Harry, born 1879 arrived from New York to Liverpool on 12 August 1916. There is a Harry born 1879 who arrived at Ellis Island in 1919. Both could be Harry son of William James and Ruth (nee Woods) McIlhagga who married Sara Browne in February 1920. Maybe he came back from New York to get married. There is another Harry, or rather Henry, born 1879 who was son of John and Eliza (nee McCullough) McIlhagga. However, I favour identifying with the first Harry on the slender evidence of him being recorded as Harry rather than Henry and his return date being six months before his marriage, though I have to say I have no firm evidence of either Harry or Henry having emigrated.
My next person to record from the Migration and Travel lists is Annie McIlhagga, born 1880/1 from Ballymena who in 1947 when she was about 66 did the return journey from New York to Southampton, arriving in England on 4th July. It would appear that she was unmarried and travelled alone.
Third, the name Catherine appears seven times and Katherine once. I suspect all these references are to the same person. So who was this well-travelled woman who seven times crossed the Atlantic to and from the USA and once to Canada? Despite a discrepancy of one month between the two full records of her birth date, my guess is that she was Catherine McCulloch McIlhagga (once spelled McIllhagga), the sixth child and third daughter of James McIlhagga and Johanna McCulloch, who was born in the mid 1880s.
It looks as if her first double trip may have been in 1916 when she was 30, and it is very likely that this was a visit 'home' to Scotland and that she therefore emigrated earlier. In the 1901 Census she was a 15 year old Mill Worker and the probability is that she went to the USA in her mid-20s, probably after her father died in 1913. We know that she settled in New York because when her younger brother James emigrated in 1922 he gave his sister's address of 730 Main Street, Buffalo, New York, as his destination. Catherine made the trip to Scotland in 1927, 1933, 1934 and finally in 1957 when she was 71 years old. This was the journey she made via Canada when she returned. By 1948 her sister Ina was also living in New York. Ina had married James Strathearn, though it looks as if Catherine remained unmarried. At some point, perhaps when she considered she had 'retired', Catherine migrated south to the warmer climes of Florida where in 1976 at the great age of 89 she died at Plant City, Hillsborough, where she is buried.
Good Afternoon Donald:
ReplyDeleteI have been reading your blogs posts with great interest and I'm slowly catching up with e wealth of information that you have provided. Thank you very much!
I did want to make mention of your post of October 4, 2011 as I do believe the Annie McIlhagga was my grandmother. My grandfather Thomas Norris retired about 1949 and this may have been one of the last trips my granny could take home. Annie did have a sister Catherine (Annie and Catherine Campbell) and they married two best friends - my grandfather Thomas and his friend Robert Howie Hardie.