1864 Tewksbury Almshouse Intake Records #21827 and #21828 for Margaret Kellaher and John C. Kellaher.

I wrote about Margaret (Mulligan) Kelleher and her infant son John Cornelius Kelleher a few months ago in a previous Vita Brevis post. While I thought the trail had gone cold, I wanted to try looking one more time at the Tewksbury Almshouse records. As you may recall from my previous blog post, according to records, Margaret and John were sent to the Tewksbury Almshouse after being given a meal at Boston’s Temporary Home for Women and Children.

I had previously searched for “Kelleher, Margaret” and “Kelleher, John” with no results returned, but I realized that might not be the end of the road. As genealogists, we get used to performing searches on larger genealogy sites which use Soundex —a system which indexes names by sound, and can therefore return search results which include similar-sounding names. However, many smaller and nonprofit archives don’t have this feature, meaning that researchers must manually search for different possible variations of a name. I decided to try a few different versions, and finally came across a John C. Kellaher, recorded with his mother Margaret!

We learn more details about Margaret and John’s lives in this short entry. Margaret’s birthplace was given as Boston, and John C.’s was given as B.A.H. (Bridgewater Alms House). Margaret’s father was Pat Mulligan, a naturalized immigrant from Ireland who was listed as “Insane.” Her mother died in Stoughton. Margaret had married twice, a detail which I knew from her intake form in Boston. Her first husband was Thomas Mulligan, and her second husband was Cornelius “Kellagher.”

Using this information, I was able to find Margaret’s marriage record to Thomas Mulligan . They married on 13 November 1859 at Sts. Peter and Paul Church in South Boston.

Marriage Record of Thomas Mulligan and Margaret Mulligan, 13 Nov. 1859, Stes. Peter and Paul, South Boston, Archdiocese of Boston. Source: Massachusetts: Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston Records, 1789-1920, AmericanAncestors.org.

According to their marriage register, which was recorded in Stoughton , Thomas was a stone mason. Margaret was 23 years old, and Thomas was thirteen years her senior. Both Thomas and Margaret were residing in Stoughton. He was born in Ireland, and Margaret was born in Boston. Margaret’s parents were listed as Patrick and Bridget.

Marriage Record of Thomas Mulligan and Margaret Mulligan, 13 Nov. 1859, Stoughton, Massachusetts. Source: Massachusetts: Vital Records, 1841-1910, AmericanAncestors.org.

It appears that Cornelius had run from the draft and may have been in the Bridgewater Alms House under the name of Mulligan. It was barely a year since the Boston Draft Riot of 1863 . Many of the recipients of conscription notices were immigrants, who couldn’t afford to pay $300 to furnish a substitute in their place during the war. Did Cornelius assume an alias to keep the local police from conscripting him into the U.S. military? Perhaps he viewed the Alms House as a place of refuge.

What happened next to Margaret and John? The margins on the left-hand side of the intake record note an absence on 13 July 1864, and a discharge on 12 August 1864. There may be a trip to the Massachusetts State Archives in my future to learn more about what happened to Cornelius Kelleher, and hopefully to pick up the trail on Margaret and John.

I’d like to give a special thank you to the staff at the Center for Lowell History for their assistance deciphering the details on the Tewksbury almshouse record.