A Theory in Progress

        I, like so many others, have been on a quest for the place, or places, where my Irish 2nd great grandparents came from in Ireland. They are John Merryn Reilly and his wife Matilda (maiden name unknown).  I revisit this quest from time to time, but have not had any luck so far. Every official document just states they were from Ireland. 

Here are the folks in this post: 

  GG Grandfather: John Merryn Reilly (Riley) abt 1831  - 1872

   GG Grandmother: Matilda (maiden name not known) abt 1836 -  1903

    their 4 children: 

        Elizabeth Reilly 1859 - 1941 (my g-grandmother)

Matilda Emma Reilly - 1863 - 1870 (died at 9 yrs)

Robert M. Reilly   1863 - 1931 (my great grand uncle)

George Washington Reilly 1869 - 1870 (died at 1 yr))

Starting 1870 Mary J. McDowell lived in the Reilly household 1821 - 1903

US 1860 census Cincinnati, Ohio, 13th Ward.  John Reilly, Matilda, Elizabeth, Phebe (20 yr old Reilly relative), and a servant. Note $600 value of real estate owned.

My GG grandparents first appear in the 1860 census in Cincinnati, Ohio. And they had just had their first child, my great grandmother, Elizabeth Reilly in 1859. I also know that they next appear in the New York State 1865 census (this census was taken just at the end of the Civil War).  I know it is them, because Elizabeth is listed as being born in Ohio, and she is the right age. Plus by then they have added two other children to their family. 

1865 NY state census - Brooklyn, King's county - notice Reilly is spelled Rilley - its how the census taker wrote it. Elizabeth born in Ohio - Robert and Matilda King's county.

Then in the 1870 US Census they had moved to Philadelphia, and had another child. Also living with them in 1870 was Mary J. McDowell, age 38, and listed as a domestic. The interesting thing is that she continued to live with the Reilly family until she passed away in 1903. And she was buried in the family plot in the Odd Fellows Cemetery in Philadelphia. 

John Reilly passed away quite young in 1872 at age 42, and he was buried in a cemetery called the Union ME in Philadelphia, with two of his four children. They had died in 1870 within a month of each other from diphtheria and croup. 

John Reilly’s wife Matilda lived until 1903. She was about 63 when she passed. By 1900 she was living with her son Robert Reilly and his family in Philadelphia, along with the lady mentioned about, Mary J. McDowell. 

Here is a theory in progress:

Within the last year, I received a ‘hint” from Ancestry. The hint was a fragment of a census record from the 1821 Irish Census (most of this census had been lost in a fire). This census record was for a Mary McDowell, who was just born in 1821. And this record listed the other people in the household with her then. Besides baby Mary’s parents (Thomas and Mary McDowell)  and older siblings, there was a married couple - Laurence Reilley and Eleanor Reilley, ages 74 and 75, listed as father-in-law and mother-in-law to the head of the household. Could this record show a family connection between the Reilly and the McDowell families in Ireland? It’s possible. (This Irish census fragment was from Cleralohan, Drumlumman, Cavan county, Ireland.)

Even if this hint does not pan out, it has caused me to revisit the records and the things I do know about my 2nd great grandparents, John Merryn Reilly and his wife Matilda. Doing so has made me pay more attention to some details that I had ignored prior. For example, when John and Matilda were in New York (Brooklyn, in King’s county) in 1865, his occupation was a quartermaster clerk in Goldsborough. 

I remember I did look up what that was, but I never researched the location he worked at. Remember, this was at the end of the Civil War. Turns out that Goldsborough (Goldsboro) was in North Carolina, and was a massive logistics hub where supplies for the Union Army were requisitioned and distributed. He might have been in a military unit from NY, or he could have been a civilian. I suspect the latter.

During the Civil War, the Quartermaster Department was the largest employer in the U.S. government, hiring tens of thousands of civilians—clerks, teamsters, agents, and laborers—who were not subject to military enlistment or found on traditional muster rolls. (credit to Gemini AI for this information).

It is possible that John Reiily was there in Goldsboro when this happened.

The next step for me is to research some of the resources that Gemini suggested, along with my usual ancestry sources. I am hoping that this will lead me to a record that will state where John Reilly was from in Ireland. I should add that he and his wife Matilda probably did not come to the US together, as Matilda was only about 3 years old when she immigrated. So they most likely met in the US and married here. Marriage records are not available in Ohio in the 1850’s, if that is even where they married.

Next week’s topic is “A Breakthrough Moment.” Maybe I will have one of those moments to write about!