On the Irish Bridget



I have one Bridget in my family. She was my great grandfather's grandmother (my great great great grandmother). I have only the most tenuous of paper links to her thus far, finding her name on death certificates and in census records for 1900 and 1910. It appears though that Bridget is one of my immigrant Irish relatives, arriving in New York City in the late 1850s. I know that my great grandfather's (he was born in 1888) aunts and uncles were all born in NYC starting in 1860, so Bridget looks to be the one* who made the journey across the Atlantic.



The really weird thing about Bridget though is that she is our only known Bridget. The Irish are notorious for using the same names over again and we have a ton of Johns, Catherines, Roberts, Jameses, etc. When Bridget first popped up I didn't think she was one of mine because we have no Bridgets at all - not as a first or middle name, not as a deceased child - and my grandmother never ever mentioned this name. It's been a little puzzle and then I read the novel So Far Away by Meg Mitchell Moore a couple of weeks ago and I think I found my answer. (Loved the book - highly recommend it.)



In the novel, Massachusetts teen Natalie is working on a family history project while dealing with some horrible cyberbullying. She becomes friends with state archivist Kathleen who helps her read a diary found in Natalie's house. In those pages, they learn about the trials of Bridget O'Connell, an Irish maid who worked for a family in 1920. Here is the bit from the diary that gave me pause:



Ah, Charles had said when I first arrived at their home, a Bridget named Bridget. Because that was the name they gave to all the girls over from Ireland, they called them Bridgets, and while I should have been able to laugh that off, the terrible coincidence of my name, the way it made something I always thought was individual to me common and everyday, I often felt a flame of anger when I heard it. How funny, Charles said. We got the actual Bridget!



Moore listed a reference in her afterword, The Irish Bridget: Irish Immigrant Women in Domestic Service in America 1840-1930. Obviously I'm planning to read this and see what I can learn, but I'm also wondering if this was why Bridget's name was not repeated. Maybe my family found they did not want to use it again when they discovered how other people used it. I honestly don't know, but at least I have an idea now of what might have happened to it.



Now it's back to tracking my Bridget, and seeing what I can learn about her life and how she came to America, an endlessly fascinating mystery!



*Bridget's husband was Michael John or Michael or John (sigh) Lennon, my great great great grandfather. I have next to nothing on him though, so I don't know yet if they were married when she arrived, or if he was NY born.



[Post pic via Times Higher Education.]

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Published on December 03, 2014 22:23
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