Gen 5: Edward Hughes (1810-1893) and Ann Dooley (1822-1884)
Father’s Great Grandparents, parents of JB Hughes, Hartland Township, McHenry County, IL
When JB went back to visit Katie in McHenry County, he also visited the home of his father, Edward Hughes. Mary and Frances do not mention their grandfather in their brief report. It is possible they never met the man in their young life. Ed Hughes Sr was born circa 1810 and died in 1898 in Harvard IL. At the time of his death Ed Hughes (b 1810) was 88 years of age. My grandmother Mary was 15. They lived 500 miles apart from one another.
When Ed Hughes did arrive from McHenry County in South Dakota, he arrived in a coffin, to be buried in the Springfield, South Dakota cemetery. His passing was noted in an obituary found in the Springfield Times, Thursday, November 24, 1898:
“Mr. Edward Hughes, father of the Hughes boys who reside in Albion precinct, died at his home in Harvard, McHenry County, Illinois last Friday. The remains were shipped to this place for burial and arrived Tuesday evening. The four sons, Edward, John, Michael and Thomas have the sympathy of our entire community. The funeral services were held from the Catholic church yesterday and the remains were interred in the Springfield cemetery.”
The Tyndall newspaper added a social note to an otherwise similar obit:
“Mrs. H. Saville of Keystone, S. D., sister of the Hughes boys, arrived the forepart of last week to attend the funeral of her father, Edward Hughes. She will make a several days visit with old friends in the county before returning to her home.”
There is more to know about the life of Edward Hughes than his death. And there were more of his children than listed in the South Dakota newspapers. The South Dakota newspapers only carried the names of those of Edward’s children who lived in South Dakota. They knew little of the man, only that the Hughes kids were coming to Springfield SD to plunk a coffin into the earth of the St Aidan’s cemetery.
The Census record in McHenry County, IL in 1870 revealed the full extent of Edward’s effort to populate the nation with second generation Irish children. The print on the page was faded when I copied it. The names of his children include Catherine (Katie), she of the silver tube and tragic death. She is shown as 20 years of age in 1870. Great grandfather John (JB) is listed as 16 and as a farmer. The other children itemized on the census include oldest brother Edward (age 22), Mary (15), Michael (13), Thomas (11), Theresa (9) and Peter (7).
The name I consider most valuable on this faded page is ‘Ann,’ the wife of Edward Sr. She is identified as 49 years of age in 1870 and occupied as “keeping house,” which had to be a full-time job with 11 people in one farm house. This would put her year of birth at circa 1821. The census also reveals that Edward Sr was a farmer who was born in Ireland as was Ann. Their children are all identified as being born in Illinois.
The 1865 Census is formatted differently than the 1870 census. The ’65 Census enumerated but did not name children. It also revealed economic data related to ‘Manufacture and Agricultural.’ Edward’s livestock, grain crops and estate were valued greater than any of the other 37 farm families listed on the page in which his name appears. The total value given to his properties was meager by today’s standard: $1507 ($23,300 in 2018 currency). He was far more heavily invested than his neighbors in livestock.
The 1850 Census was defaced and barely intelligible. Edward Hughes was living in Hartland Township of McHenry County IL. In each of the census documents reviewed Edward Hughes and John Mahan are identified as neighbors. John was married to Mary Dooley, Ann’s sister.
The tombstone of Ed Hughes states that he was born in County Dublin in 1810. Father believed Ed was born c 1813. Ed was a devout Catholic and attended mass on Sundays then practiced fist fighting in the lot behind the church. On weekends Dubliners would fill stadium seats where staged fights on the hurling fields were common. Stadium seats would fill early on and the pints would flow freely throughout the afternoon. Ed Hughes was one of several fighters whose reputation drew more than a few fans.
The circumstances in Ireland in the 1830s and 40s created a harsh reality known as the Famine. Known historically as the “Potato Famine” the disaster was far more than a hardship brought on by a failed crop. The name is a misnomer meant to gloss over the fact that the British government was earnestly engaged in genocide on the island.
Historians in the past several decades have uncovered a plethora of documents and evidence that Parliament was engaged in economic practices that killed more than a million people. The intent was to put to rest, once and for all time, the centuries of dissent and rebellion that had deterred the English protestants effort to colonize the Emerald Isle. While the potato famine was real, the Irish farms were yielding various other successful crops and livestock. The farms were controlled in large part by English landlords who sold their produce to the British government who then routed the food stuffs out of Ireland and into a world market for greater profits.
Many small farms owned by Irish natives were lost to the large plantation holders and those farmers were then driven from their homes. The streets of the cities and the pathways leading to them were littered with the bodies of those too weak to walk any further. When I first encountered the research related to these events, I was shocked and viewed the author’s efforts as sensationalism meant to sell books. As I dug deeper into the stacks, checked the credibility of authors (plural) and the collegiate institutions responsible for publication I realized the full depth of the tragedy. The Irish genocide was real. The deaths were intentional and profit grabbing glossed over. The efforts were subject to discussion found in the annals of Parliamentary history.
The question arises: How did the poverty stricken, starving Irish peasant afford passage to the North American continent?
First, one cannot assume that Ed Hughes was living in poverty or starving when he emigrated. As I write this paragraph in October 2018, I have found little evidence regarding the lives of any of our Irish ancestors including the families of Hughes, Dooley, Mahan, Byrne, Banks, Fitzgerald or Mulvanney. If the immigrant in our family came from a rural area the likelihood that they came from a British Plantation increases. Ed Hughes appears to have been a Dublin man as the scant few stories we have of him depict him as appearing as a ‘boxer’ or ‘fighter’ appearing in the ring in arranged fights at festivals and stadiums. In all likelihood, the bouts were a side job for Edward and his reward for enduring a battle were small. We know even less, in fact nothing at all about his cousins, in-laws, neighbors and friends.
The cost of passage for one fleeing to Nova Scotia or the American east coast was 4 pounds 10 shillings, on average, for each year between 1838 and 1872, Found among the Minutes of the Fressingfield Suffolk Parish Meeting in 1837 is a reference to that same sum for passage to the states. The average annual income for the Irish farm laborer was 30 pounds 3 shillings in 1835 and a little less than that (29 pounds 4 shillings) in 1850. These stats are found in Williamson’s Research in Economic History – The Structure of Pay in Britain. Doing the math: The cost of Ed’s journey to America, for himself alone would be 13.8 percent of his annual income.
Knowing very little about our own ancestors we are left to extrapolate from history and create some conjecture as to how our folks may have arrived here from Ireland. Beginning in 1620 through 1852 the patterns were consistent. One could pay one’s own passage and arrive on the continent a freeman. A person could also arrive at the expense of a benefactor and as a headright for that person, or as an indentured servant to that person (or both: headright and servant). One could also arrive as that benefactor’s slave for life, or be sold by that person into slavery, bondage to another human. White slavery did exist. There is no evidence that our ancestors arrived in such a manner. They seemed to have moved freely from New York City to Townsend, New York and the Midwest within several years time.
Several other avenues of travel were also common in mid-century Great Britain. Chain migration was common. The men of the family would arrive first, pick up a job of any kind and send their earnings back to the homeland and the family would arrive as made possible by the wages that were wired home. This remains a common procedure to this day.
It is equally likely that our ancestors arrived at no monetary expense to themselves. The physical and emotional toll would be a heavy burden to endure, but the passage may have been paid by a British Plantation owner. It would be a mistake to assume the British landlord was being generous and benevolent. While there were landlords with a heart, even their motives could have been driven by profit motive.
In 1847 the Poor Law sought to resolve a growing problem in Britain. The number of poor starving Irish men and women was overwhelming the countryside. A million or more starving peasants had died. Millions more were living in squalor on plantation lands. Keep in mind, the British government was not innocent victim of a Potato Famine as we have been led to believe by the whitewashing of our history. The Irish catholic peasants were the victims of genocide. They had been denied the right to own land for centuries. Their properties had been wrongfully seized, taken from them by the English plantation owners in the name of a protestant god and civilized Englishman. The problem was compounded by economic policy.
The records of Parliament for the time of The Famine have been well researched in recent decades by scholars in collegiate settings. The literature revealing the truths of what happened to Ireland in the mid-century is now well documented. The English were seeking to rid themselves of the poor Irish catholic peasants, once and for all. Tired of Risings (rebellion), tired of criminal conduct, tired of Catholicism and all the pain and frustration that came with governing a destitute and unruly land, the British sought to drive the Irish to death or out like lemmings into the sea.
The famine was avoidable. Certainly, the potato crop failed, and the potato was a staple in the peasant family’s diet. But to assume that the potato was all that would be found on a table, three times a day for the life of an Irish man, woman or child is absurd. The nation was an agricultural mix of crops and livestock. The records show that the British capitalist was exporting commodities, produce and livestock, to the world markets in record numbers during the time of The Famine. Food was leaving the island on board vessels for foreign ports while the peasants starved at home. The matter was discussed and debated on the floor of Parliament. It was a capitalist system; the one percent grew wealthier and the peasants paid the price.
The Poor Law sought to move the expense of keeping the peasants alive onto the backs of the landlords. Workhouses had been established to house the peasants in enclaves found in counties and cities across the land. The workhouses were often the last stop for a person bound to die. Landlords were taxed pounds per person found on their property. I was going to say ‘living’ on their property, but it was hardly living.
Shrewd landlords ran the numbers through their books and found it was cheaper to pay the passage of a person to America than to pay the tax to the Crown. The only hope for solvency for the landlord was to reduce the number of destitute on their estates. The Poor Law forced landlords to evict peasants. It was one way to avoid the tax. Humans were forced to march from their bedrooms across paths leading away from the plantation home, to nowhere. Some landlords found what they considered a more humane method of disposing of the downtrodden: Put them on a coffin ship and send them to America, Canada, Australia, some colony or land willing to accept the street urchins and crusty farm families.
The moral argument was simple: it was far more Christian to export the peasant than to evict them with no place to go. Eviction simply dumped the population out into the British owned countryside of Ireland. The land was already overpopulated, crawling with these wretched, less civilized, less than human beings. Why not export them? It was cheaper to pay the four pounds passage out of the country for one peasant than to support that person in a workhouse for a year.
I cannot pretend to know how Edward Hughes arrived in America. I have been convinced by family lore that he arrived in the port of New York City. Per my father’s memory, Edward Hughes boarded a ship from Dundalk, 50 miles to the north of Dublin, in 1848. He was 38 years of age when he left Ireland and stepped through the immigration lines entering America. This was 50 years prior to the establishment of immigration offices at Ellis Island. Records indicate that an Edward Hughes and wife Anne also arrived in New York in 1842. The names were common Irish names and there are multiple people with the name. Census records of Hartland Township, McHenry County, Illinois, reveal that Ed was doing just fine as a farmer once he settled in here.
This information is about all we have in terms of locating Edward’s parents. Suffice it to say that a check of parish birth records was of little help. There were four Edward Hughes children identified in one Dublin parish alone in 1810. The nation of Ireland and the Catholic Church make continuing improvements in their online archive services to genealogists and perhaps further evidence will surface. As for now, we are serving full Irish (bangers, rashers, farl and mash) in the other room if you would like to join us.
Ed secured 40 acres of McHenry County land shortly after his arrival in 1848. The exact location of the land is defined in the paragraph shown on this copy of the original deed. I am only presenting the top half of that deed. The remaining half carries the usual flourishes and signatures of the local, state and federal officials and politicians who wanted to brand their name into the mind of any immigrant who might appreciate the land and vote their gratitude in any election. President Polk was a signatory.
The 1848 deed reads: “The North East quarter of the South West quarter of Section Seventeen in Township forty-five of Range Six in the district of lands subject to sale at Chicago Illinois containing forty acres.” Using this information (45N 6E 17) and consulting the McHenry County online plat map; the Edward Hughes homestead appears in Hartland township, as marked on the map, north of Paulson Rd and west of Lembcke Road, just off Highway 14, SE of Harvard IL. The property is heavily forested. The GPS coordinates are as follows: 42°22’35.70”N and 88°33’45.88”W. Plug those into Google Earth and you can see the small forest preserve that was Edward’s homestead.
More than a century later, another remarkable Hughes moved into the township buying up an old Hughes farm. Filmmaker John Hughes sought an escape from Hollywood and resided 6 miles directly north of the Edward Hughes homestead. John Hughes wrote and occasionally directed a ton of popular movies including Breakfast Club, Home Alone, Ferris Bueller, Sixteen Candles, Pretty in Pink, Mr. Mom and a series of movies done in collaboration with John Candy. The list would be incomplete if I did not include Christmas Vacation. His early movies became cult classics. Home Alone grossed $285,761,243 in just four years and marked a turning point in the writer’s career. His later movies followed a cookie cutter pattern that dodged critical acclaim and pursued profits alone.
Born in Grosse Pointe, Michigan, the screenwriter/director moved with his parents to Glenbrook, in northeastern Illinois where Hughes graduated from Glenbrook North High School. His early films often depicted teen life in the Chicago suburbs. When Hughes bought property in the Hartland Township there was a report that one of Ed Hughes’ descendants had returned home to his roots. I have found no evidence that one of Hollywood’s great director/screenwriters, John Hughes (1950-2009), is sharing a branch of the Edward Hughes tree with the rest of us.
Our Edward Hughes wrote his own piece of dramatic history when illness threatened the very life of his children. My father’s recollection of events was that death was at the doorstep of the Hartland farm house in mid-winter. Ed needed to locate a prescription drug for his family. As the story was told, Ed journeyed through winter weather conditions, on foot to Chicago, to get the drug. He made the round trip in forty hours.
The story survived as one of several great family legends that my dad liked to recall on occasion. Of course, the story was embellished from beginning to end and each time it was told the winter weather evolved into Arctic blizzard conditions and a journey that began as a jaunt to the local drug store turned into an epic 100-mile round trip to the heart of the Chicago metropolis. Somewhere amid all the verbiage, as with my efforts, lies a kernel of truth and the point is made: Ed Hughes, vaunted Dublin pugilist, loved his kids and risked his life that they might live longer.
Gen 5: Ann Dooley (1822-1884)
Wife of Edward Hughes, Hartland IL
My father thought of County Longford as the homeland of his Irish roots. He had listened intently to his mother Mary telling tales of his ancestors. Ed Hughes married Ann Dooley of County Longford. Her birthplace (County Longford, Ireland) and date of birth (June 21, 1822) are inscribed on her tombstone. Records reveal that an Ann Dooley arrived in New York on June 19, 1849, on the ship London which sailed out of the port of Liverpool. This may not be our Ann Dooley. A very Catholic Church in Essex New Jersey records the marriage of Anne Dooly and Edward Hughes on August 31 of 1845. Very little is known about Ann(e). Her first child Edward was born in 1849 and every two years after she delivered another child. She repeated the process 8 times, giving birth to 5 boys and 3 girls. The youngest, Peter John Hughes, born in 1863, was the only son who remained in Illinois. Her other children included James, Edward, Catherine (The Katie we met earlier), Mary Jane (Polly), Michael, Theresa (Tess) and our John Benedict (JB) Hughes. JB, aka Jack, was born in the middle of the ‘pack.’
