McCaffery Breakthrough

Over the last two months, I discovered two more distant cousins as in "distance", one lives in China and the other lives in Indiana. Bill Siejna (China) is a descendant of Bernard & Mary (Boland) Cafferty and Eileen Dougherty Russo (Indiana) is a descendant of Collum & Catherine McCaffery. Both came across my website during a "goggle" search and contacted me "via" email.

I was able to share a lot of Boland/Cafferty information with Bill. His mother currently lives up in NorthEast Philadelphia and Eileen gave me a ton of information on the McCaffery family. It is because of her that I now know grandmom's father, John McCaffery was Collum McCaffery Sr. younger brother who immigrated from Letterkenny, Donegal, Ireland on May 29th, 1907 on the ship "Columbia" through Ellis Island in New York. I reviewed his ship records myself just yesterday and realized why this family was difficult to trace. The McCaffery family are actually the McCafferty family dropping the letter "T" from their name when they came to America. All this time I have been researching McCaffery and McCaffrey never realizing the proper spelling was indeed McCafferty. Our great grandfather John McCaffery was one of thirteen children with only four immigrating from Donegal to Philadelphia. The four that immigrated were Collum (Uncle Coll's father), John (grandmom's father) and two sisters Ellen and Mary. Collum must have been one of the older of the thirteen children because he came over from Donegal between 1875 and 1878. Ellen came over around 1904. I am not sure when Mary came over but she was Ellen's contact in 1904. And of course our direct descendant John came in 1907 and his contact was Collum who at the time resided at 104 Dawson street in Manayunk. By 1909, John McCaffery was living at 115 Hermit Lane in Manayunk. Of course John McCaffery and Agnes (Bridget) Boland married in 1911 and grandmom (Anna Marie McCaffery Gallagher) was born in 1912. By that time they lived on Cresson Street.

According to John's ship records he was 5 "9" with light brownish hair (most likely reddish) and gray eyes. Our grandmother, his daughter had red hair, green eyes and a ton of freckles. It appears grandmom favored her father more in physical looks than her mother who was blue eyed and black haired.

Another interesting piece of information Eileen had was a copy of grandmom's mother's death certificate and it stated that Bridget died of an intestinal obstruction in the diverticulum which closely resembles the cause of death grandmom told us "appendicitis". It also gave the maiden name of Bridget's mother's as "McCarrick". This is another valuable piece of information because I just recently discovered that Ella (Ellen) was first married to a "Doherty" and even had at least one child named "Michael" before she married John Boland and had four other children. As far as I know, Michael Doherty remained in County Mayo and did not immigrate to Philadelphia.

Some more details just recently discovered; Collum McCaffery Sr. died on March 7th, 1926, twenty-two years after his wife (Catherine) died in 1904. He is interred at Westminster Cemetery along with his daughter Anna Pester and son John Edward McCaffery & wife Gertrude. Collum's wife Catherine is interred at St. Patrick's Cemetery in Norristown. Even though I found an Obit that also listed the daughter Catherine as being interred at St. Patrick's in 1905 at the age of 20 yrs old, this information is "questionable" because the cemetery supposedly does not have that record.

Another valuable piece of information is the name of the parents of Collum, John, Ellen and Mary. It appears their names were James & Catherine. It also appears that we have a ton of cousins still living in Donegal.

Eileen told me she visited grandmom in 1989, a year before grandmom's death and talked to her about her McCaffery side of the family. Eileen will be coming here to Philadelphia on June 10th to spend a few weeks with her parents who currently reside in the area. It is at this time, I along with my mother will meet the McCaffery clan.

And for my first cousins out there on the West Coast, there are McCaffery relatives out there in California....

Stay tune...