Cormick may be the son of Francis Bohan and Margaret Reily. A list of marriage license bonds on file in the Four Courts, Dublin, show the marriage between those two people taking place in the Dioese of Ardagh, County Leitrim, in 1770.
In the census of 1659, one of the Principal names in the baronies of Leitrim, Mohill and Carrigallan was Bohane, with eight families by that name. At the present time (1984) a Patrick Bohan lives on the farm (of 22 acres) with his wife Anna Clancy and their children.
Cormick Bohan is listed in the 1833 Tithe Applotment Book for Kilveyhybeg, Parish of Cloone, Diocese of Ardagh, Barony of Mohill, County Leitrim. This book shows that he occupied eight acres of agricultural and pasture land and paid annual tithe of 5£, 13 shillings, 9 Pence. Kilveghybeg (the name has had various spellings over the years) was part of the estate of James White, Esquire, and leased to the representatives of B & B Lloyd. The book states that the undertenants have no leases. Some Of Cormick's neighbors in 1833 were John Bierne, John Flynn, Laughlin Conboy, James Cregan, John Cunningham and William Casey.
Cormick Bohan is buried in a cemetery called Tubber-Patrick, in a Place called Cornakelly, just across the border in County Longford. The tombstone is inscribed: "O Lord have mercy on the soul of Cormac Bohan of Killiveha who died on 30th May, 1856, in the 77th year of his age. Erected by his son Cormac as requested by his brothers Michael, Patrick and Paul Bohan. Done Eis Requiem."
Based on this inscription it can be ascertained that Cormick Bohan was born in 1779, lived through the famine period of 1845-1848, had at least four children and was highly respected by those children. He was born during the American Revolution and was about 19 when, in 1798, the French under General Joseph Humbert led an army through Connaught, Cloone, and no doubt Killiveha, in support of Wolfe Tone and the United Irishmen in the rebellion against the English.
Although the area in which the Bohans lived was and still is a relatively isolated part of Ireland, it is not without an interesting history.
"...one of the most marvellous salvages from that-dark epoch and ruin is the survival of Classical lore. Among places in Ireland that have, from time immemorial preserved the classics, none is more prominent than Dromard (Longford). This Parish is not without historic interest. St. Patrick in his progress from Granard met a large assembly on the western slopes of Cornakelly about two miles east of Ballinamuck. He instructed them in the faith and as there was no water in the place, he struck his Crozier into the earth and a well sprang up. That well exists in a corner of Tubber-Patrick cemetery. Here also in this spot, rests the body of General Blake and many others who were slain at the battle of Ballinamuck in 1798. History tells us that it was in this particular region that Owen Roe O'Neill made the final muster of his army in 1642. Furthermorey from the history books, we find that a Synod of Bishops from the Armagh Province was held in Clonelly, Dromard in October 1660. The place was well chosen too, for that angle of North Longford seems to have escaped all the confiscations of the time. ("Moyne-A Home of the Classics," by Michael O'Rourke, in The Leitrim Guardian Magazine, 1975).
The General Blake referred to above was an ex British soldier who volunteered to lead a group of Irish volunteers in August 1798, when General Joseph Humbert landed with 1,000 French troops at Killala, County Mayo. This army of Irish and French was initially successful in routing the British garrisons at Ballina and Castlebar. But once reinforcements were obtained, General Cornwallis, the British mllitary commander of Ireland at the time, defeated them at Ballinamuck, County Longford, on September 8, 1798. The French troops were sent backck to France but the Irish were put to death on the spot. "Some of the victors had not had the heart to kill rebels in cold blood and about ninety had been taken Prisoner. They were soon disposed of. Blake, the Galway fire-eater who had joined Humbert before Castlebar, was hanged from a tree, after receiving permission to rub soap on the rope to ensure himself a quick death. Nine of the Longford militia deserters were hanged with him. (The Year of Liberty, The Great Irish Rebellion of 1798, by Thomas Pakenham, 1969, Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, N.J.)
Our great grandparents had six sons and two daughters. They were: Cormac, born in 1858, Patrick (1860), Michael (1861), Francis (1863), Thomas (1865), Mary (1871), Catherine (1873e), and John (1875). The entire family came to the United States but they came at different times. Two sons, Michael and Francis, came in 1875 and Cormac and Thomas came in 1880. The great grandparents and the rest of the children came in 1882. They were encouraged to come the the United States by great grandfather's brother, Paul Bohan.
Ireland was prosperous during the 1860's in part because of the U.S. Civil War. Farm prices were high both in the United States and Europe and the factories were producing at full capacity. After the war however, business fell off and, by 1873, a severe depression hit the United States. Prices of goods and farm products fell drastically and there was a large amount of unemployment. This depression hit Ireland as well as the rest of Europe and no doubt affected the price of farm products grown by Cormac Bohan. With the decline in the value of his farm products, the expected birth of John in 1875, and the troubles caused by the land war, Cormac and Bridgette decided to send two of the older boys to their Uncle Paul in Pittston.
Ireland has always been a scene of unrest, principally because of the British occupation of the island. Most of the land had been confiscated by the English centuries before. Due to the drop in farm prices, landlords were converting their estates to pasture. To do this they were evicting their tenants. The tenants had no leases and resisted in a number of ways, including violence, boycotting and electing representatives to parliment that would support their cause.
Landlords or agents also used their right of ejectment to protect themselves or their families from attack. Colonel J. J. White, a Leitrim landowner, and probably the same James White that owned the land the Bohans occupied, upon receiving a threatening letter in January, 1862, assembled all his tenants and "addressed them at some length, saying that he had made his will, leaving all his property to his eldest son, and that should his death be caused by violence that he ... directed that all his tenantry should be removed from the property."
As early as 1850 a Tenant Right League was formed in Ireland with the object of securing for the tenant fair rent and security from capricious eviction, but its three year agitation was a failure. In 1870 a Land Act was passed, which protected tenants from the unjust forms of ejectment. But it had little effect, for it left the landlord's rights practically intact, and this brought the question up again and again. Between 1874 and 1881 there were some ten thousand evictions.
One of the best examples of what people thought was a bad landlord was the third Earl of Leitrim, who owned approximately 76,000 acres in the Counties of Donegal and Leitrim. A feeling Of intense hostility developed against the man among his tenants because of his evictions. On April 2, 1878, while some eighty evictions were being carried out on his lands, Lord Leitrim, his clerk and his driver were murdered on a deserted road in the north of County Donegal.
In 1881 a Land Act was finally passed that conceded to the tenants the principies advocated by the Tenant Right convention of 1850, and secured "the three F's: fair rents, fixity of tenure and free sale." Perhaps Cormac Bohan was waiting for such a situation because it appears he sold his tenancy to the 14 acres to Peter Bohan and took the family to the United States. By 1882 he had a brother and four sons residing in Pittston, Pennsylvania.
Cormac worked for a while at a railroad coal shoot at Kennedy and Spring streets, Pittston, and lost an arm in an accident there. The family lived at 72 Pine Street. I have been unable to find any records pertaining to Cormac and Bridgette Smyth Bohan but it is said that they are buried in St. John's cemetery. Tradition has it that great grandmother Bohan died of a broken heart because she longed to return to the farm in Killiveha.
Paul Bohan immigrated in 1850 at the age of 21 to Pittston. Whether the Irish famine hit the Bohan family hard is not known. By 1850 the worst of the famine was over but, in any event, Paul struck out on his own. he was not the only one. Between 1849 and 1853 over one hundred thousand Irish arrived in New York each year.
One of the booming areas of the United States in 1850 was the anthracite coal fields of Northeastern Pennsylvania. Anthracite was replacing wood as the major heating fuel and a large number of unskilled immigrants were finding work in the mines. Paul settled In Pittston, a small town, organized in 1833, on the Susquehanna river. The Scotch, Welsh, Irish and Germans came to Pittston in substantial numbers between 1850 and 1855. An idea of how the town developed can be seen by the establishment of the various churches. The Baptist Church was organized in 1786, the First Methodist Church In 1791, the First Presbyterian Church In 1842, the Episcopal Church in 1849 and the Catholic Church of St. John the Evangelist in 1853.
Pittston was a boom town when Paul Bohan arrived. The first bridge across the Susquehanna at Pittston was built in 1850 and, although railroads were being built, the transportation needs of Pittston were, at that time, Primarily served by canal. The State of Pennsylvania was blanketed with a system of canals, most of which have completely disappeared. Pittston was on the North Branch of the Susquehanna canal system. The North Branch provided a water route for supplying coal to the Pennsylvania canal system south and west of Nanticoke. In 1834 a project, known as the Wyoming extension, brought the North Branch from Nanticoke to Pittston. Another section, begun in 1836, brought the North Branch from Pittston to Athens and the New York state line. This section was completed in 1856. The North Branch was eventually linked with the Erie Canal. The canal boat "Towanda" was said to be the first boat to open interstate trade between Pennsylvania and New York when, in November, 1856, it took a load of anthracite coal from Pittston to Elmira. The North Branch was sold to the Sunbury and Erie Railroad (eventually acquired by the Pennsylvania Railroad) in 1858. (The Amazing Pennsylvania Canal, by William H. Shank, American Canal and Transportation Center, York, Pa., 1973). The canal system continued to be operated by the Pennsylvania Canal Company, a subsidiary of the Pennsylvania Railroad, but most of the canals were closed by 1901. The North Branch, from Wilkes Barre to the New York State line, was abandoned in 1872, sixteen years after it had opened. Periodic floods on the Susfquehanna caused significant damage to the canal and this, along with diversion of traffic to the railroads, caused its decline.
Flooding on the Susquehanna was almost an annual event. Major floods occurred in 1865, 1884, 1889, 1901, 1902, 1936, 1942 and 1972.
By the time the 1860 U.S. Census was taken, Paul Bohan had married a girl named Bridget (probably in 1858), had one child Mary, 10 months old, and had a niece named Mary Bohan, age 12, living with him. His business was listed as operating a grocery store at 128 S. Main Street, Pittston. His personal estate was valued at $1500 in the census report. As was customary at that time, the Bohans lived above the grocery store.
Paul Bohan worked hard during the 1860's. He apparently enlarged his general grocery store. He no doubt benefited by not serving in the army during the Civil War, although he was registered for the draft. A June, 1863 list of all persons subject to military duty lists Paul Bohan in Class II, married males without previous military experience. During the Civil War, those who were financilly able could hire someone to serve in the army for them. Perhaps Paul hired someone to serve for him.
By 1870 Paul and Bridget had six children in addition to Paul's niece Mary and a nephew Cormack C. Bohan, age 20. The occupation of Cormack C. is listed in the 1870 census as clerk in the store. By 1870, Paul was a wealthy man. His net worth, as reported in the 1870 census, was close to 27,000, a substantial sum in those days. In the Atlas of Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, published by A. Pomeroy and Co., Philadelphia, in 1873, Paul Bohan is listed as follows:
Paul was very prominent in Pittston and one of the town's wealthiest merchants. As is evident in the 1880 U.S. Census, he was also very generous. By 1880, Paul and Bridget had seven children of their own as well as three nieces and seven nephews under their care, for a total of 19 people living in the same household. There is no question but that Paul was interested in helping his nephews obtain the same opportunities in the United States as he had. No doubt the nephews worked in the grocery store in order to repay the cost of their transportation from Ireland. Paul's own children went to college and two of his sons became lawyers. One son, C. Francis Bohan, was City Attorney for Pittston in 1893. (History of Luzerne County, by H.C. Bradsby, Editor, S.B. Nelson & Co., 1893)
Sometime around 1893 Paul Bohan sold the property at 128 S. Main Street to our grandfather Francis Bohan, one of the nephews Paul brought over from Killiveha. The 1900 U.S. Census reports Paul was living at 67 S. Main Street with his wife and son Charles.
Paul and Bridget Bohan had 13 children, most of whom died as children. Only five of the children survived Paul, who died in 1900, and only two appear to have survived his wife Bridget, who died in 1918. All but two of that family are buried together in St. John's Cemetery, Pittston. Anne and Bridget, two daughters not buried in the family plot, married and left Pittston. Bridget married a Wilson. Anne married Edward Barrett and one of her sons, Paul Bohan Barrett, was best man at our parents' wedding.
C. Francis Bohan married Mary Reap and they had three children, Genevieve, Frank and Paul. Frank married Mary Kilgallon, sister of the gossip columnist Dorothy Kilgallon, and their son, William is said to be residing in Philadelphia.
Originally, two older brothers of Francis, Cormac and Michael, were going to make the trip to their Uncle Paul in Pittston. However, their father became sick as the day approached for the boys to depart, and Francis was substituted for Cormac at the last minute and traveled under Cormac's name. Ships passenger lists on file in the National Archives, Washington, show Cormac and Michael Bohan, ages 16 and 14 respectively, on the SS England, out of Liverpool, England, arriving at the Port of New York (Castle Garden), August 30, 1875. Both boys were described as being citizens of Ireland, laborers and traveling in steerage. Accompanying them were two cousins, Ellen and Bridget Higgins. The mother of the Higgins girls was a Bohan and a sister of Cormac and Paul Bohan. Some of the Higgins family still live next to the Bohan farm in Killiveha, and a decendent, James Higgins, is living in Pittston. By 1880, Cormac and Thomas had joined their brothers in Pittston. All six are among the nephews and nieces in the household of Paul Bohan as reported in the 1880 U.S. Census
Other than this long trip across the ocean, little is known about Grandfather's younger days. In the 1880 U.S. Census, he would have been 17 years old at the time, it is reported that he was working at the Pittston Arms Company, incorporated in 1877, a firm manufacturing revolvers, which was located in Pittston.
No doubt Grandfather attended the 1878 fourth of July celebration at the Wyoming Monument. This event commemorated the massacre of the Wyoming settlers 100 years earlier. President Rutherford B. Hayes attended with most of his cabinet. The event was significant in that it provides evidence of the political importance the area was to the Republican Party. The Greenback Party was very strong in the Wyoming Valley during this time. With the election of the Governor coming up in the fall, it was very important for the Republican candidate, William Hoyt of Wilkes Barre, to have all the support he could find.
Grandfather married Mary Agnes Cummings on November 27, 1889, in St. John's Church, with the Rev. John Finnan, Pastor, officiating and in the presence of Thomas Cummings and Mary Gilroy. Mary Cummings was the daughter of Patrick and Bridget Cummings of Jenkins Township (Pittston) and was born in Pittston in May, 1867. Her parents were born in Ireland, being from County Mayo. Mary had two other brothers, John and Michael, and a sister Catherine.
I am in possession of a love token with our grandfather's initials FJB on it. It is dated 1888, probably the year he met Mary Cummings.
Francis and Mary Bohan had five children but only two survived to adulthood. The children were Gertrude (1891-1968), Kathleen (1893-1894), Maria (1894-1896), Frank (1898-1961) and Mary Eleanor (1901-1902).
Mary Cummings Bohan was apparently a sickly woman and, her health failing, she died with her sixth child on Christmas Eve, 1903, after 14 years of marriage. Our grandfather never married again even though he was not quite 40 years old when his wife died.
Sometime around 1893 our grandfather purchased Paul Bohan's grocery store at 128 S. Main Street, moved into it and converted it into a bakery. The family was living there when our father was born on April 20, 1898. He was one of three or four bakers in Pittston during this time and apparently trained a number of other men who subsequently established bakeries in Scranton and Wilkes Barre.
Grandfather had a great sense of humor and was well thought of in Pittston. He had a penchant for writing poems and used them in advertising his bakery products. I remember as a child seeing some old issues of the Pittston Gazette with ads at the bottom of the front page telling about his pies and bread. One ad was:
Grandfather was a charter member of the Pittston Council, Knights of Columbus, a member of the Holy Name Society, and attended Mass daily. While his wife was alive, he had help running the bakery from her as well as from a servant. The 1900 U.S. Census lists himself, his wife, two children, his mother-in-law Bridget Cummings as well as a servant Annie Kane, residing at 128 S. Main Street. Between 1909 and 1922, our grandfather's brother Patrick, who never married, lived at the bakery and no doubt helped out. R.L. Polk's Pittston Directories lists Patrick as living with our grandfather from 1909 through 1918. In the 1920 edition Patrick is listed as living at 255 Foundry Street, West Pittston.
Grandfather must have closed down the bakery business shortly after Patrick left. He continued to live over the store for a while making small amounts of whiskey for himself and his friends. Making good whiskey was one of the skills brought over from Ireland and, to this day, the best bourbon whiskeys made in Kentucky are derived from recipes brought over by the Irish immigrants that settled Kentucky.
The Irish brought all of their traditions and home remedies with them as well as their skills. Our grandfather had a "cure" for skin cancer that he used many times. Whether he brought it over from Ireland, or his brother Michael, I do not know but Michael also had the "cure". Our father eventually inherited a small portion of it and he kept it locked up. He wanted me to become a doctor in order that I might develop this cure. It was a salve that contained arsenic and this was the reason he kept it locked up and not let anyone go near it.
A recent article on Irish folk medicine mentions this "cure". Skin growths are treated with a plaster of which the essential ingredient is arsenic, the same way the Bohan cure was applied. In Ireland today many patients prefer to take this cure at home rather than go to a strange hospital to have the growth removed. Many of the cures referred to in the article were handed down among the families living in the Counties of Roscommon, Leitrim and Cavan.
Grandfather retired from the bakery business in 1923 and moved in with his daughter Gertrude and her husband Justin Cosgrove. Gertrude and Justin lived in Harding with their daughter Eleanor. Harding was north of Pittston, on the Sullivan Trail, an old Indian trail widened into a road by Major General John Sullivan when he took an army of Continentals to upper New York State in 1779 to avenge the Wyoming Valley Massacre of 1778.
Grandfather died on April 4, 1933. He is buried in St. John's Cemetery, Pittston, where a simple gravestone inscribed "Frank Bohan" mards the spot.
What happened to Grandfather's brothers and sisters? Cormac, the oldest, married and lived at 147 Pine Street, Pittston. He had three sons and three daughters, William, Maurice, Thomas, Mary D., Margaret, and Regina Burke. Some of his decendents are still living at 147 Pine Street. One of the daughters, Margaret, became a member of the Immulate Heart of Mary order and was a school teacher in Scranton. Her religious name was Sister Cormac.
Michael married and lived in West Wyoming, Pa., south of Pittston. He had two children, James and Josephine. His daughter, Josephine Grace, is still living in his homestead.
Thomas married Liza Glynn and they had eleven children in order of age John, Thomas, Etta Eaton, Josephine Donovan, Edward, Clement, Walter, Catherine, Mary, Sylvester and Francis X. Bohan. Thomas moved the family from Pittston to Brooklyn, N.Y. in 1903 or 1904, and died in 1951. He appears to be the only one of grandfather's sisters and brothers who went back to Ireland to visit his birthplace.
John, like Patrick, never married and eventually moved to Brooklyn to live with his brother Thomas.
Mary became a member of the Mission Helpers of the Sacred Heart in 1917 and resided in New York for a number of years. She retired to the Mother House in Towson, Maryland, and died there on July 2, 1959. She is buried in a small graveyard on the grounds of the Mother House. Her religious name was Sister Benigna, named for a French Priest who was a saint. Buried close by is Sister Alphonsa McLaughlin (7/20/1866 - 4/1/1950). We have relatives in Ballinamuck named McLaughlin and she might have been a member of that family.
Catherine married Thomas McGowen and lived in the Bronx, N.Y.
During the last half of the nineteenth century the Wyoming Valley and the entire anthracite coal fields were areas of continuous unrest. It was probably the first area where large numbers of laborers felt the economic impact of the monopoly power of a few large corporations. The railroads held a monopoly on the transport of coal and through subsidiaries, the railroads also controlled the production of coal. The Reading Railroad and its subsidiary, the Philadelphia and Reading Coal and Iron Company, headed by Franklin B. Gowen, constituted the largest single monopoly power in the area and controlled the destiny of the people for a number of years. Between 1871 and 1874 Gowen's company purchased over one hundred thousand acres of coal producing fields. Numerous mines (overcapacity), an unlimited supply of unskilled labor and the depression of 1873, which extended until 1880, along with overexpansion by the Reading Railroad, brought together the opposing forces that made the Wyoming Valley the national scene of labor/management conflict during the period. Labor strife continued even after the collapse of the Reading in 1880 and was not normalized until recognition of the United Mine Workers in 1902, an outgrowth of the long anthracite coal strike of that year.
Major Labor strikes occurred in 1853, 1865, 1869, 1871, 1875, 1877, 1887, and 1902. The strike of 1875 crushed the Workingmen's Benevolent Association (WBA) and the strike of 1887 broke the Knights of Labor Union. President Teddy Roosevelt was forced to intervene in the 1902 strike, which the miners claimed to have won. This strike was instrumental in gaining recognition of the United Mine Workers (UMW), which to this day represents all coal miners in the country. The 1902 strike was also the beginning of the end for anthracite coal as a home heating fuel. Supplies of oil were becoming abundant and, coupled with the unreliability of coal deliveries, families in the larger cities of New York and Philadelphia began to switch to oil for fuel.
In addition to the hardship created on families by miners not working, mine disasters were frequent occurences. Two of the major mine disasters in the area were the Avondale mine explosion of 1869, which took the lives of 110 miners. The second was the Twin Shaft Disaster, which occurred in Pittston in 1896. Sixty five miners were buried alive when the Susquehanna River bed gave way and rushed into the mine tunnel. Their bodies have never been recovered.
At the turn of the century half of the population of Pittston was Irish. Jere (Jeremiah) Donovan, son of Josephine Bohan Donovan, has said that in the 1920's it was very much like a transplanted Irish town. He visited there often with his mother and remembered all of his grandfather's brothers and sisters.