#4- Recent Immigrant Catherine Higgins (Kate) What’s the Truth?

Kate Higgins of Ireland, My Brick wall. 

Research does not always yield what you think you might find--and that is one of its pleasures. Family lore: love it, hate it, or somewhere in the middle? I usually like it, it helps me to connect the “whys” and find a trail gone cold. However, when it comes to my father’s grandmother, I lean towards hating it. I’m not saying she lied—but you know what the Irish say about a good story…
She was from County Sligo, Ireland, her name was Catherine Higgins AKA “Kate” (her daughter-in-law was also Catherine).

The doctor who delivered my grandfather put down her name as “Bridget” (as Irish women were often called this generic name). Family lore told me her husband was killed in an accident when my grandfather was very young. Documentation contradicts this (see her naturalization petition).
She was born in County Sligo, it was rural. She spoke Gaelic. When she had a chance to return to the family farm when it was willed to her, she did not. 
She was dark-haired and had brown hair. In March 1934 when she was a middle-aged widow, she was 5’6” and 200 pounds. According to my father who ate at her house after school now and then, not a particularly good cook (but which never deterred his brother Joe).

She was born on December 28, 1882- or 1881. She immigrated around 1900-01 (abt 18 years old) to NYC. She worked as a cleaner and as a house servant way downtown in NYC.
 

I was skeptical of her marriage to the father of my grandfather. I had my father take a DNA test as my grandfather’s birth certificate shows no father, and he carries her maiden name Higgins. 

At the time, as now, ethnic groups mingled with each other mostly. Kate was dark-haired, while her son Jack (Victor) was red-haired and freckled all over. 

Kate had my grandfather in the Maternity Hospital of New York Mothers' Home of the Sisters of Misericorde which was at 531 East 86th Street, New York, NY—a charitable hospital for unwed mothers. On his birth certificate where the father’s name would be, it says “Unknown”.  

Here is Victor (Jack)'s birth certificate:

1905 Birth Certificate of Victor Higgins to Bridget Higgins

Why she named him Victor is no matter for he called himself Jack and so did everyone else. So, he was born in 1905. 

 

Now back to Kate:
The census of 1910 puts her in Ward 9, Manhattan, NY at 28 years old, with a child not quite 5 years old and no husband. She had to work and to care for her son, she had no close relatives.
 

I will supplement here information from Jack’s life: the 1915 census puts age 9 ½  year old Jack living as a boarder quite possibly because Kate worked and she could bunk where she worked—but couldn’t keep him with her. Being a boarder doesn’t mean he had his own room, possibly a bed (or shared bed). It may sound irresponsible, but she likely had an arrangement with friends she could trust—and the arrangement worked out for both parties.
 

How long he was boarding I do not know. I understand that he was independent from a young age. The nuns at his Catholic school ("grammar" school) who would administer any chastising he needed. 

Less than 3 years later, when she was 35 ½, Kate married Patrick Devaney in Feb 1918 and all three of them had a proper place to live.
Two years later the 1920 census has them living at 305 West 147 St, NY, NY. In the home is Patrick (& Catherine, now 38 years old), Devaney’s stepson (my grandfather) Jack is listed as living there with them, as well as sons Joseph and Tom Devaney. (Jack also has a parallel life at 84 West 147th St, NY —but that’s the census!). 

 

My father told me Jack did not like Patrick Devaney and never lived with the family for that reason. 

A 13-year-old who has been independent most of his life would probably bristle at another man giving him orders. .

Devaneys as adults-my father John Higgins-between them. Taken in Sullivan County many years later.

Her husband Patrick was naturalized two years after this in 1922 (he was Irish). Four years later in 1926, Patrick died at 42. 

Catherine was married for 8 years, now she's back to being alone with (now 2) children to care for (Joe and Tom Devaney). The year is 1926. (Strange to think that Jack married my grandmother the following year, 1927!)
 

Kate had worked but she was diabetic and was finding it more difficult to do jobs she was qualified to do.  As a widow, she needed money but as an immigrant she was not entitled to state support. What means she lived on, I’m not sure. She was determined to remain in America and made an Application for Naturalization in 1927, the year after Patrick's death (she was 44).

However, she did not follow up. It was 1933 (6 years later) when her petition is finally submitted in full. Her petition to naturalize does identify her son Victor (Jack, my grandfather) as illegitimate.

Kate's Petition for Naturalization in 1933, granted in 1934.

In 1933 she lived at 1887 Amsterdam Ave, New York, NY when she applied. Her son, my grandfather, married his 16-year-old bride (my grandmother). Their first child Alice is born in 1928, but dies before she is a week old. In the 1930s Victor and family live on Amsterdam Avenue in Harlem, as well. But in 1930 they lived on 499 West 158th Street.
 

The final time Kate appears in a census in New York City is 1930 when she was 48. 

By the April 1940 census (at 57), she is now a US citizen living in Neversink, Sullivan County, New York. She is living with the two sons she had with Pat Devaney and in the same small village as her Victor, his wife and their seven children.

 

How did this come to pass? About 1933 my grandfather began to work for the NYS Dept. of Corrections as a guard. First in Dannemora (now "Clinton") then in Woodbourne, in Sullivan County. His transfer to Woodbourne precipitated a migration from NYC of his wife and children and his mother and half-brothers to Sullivan County.  Dannemora also called "New York's Little Siberia" had not appealed to my grandmother. But Woodbourne is about 100 miles by car from her native New York City, so it was satisfactory.

For a short time they all—the Higgins family and Devaneys lived in one house till the Devaneys found a place to live. Kate eventually was able to draw a small sum of state support.

She attended St Peters Roman Catholic Church 1950-1960 in Liberty, NY. She died in December 10, 1960 in Liberty, NY at 77 years old. Kate was buried in Hillside Cemetery in Liberty, NY. 

 

My memories of her are few—I was young, we had to go see her. When I did see her it was in Woodbourne, NY  (though I may have a vague recollection of a stop-in in Liberty on the hill). I can recall her Irish brogue—and that she seemed to be a big woman.
 

In pursuit of the father of my father, I asked Kate's grandson to get his DNA tested. I posted it and connected it to what I knew to be true about Victor's mother. 

We were both happy and surprised to be contacted by a first cousin! The cousin was the son of an uncle of our "mystery” father. 

We now knew my grandfather's father’s last name was Cassidy and he was from County Cavan, also an Irish immigrant in NYC.

** I have a follow up post on the Cassidy's" 
Lesson: If you did DNA but didn't post a tree, do it! If you haven't done a DNA test, do it! You'll be glad.    

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SOURCES:

1 Petition to naturalize, her photo, etc from Ancestry.com
2 DNA test -  Ancestry DNA
3 Data - Ancestry 
4 Verbal history: John Higgins Sr