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Gorman Family Genealogy Site |
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| Part 4: The Gorman Family in Ireland and America | << Back to Contents |
| During the years of the Penal Laws in Ireland (between 1700 and 1832), it was illegal for Roman Catholics to keep records of births, marriages, and other church-related activities in their communities. Consequently, it is nearly impossible to make a connection between our branch of the Gorman family and the main MacGorman/O’Gorman/Gorman family line. Generally, only descendants of wealthy landowners of Protestant English descent have the ability to trace their lineage back past 1795. Nonetheless, we can trace the connections within our branch of the family and find our Irish ancestors up to two hundred years ago. We can but imagine at what point on the line of the original Uí Bairrche our family might have diverged. We will start in relatively recent times and work backwards. |
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Our story begins in a small farmhouse on a 40-acre plot of land in rural Saginaw County, Michigan. The address was roughly 18101 Roucholz Road, at the corner of Ferden Road (see map), in Brady Township, two miles outside the town of Oakley. Very little remains of the house today. If you go to the site, all you will see is a small stand of trees and a mound of loose stones and concrete that once formed part of the foundation. The old well is still there, covered up with a few decayed boards. The house burned down sometime around 1945 and the barn in the early 1980’s, but the homestead’s inhabitants left a record of their existence that remains with us still. It is a panel of boards from the barn. My father, John Michael Gorman, removed them only a year before the barn burned down. On it are inscribed names and initials of people who lived in the house, neighbors, friends, hired hands on the farm, and the name of the town of Oakley. The inscribed letters that correspond to members of our family are of five siblings: L.G., M.G., A.M., G.G., and J.G. These five are the fathers and mother of every Gorman, Tynan, O’Brien, Riley, and Neal in our family tree. Their stories follow. |
 Linus Miles Gorman, circa 1918 |
Linus Miles Gorman (M.G.), who used his second name Miles, was the eldest. He was born September 18, 1890 in Oakley, Michigan and later moved to Lansing with the rest of the family. He married Mabel Helen Tynan in 1915 and they had the first of what would be three daughters in 1916. He worked for the REO Motor Works (a motor car company which would become the Diamond REO truck company) in Lansing until the 1920’s when the factory closed. Following this, he worked for his wife’s mother’s brothers, James and Thomas Farrell, for $10.00 a month. In 1932, he went to work for Oldsmobile in Lansing, where he stayed for 25 years. His daughter, Mary Ellen Neal, described him as "one of the most mild mannered men I have ever known. I can’t ever remember him losing his temper." He died Nov. 1, 1962, in Lansing, Michigan. |
 Anna Marie (Mabel) Gorman, circa 1920 |
Anna Marie Gorman (A.M.), who preferred to be called Mabel, was born April 28, 1892 in Oakley. She married Frank E. Tynan in 1921 and quickly started a family. An aviation mechanic during WWI, Frank was already friends with Mabel’s brothers and his sister was married to Mabel’s older brother, so the two were a natural fit. Mabel and Frank had two sons, Frank and Jim, in 1922 and 1924. Not long after Jim’s birth, however, his father contracted pneumonia and died September 20, 1924. To support her family, Mabel started working for the State of Michigan in the Corporate Securities Division, a job which she held throughout her working life. Both her brothers Greg and Leo moved in during 1929 and Leo became a surrogate father to her 2 young sons, living with the family until 1943. Mabel was very close with her brothers and the family often got together to sing while Mabel played piano. Her son Jim remembers her as being very quiet and reserved, but level-headed with a strong religious faith. She died April 3, 1970 and is buried in Mt. Hope Cemetery, Lansing. |
 William Justin Gorman, 1918 enlistment photo |
William Justin Gorman (J.G.), who went by his second name, Justin, was born May 11, 1895 in Oakley, Michigan. When the family farm failed, he moved along with the rest of the family to Lansing where jobs were more plentiful. In 1918, when the United States entered World War I, he enlisted in the Army Aviation corps where he served until 1919. Following his service, he began working at Oldsmobile in Lansing. He married Mary Margaret Dwyer of Port Huron on November 21, 1921, in St. Mary's Catholic Church in Lansing. They had the first of their six children in 1923. He continued working at Oldsmobile until his retirement in 1960. Not long after, it became clear that years of smoking had taken their toll. He developed emphysema and died July 12, 1969. He is remembered as having a great interest in sports, both baseball and football, and penny-ante poker played with matchsticks as chips, a game that characterized many family gatherings. He is buried in St. Joseph Catholic Cemetery in Lansing. |
 Thomas Leo Gorman, 1918 enlistment photo |
Thomas Leo Gorman (L.G.), who went by Leo, was born April 16, 1896 in Oakley, Michigan. When the United States entered World War I in 1918, he entered the army at the rank of Private 2nd Class in the Motor Transport Corps and served in France. While there, he heard Enrico Caruso sing and gained an appreciation for opera and classical music. Following the war, he moved back to Lansing where he met and married Rhoda Moriarty. Their marriage only lasted until 1924, when Rhoda died of pneumonia. When the depression hit, unemployed, Leo moved in with his widowed sister Mabel (Anna Marie) Tynan. Here he met Hilda Doepker, who worked for the Tynans as a domestic. They married on June 6, 1934 and had the first of their two children in 1936. He found work at the Arbaugh Co. Department Store for a period and then became a rate clerk for Oldsmobile. Leo was a dedicated worker and father, had a dry sense of humor, played the banjo, and loved Notre Dame football. He died of cancer on November 4, 1954. |
 Gregory Gorman, circa 1932 |
Gregory Gorman (G.G.) was the youngest in
the family, born February 10, 1900 in Oakley, Michigan. Only four years
old when his father died, he moved to Lansing with his family when the
farm failed. He enlisted in the Navy in 1918 at the age of just 18. After
the war, he went to work for the State of Michigan. Like many his age,
Greg enjoyed the Twenties working, playing golf with friends and coworkers,
and generally having a good time. He was known to be lively, fun loving,
and had a great sense of humor. He married Adeline Grennay of Durand,
Michigan in 1927 and they had the first of their two children in 1929.
Not long after the birth of their second son in 1931, Gregory began to
have neurological problems. It was Parkinson’s Disease, a degenerative
disorder which attacks the central nervous system. He continued to work
for the State through the depression, but the disease eventually overtook
him, leaving him dependent on his wife and children with the simplest
of daily needs. He died in November, 1971 and is buried in Mt. Hope Cemetery,
Lansing.
There had been at one other sibling, Lauretta Winfried Gorman, who did not live past the age of two. |
 Portrait of Catherine Sharkey |
William Gorman, the father of Miles, Justin, Mabel, Leo, and Greg, was born Jan 9, 1862. He married Catherine Sharkey on November 27, 1889 at St. Michael’s Church in Oakley. Catherine, whom people called Kate, came from Lansing, the daughter of Alice Delaney and James Sharkey. James Sharkey had served in the 1st Michigan Sharpshooters during the Civil War and had been imprisoned at the notorious Andersonville Prison. His experience left him in a state of ill health and he did not live long enough to see his daughter married, having died four years earlier. William and Catherine’s marriage was performed by Father Franciscus Maria Gustav Graf and witnessed by John Lortus and Catherine’s sister, Mary Sharkey. In the State of Michigan’s record of William and Catherine Sharkey’s marriage, it indicates that William considered himself a butcher by trade, though in the Michigan census of 1900, he is listed as a farmer, so it seems he had several occupations. By this time, they had had their five children and had also taken on two boarders, brothers John and Martin Spreman, to work the land, presumably in exchange for room and board. |
 Record of the marriage of William Gorman and Catherine Sharkey at St. Michael’s Church, Oakley. |
 Michigan Census of 1900, showing family of William and Catherine Gorman, with their 5 children |
 The original 1861 deed for the farmland on Roucholz Road, Oakley, Brady Township |
William Gorman inherited the farm on Roucholz Road from his mother, Anna Lingle, who gained ownership after the death of Patrick Gorman, William’s father and her first husband, in 1873 when William was eleven. On March 1, 1861, Patrick Gorman purchased the land from Albert Jewell and his wife Mary, who lived in the town of Atlas, Genessee County, Michigan, for a price of $200. In 1861, that would have been a relatively large amount of money, equal to $3546 in today’s money. However, for someone who came from Ireland (where land literally could not be bought because of the class system), it would have seemed a dream come true. The description on the deed reads, "…that certain piece or parcel of land described as follows, to wit: being the southeast ¼ quarter of the southeast ¼ quarter of section twenty-two, Town 9 (Nine) North, Range 2 (Two) East, containing 40 acres more or less, in Oakley, Saginaw Co., State of Michigan". Patrick Gorman was born in 1823 in the Parish of Moycarkey, County Tipperary, Ireland. He immigrated to the United States either during or just following the Potato Famine, along with over a million of his countrymen. His whereabouts between the time he came over until 1861 are not known, but he had married a woman named Bridget Kane, possibly in Ireland, but she died, date and cause unknown. Patrick was remarried to Anne Ryan of Corunna, Shiawassee County, Michigan, on February 7, 1864, two years after the birth of their first and only child William, at St. Mary’s Catholic Church in Corunna. She was 23, he 40. The ceremony was performed by Father L. Vandendriessche and witnessed by Jacob Laffin and Magdalena McEroy. |
Record of the marriage of Patrick Gorman and Ann Ryan |
 Page from Michigan Census of 1870, showing the family of Patrick and Anne Gorman |
 Grave marker for Patrick Gorman in St. Mary’s cemetery, Corunna, Michigan |
In the 1870 census for Brady Township, Saginaw County, we find the entry for the family of P. (Patrick) Gorman, his wife Ann R. (Ryan), and "Willie", aged 7. However, in the 1880 census, Patrick Gorman cannot be found. Patrick and Anne were together for only a short time before his death – nine years. The county death records list the reason for death as "inflammation of the brain" – perhaps meningitis. In a small cemetery in Corunna, Michigan next to where the old church of St. Mary’s used to be stands his gravestone. My father discovered it in 1997 following a sojourn to the Owosso Public Library. It is not known why Patrick was buried in his wife’s home town, a place where he presumably never lived, rather than his own town of Oakley. The inscription on his headstone reads, "Erected in the Memory of Patrick Gorman of the parish of Moykarkey, County of Tipperary, Ireland by his wife Ann Gorman. Died Nov. 10, 1873 Aged 50 Years". Ann Ryan-Gorman remarried sometime between 1877 and 1880 to Silas Lingle, a farmer from Ohio, and had another son, Walter. Her father, William Ryan, was living with the family in 1880. At that time, William Gorman was 18 and worked the farm with his stepfather. By 1900, Ann Lingle no longer lived with her son. |
| In the State of Michigan death records, the names given for the parents of Patrick Gorman were Thomas Gorman and Mary Pennefather, both from Ireland. In the Griffith’s Valuation of 1848 - 1860, the Tithe Applotments of 1825, and the Poor Law rate books of 1847 and 1848, there is a single Thomas Gorman renting land in the Catholic Parish of Moycarkey and none in the Civil Parish of Moycarkey. Other than these land-holding records, there are no real censuses for this time period. The censuses of 1850 and 1860 were destroyed by the British and most other records were destroyed in the Four Courts fire in 1922. |
 Entry for the State of Michigan death record for Patrick Gorman, November 10, 1873 |
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| Thomas Gorman lived in the Townland of Cloughmartin, Fertiana Civil Parish, in the northwest corner of Moycarkey Catholic Parish. He rented his land at least from 1825 through 1848 from N. Valentine Maher, Esq., a wealthy landowner and county representative in the British Parliament whose grave can be found in the yard of the "new" church in Moycarkey. Thomas was married to Mary Pennefather, a woman of Protestant lineage, though it is unknown whether she practiced as a Protestant or Catholic. Some records have been found that indicate possible parents of Mary, though none can be confirmed. The most likely candidate would be the daughter of Reverend John Pennefather and Elizabeth Percival (daughter of Colonel William Percival) of Cashel and Newport. | |
 Photograph of old St. Andrew’s Catholic Church in Moycarkey, County Tipperary, Ireland |
 Map of Moycarkey Parish from the British Ordnance Survey, 1846-1865. Cloughmartin Townland is just off the top and left of the image. The town of Moycarkey is circled. At the center of the "X" in the lower right is the town of "Horse and Jockey", lying on the road from Dublin to Cashel |
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 The Ruins of Moycarkey Castle |
Following Thomas Gorman, his son James continued to rent the same land through 1901. James would have been the elder brother of Patrick, as, by Irish custom, the eldest son receives the right to "inherit" the use of the land that his father rents. James Gorman worked the land at least through 1874, when his son Michael, born 1851, begins his tenancy. Michael is found on the land at least through 1901 where he is shown in the 1901 census at the age of 50 with his son James, aged 7, and daughter Ellan, aged 5. He is not shown living in this area in the 1911 census. What happened to Michael Gorman, his son, or his daughter is not known. |
 The "new" catholic church at Moycarkey Parish |
About the Catholic Parish of Moycarkey
The Catholic Parish of Moycarkey lies east of the town of Thurles
in the Barony of Eliogarty, County Tipperary. The town of Moycarkey is
very small. The structure that was once Moycarkey Castle, built after
the Norman Conquest to house the Cantwell family, still stands on the
north end of town, though in a state of ruin. The old Church of St. Andrews
lies in the center of town in a similarly dilapidated state, and has been
that way for several centuries. There are many graves over two hundred
years old in the former nave of the old church. An appraisal of the structure
in 1840 found the roof gone as it is now and a large, mature ash tree
growing in the middle of the chancel (10).
At the time of Thomas Gorman’s birth, the Parish Priest was Father Edmund Ryan, who served from 1788 until 1802. The "new" church, built during Father Ryan’s service, is across the street from old St.Andrew’s. Father Ryan was succeeded by Father Robert Laffan who remained Parish Priest until he became Archbishop in 1821, at which time he was succeeded by Father David Dee. In 1832, Father Dee was succeeded by Father Robert Grace. During his tenure, which lasted until 1852, a new roof was constructed for the church at Moycarkey and the worst years of the Potato Famine occurred. |
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