I found this photograph attached to a family tree at ancestry.ca, and contacted the owner for permission to post at my site. The owner, who must be a distant cousin of mine, kindly granted my request.
This is Patrick Ryan, with perhaps one of his daughters, Bridget (“Jette”), Catherine (“Cate”), or Honora (“Annie”). The photograph was probably taken at their home, outside Killaloe Station, Renfrew Co., Ontario.
Patrick Ryan was born in 1842 at Curraghafoil, Doon,1 Co. Limerick, Ireland, the son of Michael Ryan and Bridget Lahey, and the brother of my 2x-great-grandmother Honora (“Annie”) Ryan, who married Thomas Benton. I am not sure when Patrick Ryan emigrated to Canada. His parents and sisters were in Canada by 1856; and his youngest sibling Hannah, born about 1854, may have been born in the United States (perhaps Ogdensburg, New York?), which would suggest an early 1850s Ireland-to-North-America emigration for Michael Ryan and Bridget Lahey and their daughters. But Patrick and his brother John Ryan may have come later (late-1860s?).2 In any case, Patrick Ryan was in Canada by 1871, as was his brother John.
On 17 August 1874, Patrick Ryan married Bridget Devine, daughter of Michael Devine and of Catherine (maiden name unknown to me). The couple had nine known children, six sons and three daughters. Bridget Devine died on 24 April 1891, and the cause of her death, as recorded in her Ontario civil death registration, indicates a ghastly death from childbirth complications: she apparently died, at the age of 38, of “Haemorrhage of the womb. 2 days’ duration.”3
On 13 November 1893, the widower Patrick Ryan married Ellen Harrington, daughter of John Harrington and Julia Sullivan (of Co. Cork, Ireland? I have not looked into the records here, but my first guess would be Co. Cork). The couple had four known children, all sons. Their third son, the Rev. Stephen Joseph Ryan, was a Catholic priest who died in New York City in 1930.
Patrick Ryan died on 14 August 1920, and is buried at St. Andrew’s Roman Catholic Cemetery, Killaloe, Renfrew Co., Ontario. His headstone identifies him as a “Native of Co. Limerick Ireland.”
- Doon is the civil parish. The Roman Catholic parish is that of Kilcommon, a North Tipperary RC parish which extended into Co. Limerick. ↩
- The 1901 and 1911 Canadian census returns, along with their Ontario civil death registrations, suggest that Patrick Ryan and John Ryan did not come to Canada until the mid- to late-1860s. While their parents and sisters were certainly in Canada by the 1861 census enumeration, I have not found Patrick or John in the 1861 Canadian census returns. ↩
- Two days!? O, the horror. Nineteenth-century death records are the main reason why I’m pro-modern medicine, and also the reason why I’m a bit of a proselytizer on the necessity of childhood vaccination. Whenever I encounter a proponent of the anti-vaccination position, I want to take that person on a tour of the nearest graveyard, to show him or her the headstones for all the little Johns and little Marys who did not make it to age 5, who were carried off at a tender age by childhood diseases against which we now have the solution: and that solution is vaccination. ↩