Catherine Golden, also known as Kate, was my great-grandmother. She came to Chicago from Ireland around 1870 with her husband, John Connelly, and their four children: Mary Ann, Ellen, Sarah Catherine, and Bridget. Soon after their arrival, little Bridget died of scarlet fever. Kate and John had two more children in Chicago: my grandmother, Brigid Agnes, and the baby of the family, Edward. The trip from County Mayo to Chicago must have been a perilous adventure, but Kate had already lived through quite a bit for her young age and there was much more to come. 

Kate’s birth and marriage

Kate was born  on July 29, 1847, in Claremorris, County Mayo, Ireland; that is, if the information given to Cook County officials at the time of her death was correct. Other records indicate that she may have been born in 1844. The uncertainty about her year of birth is important, because what is certain is her marriage on Feb. 11, 1857, to John Connelly, in the County Mayo Roman Catholic parish of Balla. In the registry, Catherine’s surname is written as Golding. According to Irish genealogist John Grenham, Golding is a common variation of the name Golden in Ireland.

John Grenham wrote about surname variation in his blog on March 16, 2017:

Well into the nineteenth century – especially in the poorest areas of the West and North from which there was most migration –  the Irish language, Gaelic, was the language of everyday life. So when a baptism or marriage or burial was recorded, most of the people being recorded supplied their names in Gaelic. But no written records of these events were ever kept in Gaelic. So the record-keeper somehow had to import those Gaelic surnames into English.

The result was an extraordinary range of variation, with names mangled and distorted out of all recognition.

You can see a scan of the parish marriage registry below. I’ve inserted an arrow on the lower right so you can find the names of my great-grandparents in this copy more easily.

In the year following their marriage, John and Kate had their first child, Mary Ann. So you can see why I’m so curious about Kate’s actual year of birth. Using the earlier year of birth, 1844, as suggested by cemetery records, my grandmother’s family record, and census data, Kate would have been only thirteen years old when she married and fourteen when she had her first child.

In my imagination, my great-grandmother must have been a remarkable person. She would have been about three-years old during the start of the Great Famine in 1845. County Mayo was one of the hardest hit counties; it lost almost 30% of its population to death or emigration. The Mayo Telegraph reported on March 31, 1846,  from Castlebar, County Mayo, a town in which Catherine may have been born:

On Friday last the number of individuals supplied with cheap meal, and also gratuitously, by the Evangelical Committee, was over six hundred. Yet, the demand could not be kept pace with. The haggard appearance of the poor applicants was soul-harrowing to look on, while their lamentations at being struck off the works is far beyond our power of description.

I don’t know much about Kate’s birth family, whether they were among the desperately poor or whether they had some means to carry them through the years of crop failures. I’m not sure who raised Kate, why she married so young, or why she married John Connelly.  Beginning with her marriage, Kate becomes visible to me through official records that I’ve found online. She may have married young, but she seems to have married into stability.

Kate and John gave sustenance, opportunity, and a love of education to their children. In an 1864 record, John’s occupation was noted as “licensed publican.” My mom told me of a grandfather in Ireland who wrote letters for people who were less literate. If the story is true, the person would be John Connelly. True or not, my mother’s story is an indicator of how important education was in her family.

Life in Chicago

After their move to Chicago, John Connelly worked as a fruit peddler. The 1870 census notes that Kate was keeping house, Mary Ann was attending school, and the younger children Ellen, Sarah, and three-year-old Bridget were at home with their mother. By October of the following year,  baby Bridget had died and Kate was pregnant with my grandmother, who would be given the name Brigid Agnes. The Connelly’s lived on the near north side of Chicago, in a boarding house at 52 Superior Street that likely burned in The Great Fire, as most of that neighborhood did.

After the fire, the Connelly family took up residence at 51 Huron Street, living next door to Catherine’s older brother Anthony and his family. The family settled in.

John Connelly died in 1899. Ellen had married in 1986 and my grandmother Brigid, married in 1900. But Kate’s four other children never married and continued to live with their mother. Kate’s eldest, Mary Ann, worked as a salesperson at a department store and died in 1918. John T. Connelly was a machinist who died in 1922. Kate died in 1926,around the age of 82. Sarah Catherine and Eddie continued to live together until Sarah’s death in 1934. One year later,  Eddie, a postal carrier, married widow and long-time family friend, Mary Donavan, née Canavan.

Catherine Golden, born in a rural, Gaelic Irish county at the beginning of the Great Famine, married, emigrated, and raised six children in the wild days of Chicago at the end of the 19th century. She survived her husband by 26 years and saw her children and grandchildren prosper. She presided over a close-knit, devout, hard-working, and educated family. Although I really know very little about her, I know enough to be grateful to her for carrying our family so far. Thank you Great-grandmother Kate.