Irish Roots - Mary McGill

52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks. Week 4 - CURIOUS.      For the descendants of Daniel Patrick McGill... an anecdote about his mother, Mary. We know very little about her as he only remembered being held to view her at her funeral when he was four or five.

Mary was born in Ireland and crossed the Atlantic to Canada when she was about 8 yrs. old. The new land was very desolate in the 1820s. Logging and working on a new canal was the work of the men. The Catholic church was the heart of the little community of Nepean, near Ottawa. She married Patrick McGill, a man 30 years her senior, also an Irish immigrant, and bore at least 5 children, losing two little baby girls in infancy. When her husband died in his 70s, the 42 year old mother took her 3 children, ages from 2 to 15, joined a group of pioneers and traveled nearly 1000 miles to the state of Iowa. How did she get the idea to start such an undertaking? Did she travel with a large group?  Relatives?  What means of transportation?  We are curious. 

When she arrived in Iowa City, she may have known that with her poor health she could not raise her children. We have found her will which sees to the care of the children.    The oldest boy, John, at age 15, went to work on a farm even further west, for the family of a prominent farmer (whose daughter he later married.) He became a citizen of the United States. Mary’s daughter, Bridget Jane, and youngest son, Daniel Patrick, were assigned to the guardianship of Daniel Shafer and Amelia Frost Shafer, by the terms of the will of their mother, Mary, in 1856. The Shafers were a childless couple also of pioneer stock. They had been  educated as a civil engineer and a teacher-- a strong Presbyterian family, who saw to the higher education and loving care, as well as the religious training of the children. Through the perseverance and plans for the care of her children, made by Mary McGill, our family’s destiny was changed, as we descend from Mary’s youngest son, Daniel Patrick McGill.