Almost a hundred and fifty years have passed since Patrick O'Gara disembarked in New York City.1 In 1993, of more than 200 descendants that I have been able to trace, there are about 150 living throughout the United States.
Kathryn Bradley, our nonagenarian cousin, is the oldest living descendant of Patrick O'Gara. She speaks of the longing her mother, Bridget O'Gara Bradley had for the Irish home of her parents, Margaret Donlan and Patrick O'Gara. Almost nothing was better than the ways of the Emerald Isle. And Margaret Mullen Robinson transmits the same respect and yearning passed on by her mother, Mary O'Gara Mullen, daughter of John Charles O'Gara, granddaughter of Patrick.
KATHRYN BRADLEY
IRELAND: A WONDERFUL, TERRIBLE HOME
So how and where do we find Patrick O'Gara's family when he was ready to emigrate, in the political and economic structure of 1840s Ireland? We must speculate now, because no overseas research has yet been done to place them. There are however, some things we do know: though education was forbidden to Catholics, language continued to be important to the Irish as a people, and Patrick could read and write.2 Catholics' learning was accomplished "in the hedgerows", i.e. the fields and hills where the instructor, often a priest, could teach without being discovered. His wife, Margaret Donlan, known as "Margreta" within the family, could barely write, the evidence seen in Patrick's Bible.3 Patrick sent and
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1. He probably arrived at the docks near the Southwest tip of Manhattan, on South Street, before there was a formal reception for immigrants. From here there would be an examination of the passengers on the ship (which they had just scrubbed clean). In 1855, New York's first immigration Center was opened on an island enlarged and joined to the Battery by fill, Castle Garden, previously an entertainment center, and originally a island fort constructed to protect NY after the War of 1812. 'After 1892, Ellis Island became the reception center for examination of prospective immigrants
2. Letters (afterwards noted by date and author) received by Patrick testify to his correspondence with family and friends.
3. Margreta's entry in Patrick's Bible, legible, but very light and shaky was explained as a result of Margreta's minimal schooling, by Bridget to Kathryn Bradley, and Kathryn to the writer. Conversation on O'Gara and Bradley families with K. Bradley in her home, 10A West Sunbury Street, Shamokin, PA, August 1982. Notes in possession of writer.
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