For years, my second great-grandfather’s second wife sat in my tree as Julia O’Rourke.
I always aim to use maiden names – women get lost to history too easily already. But in this case, this was never her maiden name.
Michael Hannigan farmed at Middlehope, in the town of Newburgh, Orange County, New York. He had come out of Ireland in 1870, married Margaret Welsh at St Mary’s, Marlboro, in March 1875, and buried her sometime between the birth of their youngest in December 1889 and his own remarriage in September 1891. Six children survived their mother. Somebody had to raise them, and in the autumn of 1891 a local paper carried three lines about who:
“Michael Hannigan, living south of Marlborough, was married last Sunday afternoon at the residence of Rev. J. L. Hoey, Milton, to Mrs. Julia O’Rourke, of Newburgh.”
That courtesy title from 1891 it meant she had been married before, and that the surname you are looking at came from a husband, not from a father. The notice was telling me, in the plainest possible way, that O’Rourke was not her maiden name. I copied the surname into my tree anyway, because that is what was written and I had nothing better. Yet.
Everything after that made it worse
The records that followed were no help at all, because each one simply gave me whatever name she was using at the time.
The 1900 census has her as Julia Hannigan, wife, born July 1854 in Ireland, arrived 1871.
The Orange County Surrogate’s Court file of December 1902, opened after Michael died intestate at Middlehope on 21 September, names her as Julia Hannigan, widow, alongside his six children as heirs at law.
Then, in the same file, six weeks later, she signs her own petition as Julia Shaughnesy, formerly Julia Hannigan.
Four documents, four different surnames, and not one of them hers by birth. This is the ordinary condition of a woman in nineteenth-century records. She is a wife, a widow, a wife again, and the paperwork naturally only tracks the men.
The third marriage entry
The break came from the Town of Newburgh’s own register of marriages — a clerk’s volume, still in the office, never indexed on FamilySearch and not likely to be. It was searched in person by a woman I met online who was researching some of the same family names in the area, and who happened to live closer (or at least in the same country!)
New York town and city marriage registers of this period are frustratingly invisible online, which is exactly why the answer had survived undisturbed in one.
Registered number 225. And here is what that clerk’s ruled page does under “Full Name of Wife” : two columns, headed Maiden and Married.
Julia O’Connell / Shaughnesy
Her maiden name was O’Connell. I am calling this a Proven Fact — a primary record, made at the time of the event, with the distinction I needed built into the page itself.
Her sequence of names runs:
Julia O’Connell → married (1st) a Mr O’Rourke, three children → widowed → married (2nd) Michael Hannigan, 1891 → widowed 21 September 1902 → married (3rd) Anthony O’Shaughnesy, 12 November 1902.
This changed the understanding of her widowhood from Michael
I had previously reasoned, from the probate file alone, that Julia remarried somewhere between 30 December 1902 and 16 January 1903 — the court served its citation on her as “Julia Hannigan”, and she signed as “Julia Shaughnesy” a fortnight later.
The register says 12 November 1902. She was already remarried when that citation was served; the court simply used her former name.
Fifty-two days after Michael Hannigan died, his widow married again. I have no idea what that means, and I am resisting the urge to decide.
There seem to be some ‘feelings’ about this woman. She left her three children and married Michael. Michael must have known he was dying, or he was having a family feud – he deeded the property to Julia the year he died, which would have otherwise passed mostly to the children with a portion for her dower alongside the possibility to remain in the house for a period.
There was a probate battle between John, one of her stepsons, and herself — the subject of another post. But the bottom line is that Julia was then a widow with a farm, six stepchildren and no dower – not a woman with the luxury of a decent interval between relationships. A single gentleman, Anthony Shaughnessey, her soon to be husband, owned the farm across the street.
What she was to the Hannigans, and what she was not
The 1900 census answers this in two columns most people skim past. Julia returns three children born, three living — and not one of them is in the house. Every child under Michael’s roof that day was born before their 1891 marriage; the youngest, James, by two years. All of them are Margaret Welsh’s.
So Julia came to the Hannigans a widow with three children of her own, born before 1891, alive in 1900, aged somewhere between about nine and twenty-eight, and living elsewhere. They are not all accounted for yet – and the 1902 administration cited no stepchild as an heir, which is exactly what the law would predict.
A 1897 register named an Ann O’Rourke — and opened a second story
I had seen this name in trees – but until now Anna L. O’Rourke was a hunch and nothing more, and that she would not go on the tree until her baptism or her 1897 marriage record named her parents. The marriage registers of St Mary’s, Marlboro are not digitised and not indexed; they exist on microfilm at the Marlboro Free Library. A ‘married in cousin’ went to the film and photographed the pages. Page 12, under the year heading 1897, names a bride as Annie L. O’Rourke, of Andrew, and Julia O’Connell.
That bride was marrying John Francis Hannigan. See why this gets juicy?
When you read the full register of the marriage – the two witnesses are Michael Hannigan and Julia Hannigan — the groom’s father and the bride’s mother, married to each other since 1891.
Julia’s daughter married Julia’s stepson. Five years later, that stepson took his stepmother to the Surrogate’s Court over his father’s estate, and lost to her.
That is far more than a postscript can hold, so it has a post of its own: Who Married John Francis Hannigan?
Still open
- The right-hand half of register entry 225. Julia’s own age, residence, birthplace and — parents names but those sit past the page fold and are cut off. Those columns should name her parents. It doesn’t flesh out our family but it would be great to have.
- The O’Connell–O’Rourke marriage, Orange or Ulster County, roughly 1871 to 1885.
- Julia’s third child. Her eldest, Mary O’Rourke born 1874, and now Anna born 1878, are both identified; one of the three remains. A search of Newburgh in 1900 for O’Rourkes born 1872–1891 naming a mother Julia found none — but daughters would be under married names by then and sons could be anywhere, so that is a weak negative and excludes almost nothing.
- Anna L. O’Rourke — answered. The 1897 marriage register names her as the daughter of Andrew O’Rourke and Julia O’Connell, and Julia herself witnessed the marriage. She is on the tree. What that record opened up is a separate story: Who Married John Francis Hannigan?
- A widowed Julia Rourke heads a Newburgh household in 1880 with exactly three daughters. Attractive until you notice she is nineteen years older than mine. It’s good to not get too excited by surnames, especially with the Irish!