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Archiver > NY-IRISH > 2008-03 > 1204946201
From: Jim Garrity <>
Subject: Re: [NY-IRISH] Mission of Our Lady of the Rosary
Date: Fri, 07 Mar 2008 22:16:41 -0500
References: <BAY111-DAV143808F61F4F4C098B976EB9100@phx.gbl><47CF2338.000005.05160@MURRAYMAIN>
Hello Lisa and the Listmembers,
I read this post a few days ago, and I was surprised to read the last part of the message, which stated that the pastor was gone and the church was slated to be torn down.
My fellow Board Member of the New York Irish History Roundtable, John T. Ridge, works nearby to the Church of Our Lady of the Rosary, and since he knows Father Meehan (the
Roundtable did a tour of the beautiful place several years ago) he stopped in to see what was going on.
John reports that Father Meehan (who is a Roundtable member) is still very much in charge---Masses are held there daily, and several times a day on Holy Days. The ledgers are
still being worked on by the Pace University students, and the building, which is a historic landmark due to its connection with Mother Seton, is *not* going to be torn down.
I hope this post will allay some of the fears that the false rumors were causing!
Cheers, all!
Jim Garrity
Vice-President for Family History and Webmaster, New York Irish History
Roundtable, http://www.irishnyhistory.org
"Lisa M. Murray" wrote:
> The following was posted to a list back in 2005 and I thought it was so
> interesting that I printed it out and saved it. The recent mention of the
> Mission of Our Lady of the Rosary (see below) brought it to mind and I dug
> it out. Thought some of you might find it as interesting as I did.
>
> I think it was originally published in the Irish Voice in December 2005.
>
>
> Forgotten Irish Women Found By Priest
> By Sean O' Driscoll
> Father Peter Meehan opens up a giant ledger and peers down its pages. Mary
> from Co. Donegal, age 18, was going to a cousins house in New York.
> Sheila from Cork was going to Brooklyn. Maire from Kerry is staying in the
> Bronx.
> One 8-year-old McCarthy girl was going to an aunt and uncle on Pearl Street
> in Manhattan.
> In the four ledgers he keeps at Our Lady of the Rosary church in downtown
> Manhattan are the lives of over 60,000 Irish women who were forced from poor
> houses and on to emigrant ships in the 19th and early 20th century.
> He found them in a vault in the church at the tip of Manhattan, where once
> an organization called the Our Lady of the Rosary for the Protection of
> Irish Immigrant Girls provided temporary shelters for young women to keep
> them from the pimps, thieves and sweatshop owners who lined the docks
> looking for easy prey.
> The ledgers are one of the most valuable records ever found of Irish
> emigration to the U.S., giving a far fuller picture of the womens lives
> than records at Ellis Island.
> Carefully turning the page on one of the ledgers, Meehan shows the
> handwritten entries with the name, age, county of origin and destination
> address of each of the 60,000 girls. (Some 120,000 women passed through the
> doors but only half the records have been found.)
> The potential of the find is enormous says Karen Aleta, a program director
> at Pace Universitys School of Education, which is using a team of
> volunteers to enter all the ledgers details onto a computer database.
> We have far more data here than on Ellis Island we know where these girls
> came from in Ireland and where they were going, we can follow it right
> through. Its so exciting, she said.
> The Pace group is hoping to cross-reference the volumes with Ellis Island
> records, creating a much more complete picture of the womens arrival into
> the U.S.
> Meehan, a soft spoken man and one time liberal activist within the church,
> turns another page, showing the huge range of counties and destinations.
> I found one for Oregon! he says excitedly. How on earth were they
> supposed to get there? If they wanted to sail there theyd have to go around
> the tip of South America.
> All the names recorded tell a painful story. All the women came from the
> poorhouses of Ireland, and most are from the traumatized generations that
> followed the famine, parentless and working for food in overcrowded
> government shelters across Ireland.
> As a way of depopulating the rural areas, the British government felt that
> it was best to send the young women to America before they started having
> children.
> They would ask the girls if they knew someone in America. If they did, they
> were sent on a ship. Many of them had nothing more than a slip of paper with
> the name of a relative they had never met, says Meehan.
> It is, historians say, a hugely overlooked part of Irish history. Without
> economic or political power, the women simply disappeared in huge numbers,
> their names lost to history until Meehan made a chance discovery while
> examining the vaults of the church.
> The value of the ledgers has not been lost on genealogy groups that are
> eager to record their contents.
> The Mormon Church and other groups interested in genealogy have made very
> generous offers to be allowed to photocopy the records and put them online,
> says Meehan.
> But he turned down the offers, preferring to go with Pace University and
> hoping one day to create an Internet database of the records, which date
> from 1883 to 1926.
> As he speaks, we can hear the loud thumping of construction equipment
> outside. The church, just yards from where emigrant ships disembarked at the
> tip of Manhattan, is surrounded by looming office blocks and the muddy
> construction site of a new subway station.
> These records are from a disappearing world, he says with a smile,
> pointing out where the construction work has damaged the interior of the
> rectory.
> The records, he says, are only a small, linear recording of a vast emigrant
> story.
> There would be guys waiting at the docks to take these girls to lodging
> houses but would disappear with their bags. Others were led up to Five
> Points and into vice, says Meehan.
> Others were sent into terrible indentureships. These girls would sign up as
> servants for twenty years and couldnt escape. The mission helped them to
> escape that. You dont see that in the ledgers.
> The mission was very protective, he adds. It wouldnt let anyone collect
> the girls unless they could show that their names exactly matched the
> relatives names held by the girls.
> It was more than three years after discovering the ledgers that Meehan began
> to realize their true importance.
> After looking around for a sponsor to save the ledgers from rot, Meehan got
> limited funding from the Homeland and Hougouton Foundations as well as the
> Friendly Sons of St. Patrick.
> After Pace helped design a system to preserve the records on computer,
> volunteers have been entering the records at weekends.
> A quick examination of the records finds names from every county in Ireland.
> Most of the girls appeared to be in their late teens, but some were as young
> as eight or as old as 40.
> Unfortunately, our records only go as far as 1892, said Meehan. Were not
> opening it to the public until we get it all on computer, but then it will
> be an amazing record for people.
> He sees the records as a reminder, in these scandal-hit times, that the
> church has done some good.
> The church has got some real black eyes recently. Its sexist, its
> authoritarian, its had the terrible sex scandals. These books show that the
> church has done some good, and its something we have to share, Meehan said
>
> Before Meehan closed over the giant ledger, he takes one last look at names
> neatly arranged in lines down the page. He wants these names, he says, to be
> a reminder.
> Now in America we have xenophobes who want to put barbed wired and machine
> gun towers to stop the immigrants, he said. But I think that this place
> would serve as an inspiration to them all.
>
>
> Now for the bad news.......I Googled this article to see if I could find any
> updates on the progress in transcribing the records. I found very
> disturbing news posted about it at GenForum. Someone says Karen Aleta is no
> longer with Pace University, and people who were contacted at Pace knew
> nothing about the ledgers; Father Meehan is nowhere to be found; and the
> church where the ledgers were found has closed and was to be demolished last
> year. See this page at GenForum for details. If true, it's sickening.
> http://genforum.genealogy.com/ireland/messages/70443.html
>
> Lisa Murray
> Troy
>
>
> -------Original Message-------
>
> From: Ellen Jarrett
> Date: 3/4/2008 10:05:48 AM
> To:
> Subject: [NY-IRISH] Coordinating split family arrivals in NY 1865-1880
>
> I just found out from Castle Garden that my great-grandmother was brought as
>
> an infant in 1857 with her mother, 23 years old. According to the records,
> they came by themselves. I am trying to find one of those entries where they
>
> had to list who was meeting them, and where. I am also trying to find them
> in the American census so I can find the name of the father.
>
> When my eldest O'Shea cousin died, I helped my mother empty the house. I
> found her mother's prayer book, (my great-great-aunt) who had been born in
> Meelin, Co. Cork. Her missal was printed in Dublin, in Great Strand Street.
> Unfortunately, there is no date or copyright date. However, in the pages,
> there was tucked away a Membership Certificate card, which says:
>
> from the Mission of the Lady of the Rosary.
> For the protection of immigrant girls.
> Founded October (the month of the Rosary), 1883.
> A member until October 1st, 1897.
>
> I. Object of the Mission - to protect the Faith and guard the virtues of
> Cathoic Immigrant Girls arriving at the port of New York.
> II. Annual Subscription - Twenty-five cents.
> ..Masses...
> Every one having at heart the welfare of the exile, shoud be numbered in the
>
> list of Collectors for this mission.
> Daily Prayer - "O Mary, Queen of the Most Sacred Rosary! Bless the Immigrant
>
> Girl's Home."
>
> Letters, P.O. Orders, etc., to be addressed to
> Rev. M.J. Henry, Director
> Castle Garden, New York.
>
> Naturally, I prize both the missal and the prayer card. I wonder how many of
>
> us have been lucky enough to find important materials in this manner. I
> frankly pestered every member of my family for years about genealogy, and
> they were completely indifferent. I do wish that my relative had shared this
>
> information/material with me during her life. I would have loved to have
> seen it and talked it over with her. I feel I was very lucky to come across
> these, and as no one else wanted them, I was allowed to keep them. My
> screaming with joy may have tipped the case!
>
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