NYRICHMO-L Archives

From: Jim Donnelly <>
Subject: [NYRICHMO-L] Lurking Staten Islander
Date: Sat, 14 Aug 1999 13:31:15 -0400

I was born 64 years ago in Staten Island Hospital and lived until age 14 in
West New Brighton--which, I recently learned for the first time, used to be
part of something called Castleton. I had never heard of that.

I'm a very half-hearted genealogist. I've been able to find almost nothing
about my ancestors, and I don't really expect to learn very much because
I've been away from NYC for fifty years and don't have very easy access to
places like the NYPL. So I expect to do more lurking than contributing
here. I have really nothing to contribute, but here's what I do know about
my ancestry:

My father's family was a crowd from County Bronx. I had been under the
impression that my mother's family was on Staten Island forever, but I've
recently discovered otherwise. According to the 1920 census, my grandfather
James P. SWEENEY was born in New York in 1869, but his parents were both
born in Ireland. I don't even know their names, so I don't know how to find
them in any earlier census, or even on a ship's list.

The family of my grandmother Mary Estelle (COTTER) SWEENEY is a bit
different, though. The first members of her line to arrive in the U.S. were
my great-great-grandparents William McLAUGHLIN and Mary Ann SMITH. There
are some family stories about this couple, but I think they're mostly
folklore.

First, it is held that they immigrated in about 1847, but there's no
corroboration of that.

Second, my great-great-grandmother Mary Ann (SMITH) McLAUGHLIN is supposed
to have been the niece of William ROGERS, silversmith.

Most of my relatives believe that this ROGERS cat was an Englishman, but I
doubt it. I've spent a little time looking for him, and I find nobody named
Rogers concerned with silver anywhere in the British Isles since the
thirteenth century, except a man who was retailer in Dublin in the late
19th century--too late to have been my man.

On the other hand, there was a William Rogers in Connecticut fairly early
on, whose name was associated with at least seven or eight silverware and
silverplating companies including William A. Rogers & Co., Wm. Rogers &
Son, Rogers & Somebody Else, and 1847 Rogers Brothers. All of these
companies, I think, originated either in Hartford or in Meriden.

It seems to me, then, that if William ROGERS was in fact the uncle of Mary
Ann SMITH McLAUGHLIN, he was probably in this country before his niece was,
which contradicts family lore.

The only other story I've ever heard about these people was that Mary Ann
Smith was disinherited for marrying the Irish Catholic Bill McLaughlin.
That may or may not be true, but whatever money she may have expected to
inherit doesn't seem to have been connected with silverware.

At any rate, William and Mary Ann McLAUGHLIN are supposed to have come to
the U.S. (and to Staten Island) around 1847, in the early years of the
Irish famine. I don't believe they came in steerage because they brought
some furniture with them. Four dining room chairs that I know of were
divided up among four families of cousins of mine in Catonsville, Maryland.
I've sat on two of them.

Jim Donnelly
Hyattsville, Maryland

This thread:

• [NYRICHMO-L] Lurking Staten Islander by Jim Donnelly <>