Catherine McCaffery Death Certificate

Catherine McCaffery was the daughter of Collum McCaffery who died at age 20 years old of Tuberculosis. Dr. Joseph Lehman signed the death certificate on September 16, 1914 and Catherine was interred in St. Patrick's Cemetery in Norristown. Catherine was the sister of my Uncle Coll who married Anna Marie Gallagher. Catherine was listed as a mill worker and witness who signed death certificate was Mrs. Pester. Address at time of death was 118 Dawson Street. (19127) Dr. Joseph Lehman's address was listed as 4257 main Street and the undertaker was John Dever at 100 Rector Street. 

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...

Death Of A Sibling

I discovered an old obituary dated September 17th, 1905 on genealogybank.com, a website Bill & I use for research. It appears Uncle Coll had a sister named Catherine who died on September 14th, 1905 at the age of 20 years old.

Catherine was listed in the obit as being the daughter of Collum & the late Catherine McCaffery. She was laid out at 118 Dawson Street (Manayunk), home of Robert Pester. In later Census Records, Collum & Catherine's older daughter Anna was listed as being married to Robert Pester.

Catherine McCaffery's funeral mass was held at St John the Baptist Church and interment was in St Patrick's Cemetery in Norristown.

I suppose you can probably guess that I will be taking a trip up to Norristown to check for McCaffery graves because if she was buried up there in St Patrick's Cemetery then I can guess so were her parents.

My question is, "Why a cemetery up in Norristown"?

At this point in time, I now know that Collum McCaffery immigrated from Ireland in 1875 and was married to a woman named Catherine. So far I have been able to count four children associated with Collum & Catherine McCaffery. The children are Anna, Catherine, John & Collum. Anna married Robert Pester. Catherine died in 1905. Collum married Anna Marie Gallagher and had two children Collum (Buddy) & Mary.

Then there was John McCaffery. Was this John really Collum's son or was he a nephew? If he was a nephew then he was grandmom's father. The long lost father whom I have not been able to successfully trace.

And it is totally strange that in the 1910 Census Records, all four children remain listed in Collum McCaffery's household including the younger daughter, Catherine (Katie) who supposely died in 1905. Though the ery spelling of the name is less common than the rey spelling, there are many McCafferys listed in the Census Records from 1880-1930. The name Collum is very unique.

These McCafferys continue to elude and fascinate me. St Patrick's, here I come.