Family Stories: Jeremiah Sullivan (Part 1: Ireland)

 

While Irish immigration frequently is identified with the millions who came to the U.S. as a result of the Great Famine,  the reality is that many Irish made the trip across the Atlantic well in advance of that tragedy.  Among them were our Sullivan ancestors.  These folks were established in the U.S. before the famine and well in time for the American Civil War.   

We must be in awe of these Irish ancestors who pulled up stakes in their native land,  bid goodbye to relatives they would never see again, and headed deep into the wilderness untamed in a country unknown. In understanding what motivated these forbearers and their exodus from Ireland, we begin with the patriarch of our branch of Sullivans.

The Origins of “Irish Jerry”

Jeremiah “Jerry” Sullivan,  our great-great grandfather, was born in Ireland in the 1790s.   His precise birth year is in question.   In the 1870 census,  he is listed as having been born in 1798 but in a 1896 biography it is given as 1791 - a substantial difference.   Trying to validate one or the other dates through internal evidence only compounds the confusion.  It is possible that even his children were uncertain of his age.   When he died in 1875, for example, a newspaper obituary vaguely pegged him as “at the advanced age from eighty to ninety years.”  

 

Jeremiah’s birthplace was in County Cork in the south of Ireland, a region known asLabels:  Jeremiah Sullivan, Ivleary, Inchigeela, Whiteboys Rebels, Rocktites, Immigration from Ireland Iveleary, literally the Valley of the Learys.   Iveleary was the Roman Catholic parish designation.   The civil locality was called Inchigeela after the central municipality of the area.  Parishes were the original unit of administration in Ireland and were used right up to the end of the 19th Century.    Thus,  Jeremiah’s tombstone gives his birthplace as “Iveleary.”

The name Sullivan is the third most common in Ireland, ranking behind only Kelly and Murphy.   A 1978 booklet estimated that there were then 41,500 bearers of the name -- including variants like O’Sullivan -- resident in Ireland.  It is the most common name in County Cork.  The booklet suggests that there were perhaps 10 times that number of Sullivans living throughout the world.   My father often boasted that there were more Sullivans in the Boston telephone directory than Smiths.  A check made of that claim a few years ago showed he was right.  Sullivan today is said to be the 41st most common name in the U.S.    In the original Gaelic the name is “Suilleabhain,”  whose meaning variously is given as hawk-eyed, black-eyed or one-eyed.  Of the latter interpretation,  the story is of a clan king who was so generous that he gave away one of his own eyes to a blind man.  He obviously was a man far ahead of his time in surgical procedures.

According to heraldic books,  the Sullivans/O’Sullivans were members of one of the principal families of the race of Eogan (Owen) of Munster who held power in Cork,  Kerry and most of Tipperary.   The three lines of the family and their territories were O’Sullivan Beara (Bantry and the Beare Peninsula),  O’Sullivan Mor (Dunkerron and Kenmare),  and O’Sullivan Cnoc Raffan (Tipperary).   It is impossible to know which of these three strains were in Jeremiah’s blood.  The motto of the Sullivans in Gaelic reads: “Lamb foistenach abu.”   That translates to “The steady hand to victory.”

Of Jeremiah’s immediate family we know almost nothing, not even the names of his parents or siblings.  Family legend has it that the Sullivans were farmers of some substance -- the information coming from a former “hand” on their farm.   My father was always skeptical of such claims,  noting that Ireland was so poor in those days that even ownership of a cow might be deemed wealth.

Trouble in the Valley of the Learys

The countryside around Inchigeela is some of Ireland’s most beautiful.  Nearby is Gougane Barra, a 1,000-acre wooded park surrounded on three sides with mountains and the fourth open to allow the headwaters of the River Lee rise and flow from a stunning blue lake of springs.   St. Finbarr’s Oratory is located there, a round one-story structure open at the center to a cross with beehive like cells for the individual monks.  Gougane Barra also is known for a holy well (curative waters)  and a beautiful stone chapel dedicated to St. Finbarr, a companion of St. Patrick and patron saint of Cork. 

Inchigeela, meaning “Inch of the Hostage”  is in a region of Ireland with a reputation for violence. It is shown above in the 19th Century.  Secret societies of Catholic Irish agricultural workers, usually youths in their 20s and even teenagers,  known generically as “Whiteboys,”  were on the rise there during Jeremiah’s boyhood.  They robbed and burned and sometimes even killed, reputedly as a protest against injustices to Catholics.  Poverty and famine, occasioned by a Cork crop failure in 1822,  may have been the proximate cause of their violent outbreaks, but required tithing to the established Protestant Church and confiscatory rents for land were perennial irritants.  The Whiteboys also may have been encouraged by a widely-believed contemporary prophecy that Catholics would overthrow Protestants in Ireland by the end of 1824.   Because of continuing unrest,  County Cork was under English martial law for most of the 1820s.

In early January of 1822,  when Jeremiah was a youth, skirmishes were fought at the Pass of Keimaneigh (the Deer’s Pass) that marks the boundary between Counties Cork and Kerry.  The fight was between a group of Cork Whiteboys known as Rockites and a force of gentry yeoman led by Lord Bantry.  Combatants were killed and wounded on both sides.  A famous poem in Irish commemorates the fight and the spirit of the untrained locals who challenged the King’s militia.  On January 25 three more incidents occurred,  one close to Inchigeela when  Rockites attacked and torched the home of one of Lord Bantry’s officers who had fought them at Keimaneigh.  By February, however,  the British had reinforced their troops in the county and had implemented an Insurrection Act enforcing the martial law.  Rockite prisoners were sentenced to death and hanged in public executions in several Cork towns.

Although County Cork and Inchigeela were generally calm for a time after the quashing of the Rockite Rebellion,  the region remained a recruiting ground for rebels.  In the next century,  a Fenian member called Harold Delaney would escape British capture in the Inchigeela church by dressing as a woman.  He later memorialized the event in a well-known Irish poem.  One stanza captures the spirit of the place:

“Like all the boys along the Lee I joined a rebel band,

         “And pledged myself to freedom’s cause for dear old motherland,

“An outlaw, I was chased from Cork to Keimaneigh’s famed Pass,

         “And forced to fee from Erin’s Lee and my Inchigeela Lass.”

   

While it is impossible to know what impelled young Jeremiah Sullivan to leave Ireland, it is possible to speculate that his departure somehow was the result of a disturbance that occurred around 1824.  When tax collectors for the British occupiers rode into the area on horseback from Cork City,  they were met by an outraged populace who hurled rocks at them.  The tax collectors retreated but returned in several weeks,  this time accompanied by soldiers.  In a short time the uprising was quelled and three men were tried and sent to the gallows.   Two of them were named Sullivan.  (Interestingly,  the name of the hanging magistrate also was Sullivan).

We can speculate that the hanged Sullivans may have been relatives of Jeremiah’s family.  It also possible that he himself played a role in the uprising.  Or there may also have been pressures on him as a young Catholic laborer to join a Whiteboys society. There is no way to be sure of his motives for emigrating.  But we do know that not long after after the rebellion had been put down, Jeremiah was on a ship bound for New York City.  Unfortunately,  research has not revealed anything about the name of the ship or the events of his passage.   He may have been accompanied by Edward King,  his friend and future brother-in-law.  Jeremiah never returned to Ireland. 

                                                             [End of Part One.]

Remembering Favorite Motion Pictures

 

Foreword:  In the past I have used this blog to record memories of my favorite things over these many years of life, including soda pop (Aug. 14, 2014), candy and gum (June 6, 2015), comic books (Aug. 29, 2015), hotels (March 26, 2016), eateries (Jan. 13, 2017), and radio programs (Nov. 11, 2017).   It occurs to me that a list of favorite movies is in order in a similar march down memory lane.  I have chosen to concentrate on just five, based partially on the criteria that I have seen them multiple times and would do so again.  I have added a “second tier” with short comments.

Casablanca (1942):  Let me join the millions of fans of this movie who consider it the best ever made.  The story, the acting, and particularly the memorable lines keep running through my mind.  In 1942 when it first was released, I was only seven years old and it was much too “adult” to be taken to see it.  In ensuing years, however, I have viewed it at least a dozen times and see new things to like each time.  For instance the symbolism of Rick hiding the “letters of transit” (truly mystery documents) in the piano.

The scene I can watch over and over is the final one when Rick (Humphrey Bogart) shoots the Nazi major just as Moroccan Police Chief Renault (Claude Raines) arrives on the scene knowing the killer but phoning his headquarters to “round up the usual suspects.”  Up to that time Renault’s sympathies have been ambiguous but he signals his anti-German feeling in one brief shot where he picks up a bottle labeled “Vichy water,” Vichy being the name of the Nazi puppet government established in Southern France.  Without a word he disdainfully drops the bottle into a waste basket, letting us know he is one of the good guys.

The Crosby-Hope “Road” Movies:  Not just one movie but seven made between 1940 and 1962.  One could argue that since each proceeded on the same formula, expected by the audience, they meld into one.  These make the list as a holdover from my childhood when these films were considered family fare.  Where ever the road was going, from Singapore or Morocco or the Yukon, Bing Crosby was the wise guy, who sang a song to two, and always seemed to get the girl.  Bob Hope was the ignorant foil for his buddy, always in trouble.  The pair were teamed with Dorothy Lamour (born Mary Leta Slaton) who sang in each movie and whose acting skills were not her best asset.

These motion pictures opened up the silver screen to new techniques.  For example, beginning with “Road to Singapore” the films also included in-joke references to other Hollywood actors and jabs at Paramount Pictures, the studio that released the films. There are also frequent instances in which Bob Hope breaks the so-called “fourth wall” to address the audience directly, such as in “Road to Bali,” in which he says, "[Crosby]'s gonna sing, folks. Now's the time to go out and get the popcorn.”  They paved the way for actor/directors like Woody Allen in “Annie Hall.”  One of my favorite bits was a paddy-cake routine between the two when they were about to escape capture by slugging their assailants.

High Society (1956).  With a lifelong “soft spot” for movie musicals, this one takes top spot in the many times I have watched it.  There are a number of treasured scenes from the opening number with “Satchmo” Armstrong singing on a bus with his band, to Grace Kelly’s greeting of two unwanted journalists, and the iconic moments on the sailing yacht as Bing Crosby and Kelly sing “True Love.” 

My favorite scene occurs, however, in the library of Kelly’s palatial home.

There, having escaped a boring society party, Frank Sinatra, a reporter, and Crosby, a wealthy jazz enthusiast, find each other in escape.  They sing a duet called “Did You Ever?” that ends each verse with “what a swell party this is.”

The interplay of these two major singing stars might have been difficult to pull off but these two do it seamlessly.  There is even a bow to the “out of box” moments of  the Road pictures when Crosby remarks on Sinatra’s “newer” way of crooning.  When the the men finally emerge arm in arm from the library to the party it is a moment of sheer triumph over boredom. 

Young Frankenstein (1974):  Of all the Mel Brooks-made movies, his best to my mind is this riff on the old Mary Shelley story, shot in black-and-white as were all the old movies based around the mad doctor and his monster.  Brooks “deconstructs” the original story and rebuilds it around a doctor who is an American descendant of the original Frankenstein.  Gene Wilder pays the lead role with a comedic intensity that displays true genius.  The surrounding cast is superb and Brook’s writing and directing mean non-stop laughter.

My favorite scene is the interplay of Wilder as young Frankenstein and Cloris Leachman who is eerily brilliant as “Frau Blucher,” the keeper of Frankenstein’s castle.  We are introduced to her before she is seen by the frantic neighing and stomping of horses each time her name is mentioned.  Frau Blucher gradually tempts the skeptical Wilder into the dark secrets of his ancestor.  My favorite scene between them is Leachman playing a violin and leading Young F. to Dr. Frankenstein’s attic laboratory while intoning: “He vas my boyfriend.”

Tootsie (1982):  Of a spate of comedies in which men play the part of women (“Some Like It Hot,” “Mrs. Doubtfire) my favorite is “Tootsie.”  It is the story of a down and out actor who succeeds in getting a starring role in a daytime serial dressed as a woman.  The part is played by Dustin Hoffman, one of the master actors of the last fifty years.  The supporting cast is excellent.  I fell in love with Jessica Lange at first sight.  Teri Garr stars in this movie as she did in “Young Frankenstein.”

My favorite moment in this picture is the denouement when Tootsie/Hoffman descends a staircase as the live screened show is rolling to disclose that he is not “Emily” but Edward, Emily's twin brother who took her place to avenge her.

Watching the man who became a woman become a man again before a startled cast and  assumed viewing public is delicious.  Hoffman does his striptease with infinite skill, worth watching again and again.

As part of a “second tier,” I will mention three movies briefly.  “Beat the Devil” (1953)is a spoof of spy films directed by John Huston with an all-star cast that includes Bogart, Jennifer Jones, Gina Lollobrigida, Robert Morley, and Peter Lorre (also in Casablanca).  Alfred Hitchcock’s “North by Northwest” (1959) is memorable to me not for the iconic scenes of Cary Grant chased by an airplane or scrambling over Mt. Rushmore, but for the stunning beauty of Eva Marie Saint in a scene where he meets her in a dining car. (She is living, 97 years old.) Last, the Coen Brothers “O  Brother Where Art Thou?”(2001), a film chronicling the misadventures of George Clooney and two other convicts on the lam amid an avalanche of hilllbilly music.  

Family Stories: Eugene Boyer in the Civil War

 

Foreword:  The family can only count one Civil War soldier among direct ancestors.  He is Eugene Boyer, a shoemaker by trade, who lived from 1842 to 1892.  He saw considerable combat, was wounded once and hospitalized but returned to duty and served out the war. The records of Eugene's service and of the movements and battles of the Wisconsin 20th infantry make possible a reasonably detailed account of his Civil War experience.

Eugene Boyer was approximately 17 years old when the Civil War broke out.  He joined the fight two years later when he was 19 by enlisting as a private in Company K of the 20th Regiment Wisconsin Volunteer Infantry.  At the time,  he was newly married.  We have Eugene’s original enlistment papers which fail to record his age but note that he joined on August 13, 1862, for a period of three years or the end of the war, whichever came first.  He joined at Madison, the Wisconsin state capital.  For so doing he immediately received a $215 bonus and one month’s advance pay, amount unspecified.  Eugene was part of a new unit organized as part of a levy of some 18,000 men Wisconsin was to supply to the war effort by order of President Lincoln.  The new regiment was officially mustered 10 days later on August 23 with a formal communication from Wisconsin Governor Salomon to Secretary of War Stanton.

The Battle of Prairie Grove

Private Eugene Boyer’s regiment was mobilized in quick order.  Detailed records of its movements show the Wisconsin 20th leaving the state on August 30 for St. Louis, Mo., presumably by train.   They moved to Benton Barracks two days later, where the raw troops were given some rudimentary training,  and thence to Rolla,  Missouri.   In September the regiment marched to Springfield and from there to Cassville, Missouri, then over the Boston Mountains to Cross Hollows.  The 20th saw its first combat in December 1862 at the Battle of Prairie Grove, Arkansas.

This battle was part of a campaign by both sides to control the land west of the Mississippi River.   It took place at a crossroads in northwestern Arkansas not far from present day Fayetteville.  Confederate forces had sought to destroy two divisions of the Union Army of the Frontier before they could link up and join forces.   The rebels attacked between the two divisions  and achieved initial gains.  They then established their line of battle on a wooded high ridge.   Two Union assaults in which the Wisconsin 20th participated were repulsed.   At nightfall neither side had won but the Confederates retreated during the dark giving the Union forces a strategic victory and helping establishing Union control of Arkansas.

   

The 20th Wisconsin had acquitted itself well.  Following a forced march over the mountains to come to the aid of beleaguered Union troops, the regiment had been in the forefront of the assault on enemy lines and  captured one Confederate battery before a counterattack forced it back down the hill.  Its color bearer was killed but others carried the banner to safety.  In his report to headquarters,  Gen. Francis Herron, the division commander, said:  “I ordered the infantry to charge the enemy’s batteries.   The Nineteenth Iowa and the Twentieth Wisconsin did it gallantly.”  A subsequent communique noted, however, that the 20th Wisconsin had “suffered severely.”  It sustained the highest casualty counts among the regiments.  Total casualties in the battle were about even between the contending forces, with the Union reporting 1,251 killed or wounded.

Vicksburg and Yazoo City

From his Union Army pay records, it appears that after the Prairie Grove battle and by early 1863 Eugene was out of action and in the hospital suffering from what later was recorded as measles and mumps leading to chronic diarrhea. He is listed as residing in a hospital in Springfield, Mo., in January and February,  in Fayetteville, Ark., in March, and back in Springfield in April.  By May 1863, however, Eugene had returned to Company K just in time to take part in one of the pivotal battles of the war --  the siege of Vicksburg.   In his book The Final Fortress: the Campaign for Vicksburg, 1862-1863, historian Samuel Carter III says:  “Of all military operations of the Civil War, none was more important than the campaign for the Mississippi Valley which culminated in the siege of Vicksburg in the spring and summer of 1863.

At this point the 20th Wisconsin was attached to General Herron’s Division, 13th Army Corps, of the Union Army of the Tennessee.  Its senior commander was Ulysses S. Grant,  a distant cousin of Eugene.  The 13th  Corps arrived below Vicksburg on June 13, as the Union siege was entering its final phase.  The regiment, Eugene among them, took up positions at the extreme left of the line.   The men were spread over three miles and in a version of trench warfare gradually edged forward until by June 25 they were only 600 feet from Confederate fortifications.  When the Confederate surrender came on July 4,  the 20th Wisconsin was among the Union force deployed to occupy the city and its defenses.

Within a matter of days Eugene and the 20th Wisconsin were on the move again.   This time Grant ordered General Herron and his 13th Corps to take Yazoo City,  Miss., about 50 miles up the Yazoo River from Vickburg.  Using riverboats and accompanied by the Union Navy with an ironclad called the DeKalb,  Herron’s troops attacked the strategically placed town and its defenses.   The 20th Wisconsin once more distinguished itself in battle.  As the Confederate defenders retreated from the town,  the regiment followed them for ten miles,  capturing a number of prisoners and forcing the Confederate troops to abandon wagons and a gun carriage.  Union forces suffered no casualties during this brief engagement but the DeKalb was sunk by a floating mine.

Eugene Joins the Pioneer Corps

After the fall of Yazoo City,  Gen. Herron’s troops were engaged in a number of forays against Confederate strongholds in Mississippi and Louisiana.   On September 5,  by order of the general,  Eugene Boyer was separated from Company K of the 20th Wisconsin and chosen to be part of the Division Pioneer Corps, equivalent to today’s combat engineers.   These units were organized by choosing about 20 men from each regiment.   Among their duties were cutting trees,  making roads for the army,  laying down bridges,  repairing railroads and constructing artillery batteries. Those serving in the Corps wore a special emblem of two crossed axes on their uniforms.  The involvement of a division commander in the selection process suggests that being picked for service in the Pioneer Corps was something of an honor.   As a result,  however, we cannot be sure of Eugene’s whereabouts from September 1863 until he officially rejoined his unit some 10 months later. 

 

During most of that time the 20th Wisconsin was in the vicinity of Brownsville,  Texas,  part of the Union force garrisoning the area.  It made at least one foray from that base when, in January 1864, it joined an expeditionary force that crossed the Rio Grande to Matamoras,  Mexico, to protect the United States Consul there and assist in the removal of property belonging to American citizens.    In February Gen. Herron was reporting to Union headquarters that the 20th Wisconsin has been depleted by death, wounds and disease to just 253 “effective” men.

Battle of Mobile Bay

Still the Wisconsin troops found no rest, nor presumably did Eugene Boyer.   Still a private,  Eugene is recorded in pay records as having returned to Company K of the 20th Wisconsin in July 1864,  probably at Brownsville.   In early August the regiment was on the move again,  this time to Carrollton, Ala.,  a small town near Tuscaloosa,  and from there to the vicinity of Mobile, Alabama.   By August 9 it was engaged in the Battle of Mobile Bay.    This operation combined Union naval and army forces in a concerted effort to close the bay to Confederate ships involved in running the Union blockade of Gulf Coast ports.

The action began on August 3 when Union forces landed on Dauphin Island and laid siege to Fort Gaines, shown above.   Two days later the famous Union Admiral David Farragut with a fleet of 14 wooden ships and 4 ironclads entered Mobile Harbor.    Enduring withering fire from Fort Gaines and Fort Morgan,  Farragut’s forces nonetheless gained access to the inner harbor and forced the surrender of a small Confederate fleet.   Because the 2Oth Wisconsin was sent to the scene after the battle began, it can be surmised that Confederate resistance was stronger than anticipated.   The regiment was deployed to the peninsula that forms the lower mouth of Mobile Bay, where it meets the Gulf of Mexico.   Fort Morgan lies at the end of the peninsula.  Despite the Union siege, the fort was not taken until August 23.  Its fall effectively closed Mobile Bay to Confederate ships.   The City of Mobile, however, remained in rebel hands.  Union casualties were estimated at some 320 men killed.

In and Out of Navy Cove

After the battle,  the 20th Wisconsin retired eastward to a coastal location called Navy Cove,  near present-day Gulf Shores, Ala.  They garrisoned the area for almost four months,   perhaps to prevent the port from being reopened.   From time to time the regiment was employed for pacifying expeditions to nearby towns.  In December 1864 its troops were moved, probably by ship,  to nearby Pascagoula, Mississippi, and from there marched up country to Franklin Creek. A skirmish with Confederate troops is recorded there on December 21.  In this engagement the 20th Wisconsin is recorded as having captured 8 million feet of lumber,  subsequently rafting it through enemy-held country to the town of Griffin’s Mills, Miss.,  where they captured another 7 million feet of lumber.    Turning their wooden booty over to Union quartermasters,  the 20th Wisconsin then was transported, presumably by ship or barge,  back to Navy Cove, Miss.  The regiment stood duty there until March 1965 at which point it was ordered to the final campaign against Mobile and its defenses.   

At this point the 20th Wisconsin had been reassigned to the new 13th Army Corps commanded by Maj. Gen. E.R.S.  Canby.   In mid-March 1865 Canby moved his forces along the eastern shore of Mobile Bay forcing the Confederates back into their defenses.    Union troops then concentrated on Spanish Fort and Fort Blakely that guarded the approaches to the city.   Spanish Fort was under siege by April 1 and fell on April 7.   Fort Blakely,  where the 20th Wisconsin was engaged, fell a day later.   For the next month regimental elements were at both forts,  collecting stores, ammunition and artillery pieces.   Finally,  Mobile itself surrendered and the 20th helped garrison the city until late June 1865.

Eugene Goes Home

As hostilities were winding down,  the 20th Wisconsin moved to Galveston,  Tex., on the Gulf Coast.  Then Lee surrendered. and the Civil War was over.   In Galveston,  on July 14,  1865,  the regiment was demobilized and its soldiers sent home.   During its almost three years in service, the 20th lost five officers and 100 enlisted men killed or mortally wounded.     Dead through disease were one officer and 145 enlisted,  an ironic but not uncommon Civil War statistic.  Unnumbered others had been seriously wounded and bore the scars to their graves.   Illnesses first contracted in the service also would continue to plague many. 

  

For his service to the Union  Eugene Boyer, still a private, was paid an amount due on his clothing account of $18.28, $6.00 for turning in his weapon, and $25 as a mustering-out bonus ($75 more was promised) --     a cash total of $49.28.   With that money in his pocket,  he likely was packed on a troop train in Galveston and with his comrades in arms sent home to his wife.  He was 21 years old.   According to later testimony by a friend he had suffered a “slight flesh wound in his leg”  during the war.   More serious was the chronic diarrhea that would plague him for the rest of his life.

                                                              ######