February 2nd is the 170th birthday of our ancient patriarch, Jeremiah Patrick O'Sullivan. He is one of our ancestors who made the trip across the Atlantic from Ireland.
To follow is Jim's beautiful story:
Jeremiah was born during a famine year in 1851, the youngest son of ten, to Timothy and Mary Barry.
In Ireland, people were dropping dead in the fields and the English were evicting them and picking them off. Some British soldiers abused a member of the family. Jeremiah snuck up on the English rent collector and killed him with a hardened cabbage stalk. He then fled to Cobh, down outside of Cork city and then took ship to Nova Scotia, on the run. He went inland for a few years, chased by the authorities, eventually came across at Sault Ste Marie on a raft- an illegal entrant- to the Upper Peninsula and down to Chicago, met Anna Meany from Clare and had six children, four daughters, Margaret, Eileen, Mary and Anna, and two sons, James Patrick and John Jeremiah.
Jeremiah was about 5' 9" tall and broad as a barn, though thin in his youth, stocky later. He lost his leg several years before he died in 1930. He had it buried with military honors, honestly, as a member of the old version Old IRA, the Fenians, in the Irish cemetery on the South Side, Mt. Olivet. The plot document reads, "Section 1, Jeremiah P. Sullivan; section 2, 'leg of.' "
If you ever wanted to make Mary Fran scream laughing, you just had to sidle up to her and say, "Leg Of."
Our cousin, Father Jim McKittrick, sent me some documents that had Jeremiah's name as Jeremiah B. O'Sullivan, but the "O" had never been substantiated as far as I can tell, until two summers when I found Timothy’s grave in Mahoonagh parish, Limerick, and saw that it was “O’Sullivan.”.
Jeremiah got us here, and he lived 79 years and did it pretty hard. Here's to Jeremiah Barry O’Sullivan, born in Mahoonagh parish, townland of Cooley Gorman, County Limerick, Eire, on 2 February, 1851, and died in Chicago of complications due to the amputation of his second leg on 6 November, 1930.
They say he was wild when he drank, that he was mean and rough. But he got us here, and he stuck up for his family. And he's my great-grandfather.
Rest in Peace, Jeremiah. Thank you for bringing us to America. God bless us and save us and keep us from harm.
Love, Jim & Patty
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