Gilroy Family History
By Ted Meehan
April, 1998
Great Grandfather Thomas Gilroy was born in 1810, in Country Sligo, Ireland. He married Mary, a local girl, in 1838. They had four sons, Thomas F., the oldest, Hugh, Michael, and Patrick, the youngest.
Thomas was a young prosperous provisions dealer in the town of Sligo. He was energetic and unlike his Sligo neighbors, made many far journeys in the course of his business, including one or two visits to Liverpool. It was at this tie that Ireland was distressed by the division between Catholics and Protestants, the start of the potato famine and the British promotion of Home Rule.
It was rumored that while the young provision dealer of Sligo was selling his butter, eggs and bacon, he was acting as an emissary of the Catholic Association and the Young Ireland Group. He was a good mixer, every ready for a joke, a drink and a song, and showed a talent for politics common to leaders of Young Ireland.
It was during one of those journeys in 1845 that he met his death, reportedly when he was jolted off the top of a moving stagecoach a died a few hours later without seeing his wife or family (Patrick was born three months later). Conflicting reports suggest a bullet might have "assisted" in his being jolted off the stagecoach. No investigation was conducted. According to family stories there was a strong suspicion at the time that his death was not accidental and may have been the work of political enemies, another evil afflicting Ireland.
The young widow, Mary, was faced with a crisis. Since she could not carry on the provision business and threatened by the approaching famine, she sold the business, took three of her four sons (Michael was left with relatives) and immigrated to the United States accompanied by the two spinsters sisters of her late husband, Ann and Mary.
She took accommodations in steerage on the sailing vessel "Shepherdess" which, crowded with many people fleeing Ireland, took 37 days to make a very stormy crossing of the Atlantic. Another story of the voyage speaks of a wild storm in the mid-Atlantic when Mary, the two sisters-in-law and the three boys were brought up from below decks and were lashed to the mast.
The story goes on to say that "Mary Gilroy got down on her knees among the curisn’ and blashpemin’ of the men and the wailin’ and weepin’ of the women and children and prayed to the Holy Mother. When they heard, the rest of them "left off their howlin’ and the Holy Mother answered and the ship was saved."
The ship arrived safely in New York and Mary Gilroy arranged for the group to settle in a poor area, populated primarily by Irish immigrants, in downtown New York City in the vicinity of Prince and Mulberry Streets.
Such was the start of this Gilroy family in America.
