Between 1815 and 1845, an estimated 900,000 Irish men, women, and
children left their native soil for the promise of a better future in North America. Michael and Mary
Sheedy were among those emigrants. Michael Sheedy had been born in Ireland on October 10th, 1818.
His wife Mary was born August 15th, 1823, also in Ireland. The family folklore says that the Sheedys
came from County Clare. Michael and Mary settled in a rented home in the Town of Watertown, just south
of the City of Watertown in Jefferson County, New York in 1840. Why they chose to settle there we'll probably
never know. Perhaps they had friends or family in the area, maybe there was work nearby for Michael.
In any case they had chosen a singularly inhospitable place in which to live. The area south of
Watertown where the Sheedy family lived can be a difficult place to inhabit even today. Average
yearly snowfall approaches 300 inches and the temperatures and winds of winter are ferocious.
Lake effect snowstorms blow off the eastern end of Lake Ontario, just a few miles away, and sometimes
last for days. It is not uncommon for a single storm to dump several feet of snow in the area. The
land is rocky and hilly and difficult to farm. Only the hardiest and bravest of souls would have
lived there in the mid-nineteenth century, before the telephone, paved roads, indoor plumbing,
electric lights, and central heating.
Michael Sheedy worked as a stone and brick mason, as he would all his
working life. Sometimes, when the work was slow he found employment as a laborer or mason's helper.
The family must have done some gardening and kept some animals. Horses were needed for transportation,
a cow for milk, and a few chickens.
The Sheedys were soon blessed with children. A daughter, Margaret A.
was born in 1846 and a son, Michael followed in June of 1850. Sometime between 1850 and 1855, Michael
and Mary moved their family a few miles west to the adjoining town of Hounsfield. The family continued
to grow - daughter Mary Anne arrived in 1853 followed by John Francis, my namesake and
great-grandfather in 1855. In that year Michael's family occupied a rented frame dwelling valued at $300.
By 1860 they owned that home, which was now valued at $500. The value of their personal property
was $100. Margaret, young Michael, and Mary Anne were attending school. Two-year-old James J.,
who had arrived in 1858, was just doing what two-year-olds do, probably making his parents miserable.
Michael and Mary welcomed their last child, daughter Catherine, into
their home November 15th, 1862. Little Katie, who was born when her mother was thirty-nine, would
never work outside the family home and died when she was just forty years old. In the 1880 Federal
Census she was described as "maimed, crippled, bedridden or otherwise disabled".
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Stone's Atlas of Oswego County for 1867 showing the location of the Sheedy
home.
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Between 1862 and 1865 the Sheedys would move again, this time to the
Town of Oswego, just west of the City of Oswego on the shores of Lake Ontario, an area even less fit
for human habitation than Watertown. In the Town of Oswego they lived in a frame home whose value
was estimated at $500. The Oswego Town Assessor's rolls for 1867 locate the Sheedys in plot 27 of
the town. Their home was on the south side of a wagon road that is now Furniss Road just west of what
is now Rathburn Road as shown on Stone's Atlas of Oswego County for 1867. Today that area is almost
as sparsely populated as it was in 1867. Furniss Road is a roller coaster ride over the drumlins and
eskers that dominate the landscape along the southern shore of Lake Ontario. The terrain is heavily
forested, mostly with hardwood trees. Even today homes are few and far between. Just as they had
in the Watertown area, the Sheedys lived within a small enclave of Irish settlers.
By 1869 the Sheedys had moved into the City of Oswego, to the house at
219 W. Fifth Street (later renumbered to 321 W. Fifth), between Tallman and Ellen Streets that would
be home to Michael's family for at least the next fifty-four years. That home still stands -- a
modest white-painted two-story with no garage. I suspect that Michael built the home, but the
Oswego City Assessors Rolls for that period have been misplaced. The earliest tax records I could
find for that home, the City Assessor's Rolls for 1871 list Michael as the owner and place
its value at $600. Michael paid $17.64 in property taxes that year. The value of Michael and Mary's
real estate had swelled to $3000 by 1870. They must have owned several pieces of property, for that
was five times the value of the home at 321 W. Fifth. Only four of the Sheedy children lived with
their parents that year. Maggie, 22 and John Francis, 15, who was working as a laborer, boarded at
home. Twelve-year-old James and Katie, 8, were still in school. Mary Anne, 17, worked as a tailoress
and boarded next-door with the family of Michael Dearden.
1875 found Michael, now fifty-six years old and his fifty-two year
old wife Mary with five of the Sheedy children at home, only the twenty-five-year-old Michael had
gone out on his own. Michael had taught his sons James J., 17 and John Francis, 20 his trade and
all three were working as stonemasons. The Sheedys were communicants of St. John's Roman Catholic
Church, 32 Erie Street in Oswego.
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321 W. Fifth Street in Oswego. Home to Michael and Mary's family for over fifty years.
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By 1880 the now sixty-one-year-old patriarch of the Sheedy clan must
have been able to breathe a little more easily. Only James J. and the sixteen-year-old Catherine
remained in the nest at 321 W. Fifth Street. John Francis would shortly occupy the even smaller
home next door at 323 W. Fifth with his own burgeoning brood. John F. had married the former Mary
Cecelia McFaul of Port Colborne, Ontario. On August 8th, 1882, Mary Cecelia, the daughter of Celia
and Dougal McFaul presented her husband with their first born child, a son, James Joseph Sheedy
- my grandfather. Mary, nicknamed "Molly", Francis, and Collette would follow in due course.
The 1884 Oswego City Directory lists John Francis as a contractor not a mason. By 1886, he and
his family had moved back into his parent's home and once again 321 W. Fifth rang with the laughter
of children. That arrangement didn't last long. By 1888 John Francis and his family had moved
across the corner of W. Fifth and Tallman Streets to 314 W. Fifth. Two years later, in 1890,
the widowed Celia McFall moved into 314 W. Fifth to live with her daughter and son-in-law .
The 1892 Census shows only the twenty-five-year-old Catherine still at
home with Michael, now 72, and Mary, 67, and no other Sheedys appear in Oswego's Seventh Ward.
The 1892/93 Oswego City Directory also doesn't list John Francis' family so by then they had moved -
probably to Canada.
Mary Sheedy passed away March 6th 1893 at sixty-nine years of age.
The funeral was held in the family home with a mass at St. John's Church. She was buried in the
family plot at St. Peter's Catholic Cemetery on the East Side of the Oswego River.
By 1899, Margaret had moved back into her father's home, probably to
care for her father and her sister Catherine. Maggie, who would never marry, had worked for years as
a dressmaker and lived at 221 W. Eighth Street. Her brother James, still working as a mason and
presumably still single, boarded at the Empire House in Oswego.
Michael Sheedy died Sunday evening July 14th, 1901. His obituary said
in part, " Mr. Sheedy was born in Ireland, but came to this country when a young man. He was a mason
and contractor for many years, but retired several years ago. For some time past he has been ill and
suffered much. He was an active member of St. John's Church and was respected by his neighbors and
friends. Mr. Sheedy is survived by several sons and daughters in this city and in Canada." Michael's
funeral was Tuesday the 16th from his home, with a mass at St. John's, before he was laid to rest beside
his wife in St. Peter's Cemetery. The Daily Palladium reported, "Relatives and friends in
large numbers followed the body of Michael Sheedy to its last resting place today, the funeral
procession being of unusual length." The following day the Daily Palladium reported, "The
street car that jumped the track in Syracuse Avenue yesterday struck a passing hack occupied by
persons attending the funeral of Michael Sheedy and capsized the vehicle. The occupants luckily
escaped injury". The hack described in the story would have been a horse-drawn vehicle,
remember this is 1901. The big news of that summer was the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo.
