this neighborhood. William J, his eldest son who is also buried beside his parents, also moved in with his father and the Shays in his later years and died in 1910. Daughter Ellen and her husband Mark, a Fall River police officer, certainly took great responsibility in caring for Ellen’s passing family members. I’ve not yet located where Ellen and Mark were laid to rest, but hopefully we’ll find the location soon.
Our main short term research goal is complete. We found our first Irish ancestors who escaped during a time of unimaginable strife of famine and sociopolitical upheaval in Ireland. John and Catherine Horan established a new foundation for their American Horan family to thrive. We want our children to have a sense of pride and accomplishment in their genealogical history that we all arrived to this country as immigrants and worked hard to achieve a great future. Revisiting the past and placing our feet in the same steps as our ancestors five generations later will hopefully preserve a legacy long forgotten.
Irish Proverb
Tada gan iarracht
Meaning: Nothing without effort
No comments:
Post a Comment