Week 11 2022: Flowers #52Ancestors — Making Sense of it All

Most decidedly, I did not inherit my mother’s green thumb. My sister, her daughter, and my son all have a way with plants. Me? Not so much – with one exception.

When my mother-in-law, Virginia Mills Baty, passed away in April of 2006, we received a number of plants and flowers for her funeral. Of all the plants we received, only one is still living these sixteen years later – a Peace Lily from my husband’s then law firm. I am convinced the only reason it still survives is from my benign neglect. Our cats have chewed on it, I put it outside in the summer when you are not supposed to, and I water it only when the leaves droop to the floor. Amazing resilience in the face of my abuse.

My mother always said that her green thumb did not show itself until her mother passed away. Her mom could grow anything. One of my clearest memories of Nana’s back yard is the ginormous hydrangea bushes she had. Granted, I was a little kid at the time, but I remember them towering over me with blooms as big as my head. I have tried my hand at growing hydrangeas in my yard where they bloomed for a couple of years and then put their foot down and said, “no more flowers for you missy!”

For all the years I had known my other grandmother (Mary Elizabeth McDonough Glacy), she lived in an apartment on our block. Little did I know that she too had a green thumb. In January of 1950, the weather in the East Coast turned unusually balmy, topping 65 degrees for several days. The New York Daily News reported that she “gaily” broke a branch of blossoms from her forsythia and mailed them to a friend who went to California for the winter.[1] Apparently, this deed was also mentioned on WNBC radio in New York.[2]

Mary’s grandfather, Michael McDonough, emigrated to the United States in the late 1840’s and always identified his occupation as “gardener” or “horticulturist” on the census and city directories. I’ve previously written about the “famous” Hilton strawberries invented by Seth Boyden that Michael also grew, but I just found out that Michael was most famous for his pears.[3]

But let me back-up a minute or two because I literally cannot wait to share my newest discovery!

In 2018, I organized a family reunion in Virginia. Two extra exciting things happened at that reunion: we got to meet our cousin Kevin and his lovely wife Chris and I got my Aunt Mitzi (Mary’s daughter) to take a DNA test. Fast-forward to the pandemic where I have some time to figure out what her DNA is telling me. One of her matches is a man named George McDonough, with 135 shared cMs estimated by Ancestry to be a second or third cousin. Thankfully, he has a public tree on Ancestry so I jump into that. While he doesn’t have much there, I notice that his Irish ancestor is a guy named John McDonough, enumerated in the 1900 census as a florist.[4] Hmmm. Same name and same line of work as my Michael.

Well that’s all I need to get me going on John and his family.

John and his mother Mary and sister Bridget come from Ireland before 1860 and wouldn’t you know it, they settled in the same village as Michael.[5] So, what are the chances they were not related? I do some more digging and find that John and his family came from Sixmilebridge, County Clare. Could it be that Mary is Michael’s mother too? And her husband Patrick is Michael’s father?[6] While the Catholic church records for Sixmilebridge tell me that Mary (nee Comer) and Patrick had four children (including John and Bridget), they don’t go back far enough to capture Michael’s baptism or Mary and Patrick’s marriage. Rats!

Since DNA don’t lie, my gut tells me that Michael and John have to be brothers.

The big pay-off comes when I find a new (to me) resourse for Newark, New Jersey newspapers. Lo and behold, I find Michael’s obituary and where can you guess he was born? Yup! Sixmilebridge![7] Not only that, but the newspaper uses the exact photo of Michael I had previously only assumed was him. Happy, happy, joy, joy!

A good friend called me right after I had discovered all this and was at my craziest. Sorry, girl.

Okay, okay – back to flowers, or at least pears.

Michael’s obit notes that although he “took more than an ordinary interest in growing all kinds of fruit, pears of the fancy varieties were his hobby” and those he produced were of “extraordinary size and flavor,” attracting attention of growers from all over the country who came to visit his farm.[8] The paper further claims that “large quantities” of his pears were exported to Cuba fetching the sum of twenty-five to thirty cents each in the markets of Havana. Maybe this is why pears are my favorite fruit.

Base on all the information his obituary provided, I have much more to research now on Michael but I am thrilled to finally know where in Ireland he came from.

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[1] Kermit Jaediker, “Birds, Beasts, Boys Baffled as HEAT Tops 65,” (New York, NY) Daily News, 5 January 1950, p. 2, col. 2.

[2] “Mrs. Anson J. Glacy,” unknown paper, 5 January 1950.

[3] Cecelia Baty, “Week 7 2022: Landed #52Ancestors,” Making Sense of it All, 23 February 2022 (https://www.makingsenseofitall.rocks).

[4] 1900 U.S. census, Essex County, New Jersey, populations schedule, Newark, Ward 6, enumeration district 60, sheet 17-B, dwelling 230, family 385, John McDonough; digital image, Ancestry (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 23 March 2022); citing National Archives microfilm T623, roll 964.

[5] 1860 U.S. census, Essex County, New Jersey, populations schedule, Clinton, enumeration district 60, p. 37, dwelling 263, family 287, Mary McDonough; digital image, Ancestry (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 23 March 2022); citing National Archives microfilm M653, roll 690.

[6] The Index for New Jersey Marriages shows his father was named Patrick. “New Jersey, U.S., Marriage Records, 1670-1965,” Ancestry (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 23 March 2022); citing FHL microfilm 000494152.

[7] "Was a Pioneer Fruit-Grower,” Newark (New Jersey) Evening News, 19 October 1903, p. 10, col. 3.

[8] Ibid.