Chris Kennedy’s entry for St. Patrick’s Day has inspired me…
Like many of my generation, my Italian last name hides my mother’s Irish heritage. She was born Patricia Clare Duffy, and you can’t get much more Irish than that!
We don’t know much about the Duffy half of the family; grandpa Duffy was orphaned at age four, and as a teenager was sent to northern New York State to work on a farm. He lost his first wife, Bessie, perhaps in childbirth; when he remarried, to my grandmother, he was 36 and grandma was 27. (He died several years before I was born.)
My grandmother’s family are much better documented. Her father, John Shanahan (sometimes spelled Shanahen), arrived from County Cork, around 1865, when he was 15 years old. According to a newspaper clipping in my late aunt’s possession, he made a fortune in Chicago, and lost it; came to Denver and once more made a fortune, owning at one time a whole city block there, only to lose it once again.
He married Bridget Ruth Harvey in 1882 when she was 23 (he was ten years older) and they had five children, but two died in infancy. Then John himself died in a mining accident, and Bridget took the remaining three children back to her family home in Plattsburgh, New York. Of those three children, the eldest (John) died at age 15. The youngest, Mae, died of the flu in 1920.
Only my grandmother survived. Her eldest son, my uncle, was also named John; he also died young, at 14, in a swimming accident. Thus there were three generations of John who suffered early deaths. I do have a cousin John, the fourth in that line; thankfully, he’s still alive and just turned 61!
When the third John, the swimming accident victim, was in the hospital he did have an interesting visitor. As I mentioned, that branch of the family lived in Plattsburgh, NY, not far from the Montreal border. Brother André of Montreal, now Saint André, visited my uncle in 1930. My mother remembered the event vividly, even though she was only nine at the time. Later in life, I was able to get her into an audience with Pope John Paul II. So she could claim the honor of having met two canonized saints.
André Bessette, C.S.C., commonly known as Brother André and since his canonization as Saint André of Montreal, was a lay brother of the Congregation of Holy Cross and a significant figure of the Catholic Church among French-Canadians. He is credited with thousands of reported healings associated with his pious devotion to Saint Joseph.
Bessette was declared venerable in 1978 and was beatified by Pope John Paul II in 1982. Pope Benedict XVI approved the decree of sainthood for Bessette on 19 February 2010, with the formal canonization taking place on 17 October 2010. He is the first Canadian living after Confederation to be canonized. – Wikipedia
