A find too late to share with Evelyn

After years of seeking, in 2007 I found a ship’s manifest stating that my Grandmother Flynn and her family were registered as arriving on 6 May 1883 at Castle Garden, at the Battery, situated on the very tip of Manhattan Island. Castle Garden was the immigration site before Ellis Island opened in 1892. They arrived at Boston Harbor that same day. Did they actually stop both places, or was the dual entry merely a matter of book keeping?

On board the ship “Atlas,” were:

Coffey, Dan Laborer 23 M Ireland

Coffey, Margaret Spinster 19 F Ireland (my grand mother!)

Coffey, Margaret Matron 45 F Ireland (my great grandmother and Evelyn's grandmother)

Coffey, Michael Child 10 M Ireland

Coffey, Tim Child 11 M Ireland (Evelyn’s father)

Coffey , Catherine Child 9 F Ireland

We know these to be our great grandmother Margaret, our grandmother Margaret, and her siblings Dan, Michael, Tim and Catherine. How I wish I had been able to find this while Tim’s only descendant, my cousin Evelyn, was alive!

S/S/Atlas

This is the ship on which the family came from Ireland to America. It is the S/S Atlas, built by J&G Thomson in 1860 at Glasgow, Scotland and sailed under the Cunard banner. Tonnage: 1,794. Dimensions: 274' x 36'.5. Single-screw, 10 knots. Geared oscillating engines. Three masts and one funnel. Iron hull. Compound engines in 1873. Lengthened to 339 feet (2,393 tons) in 1873. Masts reduced to two. (So the photo is as it was when this family sailed aboard it.) It was in service from 1860 to 1896. Scrapped in 1896. Sister ships: Hecla, Kedar, Marathon, Olympus and Sidon.

Most significantly, it sailed from Liverpool, England on April 25, 1883, stopped by Queenstown, Ireland where the Coffeys boarded, and arrived in Boston, MA, USA on 6 May 1883. The arrival is registered at Castle Garden, at the tip of the Battery in Manhattan, NY. The family of six traveled in steerage and brought six pieces of baggage with them.

Since they lived just north of the Kerry/Cork border, Queenstown would have been an easy port of exit for the Coffeys. Now called Cobh, it is located on the south shore of the Great Island in Cork Harbor, (reputed to be the second largest natural harbor in the world), on south-facing slopes overlooking the entrance to the harbor. It was called Queenstown from 1849 to 1922, to commemorate a visit from Queen Victoria.

Evelyn’s father Timothy is listed on the 1884 ship’s manifest as an 11-year-old boy, but his baptismal record in the Catholic church at Kenmare, County Kerry, Ireland says otherwise:

14 Oct 1866 - Timothy Coffey

Parents: Daniel Coffey and Margaret McCarty, Direen

Witnesses: John Coffey and Catherine Sullivan

Evelyn believed that her father was a world traveler, evidenced by little gifts he had brought to her and her sister. Too, she said he spoke like a Philadelphia lawyer. She wrote years later: I think I inherited my love of literature from my father. I understand he went to the University of Dublin with the intent of becoming a priest.

Tim Coffey died when his skull was fractured in an industrial accident in Cleveland in 1909. Evelyn was only two and her sister an infant, so her memories likely were wishful thinking or the embroidering of a sad young mother who sought to give her daughters something of their father to hold. He may well have traveled the world, perhaps as a ship hand, in the years between his immigration in 1884 and his marriage in 1907.