Yesterday I received Bridget Mahoney’s death record from the New Jersey Archives. I’m feeling very positive that she could be my 2nd great-grandmother, since her maiden name was listed as Buckley. She died relatively young at age 63 from pneumonia. She would have been born in the right time frame to have had sons, John and Timothy, in the early 1860s in Ireland.

My great-grandfather, John Mahoney’s death record listed his mother as Bridget Buckley Mahoney, as did his brother Timothy’s death record. When Timothy Mahoney married Mary Bohan on 1 September 1889 in Woodbridge, NJ, his parents were listed as John Mahoney and Bridget Buckley. They were married in the presence of John Sullivan and Ellen Sullivan. More about Ellen Sullivan later.

Bridget Mahoney’s parents were listed here on this record as John and Margaret Buckley. Both John and Timothy had daughters with Margaret in their names. My grandmother was born in 1895 and named Mary Margaret Mahoney, and Timothy and Mary Bohan Mahoney’s first daughter was named Bridget Margaret Mahoney in 1901. What is so interesting is that Bridget was buried in New York, at Calvary Cemetery, and not at Woodbridge, New Jersey which had a Roman Catholic church and cemetery. The address for Calvary Cemetery is 4902 Laurel Hill Blvd, Woodside, NY 11377 and the phone number is 718-786-8000.

The largest Roman Catholic cemetery in the United States is Calvary Cemetery. There are 3 million internments! It was established in 1848 by the trustees of the Old St. Patrick’s Cathedral on Motts Street in Manhattan, when land in the lower section of Manhattan was too developed to build new cemeteries. It is owned by the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York. There are four sections with First Calvary being the oldest. The total cemetery is 365 acres! If you look at the bottom right corner of this map you can find Gates Avenue in Brooklyn. That is where my great-grandfather, John Mahoney, lived from at least 1890 to 1898 at apartment number 1484. He married Mary or Maria Carter circa 1892, and their first son, also named John Mahoney, was born in 1893. Their second child, Mary Margaret, was born there on the 2nd of April 1895. This cemetery would have been near their apartment in Brooklyn.

So, first thing today I called Calvary Cemetery in New York, and talked to a lovely lady named Susan. Since I had the date of death, 11 May 1895, she found the burial record within a minute or two. Bridget Mahoney was buried in 1895 in a plot purchased by Ellen Sullivan. No one else was buried in the plot. There went my hopes for finding out more about our family from other people buried next to Bridget.  She was buried on the 13th of May 1895 in Third Calvary Cemetery, Section 18, Range 18, Row 5, and Plot L. The entrance to that section is on 52nd Street and Queens Boulevard. Third Calvary was established in 1879. Susan thought most likely there isn’t a gravestone.  Here is a map of the actual cemetery sections.

Going back to the 1885 New Jersey Census in Woodbridge, NJ, along with Bridget, Timothy, John, and Michael Mahoney, also living with them was Jerry Sullivan. Sullivan is a surname that keeps popping up in our Mahoney research. In January 1900 when John and Mary Carter Mahoney’s son James was born in Harrison, NJ, Jeremiah Sullivan and Margaret Taffe were the godparents. It is possible that Jerry or Jeremiah Sullivan was related to the Mahoney clan, and so could have been the Ellen Sullivan that purchased the burial plot for Bridget. But was Ellen Sullivan a daughter or sister of Bridget? Was this Ellen the same Ellen Sullivan that was a witness when Timothy Mahoney married in Woodbridge, NJ? And who exactly was the Jerry Sullivan also born in Ireland in the 1885 NJ Census?

Next step for my sister and me is more research into the Buckley and Sullivan family. We now have possibly the names of another set of our 3rd Irish great-grandparents. If we can find a baptismal record for Bridget, daughter of John and Margaret Buckley, born circa 1832 in Ireland,  it will be a streak of good luck. It still may turn out that the Bridget Buckley Mahoney buried at Calvary Cemetery isn’t in fact my 2nd great-grandmother, but more family research will hopefully help clear up the origins of this Bridget Buckley Mahoney.

Here at Genealogy Sisters we wish you good luck this summer with your family research! Start with what you know about your immediate relatives and start building your family tree. Although it is really easy following those shaking leaves on ancestry.com also do your own research. Order birth, marriage, and death records (BMD) and visit cemeteries, courthouses and archives. Look at not only the United States Federal Census returns, but also the individual state census return.

Recently a reader of this blog gave the suggestion to look at the genealogy and census records at archives.org and it has a goldmine of information. Look through the filters on the left column and maybe you will find something like an old genealogy book about your own ancestors. https://archive.org/details/genealogy

Copyright 2017 by Maryann Barnes and Genealogy Sisters.