10. Catherine Donahue Mullen

My great grandfather, John Arthur Mullen, Sr. lost his first wife tragically only two months after their son Raymond was born in 1896.  He and Annie McGavin had been married for less than a year, so it must have been a very sad and scary time for him.  His young wife had died of peritonitis, his infant son needed care, and he needed to work to provide for both his child and himself.  I don’t know who took care of Raymond as an infant, but if my great-grandfather was truly estranged from his family, then Annie’s family probably took on most of the childcare.  

Within a couple of years after Annie’s death, he met and married Catherine Donahue.  This is their wedding announcement from the Youngstown Vindicator published in November 1898:  At that time my great-grandfather and great-grandmother were both living in Niles, Ohio.

 

This is their marriage record dated November 8, 1898:

Who was Catherine (Kate) Donahue?   Catherine was born about 1859 in Mercer County, Pennsylvania into a large Irish Catholic family – she had two sisters and five brothers.  Although the census records show that Catherine was born about 1859, which would have made her 13 years older than my great-grandfather, she never admitted to that large of an age difference on any records that I have been able to find.  She usually used 1864 as her birth year, which would have made her five years younger than she really was.  The truth is she was at least 39 when she married my great-grandfather, and he was 26.  She would have been 40 or 41 when my grandfather was born in January 1900, so it's not surprising that he was her only child. 

Catherine’s sister, Susannah Burns, also fibbed about her age by five years and I think it was because they both married younger men.  I like to think the sisters may have compared notes about the need to present themselves as younger than they really were, and together they decided on five years younger.  I have no idea if this is what happened,  but it’s possible!

All I know about my great-grandmother’s personality is what my mother told me about her.  Growing up in the same household as her grandparents was not easy.  They didn’t like a lot of noise, so Grandma and Grandpa had to make sure Mom and Uncle Jack were kept quiet.  Mom remembers spending a lot of weekends with Grandma’s sister, Mayme, and her husband Roy.   It was a wonderful escape for my mother to spend time with her aunt and uncle, and it probably made things easier for my grandparents too.  Mom was not close to her grandmother, Catherine, and never mentioned that she really missed her.  I think it was more of a distant relationship, where kids were to be “seen and not heard”.  Mom was named after her grandmother because it was an expected tradition, but although her first name was Kathryn, she was always known by her middle name, Louise.    

Catherine’s parents, Michael and Catherine Donahue, were both born in Ireland and Michael was a farmer in Mercer County.  Michael didn’t immigrate to the U.S. on his own though.  According to census records his parents (Catherine’s grandparents), John and Mary Donahue, were the original immigrants. They arrived in the U.S. and Pennsylvania around 1830 with their family.  Similarly, Catherine’s other grandparents, John and Mary Gallagher,  brought their family to Pennsylvania from Ireland about 1840.  I don't know where the Donahues or the Gallaghers lived in Ireland before they immigrated to America.

 Here's another update to the Mullen family tree: