After arriving by ship in America at New York, Jeremiah is known to have left there for work in Chester and Lancaster Counties, Pennsylvania. One account says that “He spent five years there in the management of a public highway and in assisting farmers during the harvesting of their crops.” A skeptical interpretation of those occupations might be that Jeremiah was toiling as a road construction worker and a farm hand. We can assume that he had very little if any education. On a 1837 legal document he signed his name with an “X” indicating that he was illiterate. But he was saving his money.
About 1830 Jeremiah, who even on legal papers gave his name as “Jerry,” moved west to Sandusky County, Ohio. He bought 219 acres of government land in Ballville Township, near present day Fremont, Ohio. The selling price was $1.25 an acre. By the time he arrived, Ohio had been a state for 27 years. The opening of the Great Lakes to the markets of the East by the completion of the Erie Canal was sparking economic development. Farm products now could be shipped from Ohio to the East Coast and even overseas.
Nonetheless, the countryside at the time of Jeremiah’s arrival was still largely a wilderness. His acreage was covered in trees. The Irish immigrant worked for months to clear the forest, felling the trees by ax and removing the stumps by shovel and horse-power. The heavy tasks discouraged many of his compatriots and they returned to Ireland. A true pioneer, Jeremiah persevered and eventually cleared his land for farming, keeping a smaller plot for his log house.
Jeremiah’s obituary in the Fremont Journal of October 8, 1875, accounts him as “a noble, good hearted-fellow, and by all who knew him was respected....” This picture fits family legend of his character. One story reveals his strong Catholicism. Because there was no priest in the settlement at Fremont, the town closest to his farm, Jeremiah was obliged to go to Tiffin, 15 miles away to hear Mass. As the story goes, there was no real road at the time and he had to make the trip on foot through the untracked forest. As a result he could attend Mass only very occasionally. But on Christmas, Easter and several Sundays through the year, Jeremiah would make the trip. He would set out at midnight with a pine torch and a hatchet, marking his way through the woods on trees that served as guideposts for his return. He would arrive in Tiffin in the morning in time for Mass, socialize with fellow parishioners into the afternoon, and then begin the long trek home, arriving after dark.
Another Jeremiah story is set some years later. A man sentenced to be hanged as a horse thief the next day in Fremont asked for a priest to hear his confession. The nearest priest was in Tiffin and it did not seem possible to meet the doomed man’s request. But -- according to family legend -- Jeremiah undertook the journey on horseback, leading a second horse over the trail he had helped blaze to Tiffin. He woke the priest in the middle of the night and together they returned to Fremont in time for the prisoner to receive the sacraments.
Jeremiah worked as a bachelor farmer on his homestead for almost a decade before marrying. Somewhere along the line he acquired the nickname, “Irish Jerry.” Family legend says that he was approached one day by his friend Edward King who suggested that he bring to America for the purpose of matrimony, Johanna, King’s sister in Ireland. Jeremiah is said to have retorted that Johanna was just a little girl. King reminded him that it had been 15 years since he had seen her and that Johanna had done some growing in the meantime. That not withstanding, however, there still was a substantial difference in their ages -- perhaps as much as 20 years.
Johanna’s Story
We cannot know the feelings experienced by our Great-great Grandmother Johanna King upon being told that she was to leave her family to travel to America and marry a much older man she could hardly remember. Of her background we know only a little. She was born in County Kerry in 1817 but apparently her parents relocated in the Parish of Iveleary when she was a child. Was she a early version of the beautiful Inchigeela lass? Upon her death years later a flowery obituary “one of Erin’s dark eyed daughters.”
Johanna was in her early twenties when she emigrated, possibly accompanied by one or two other family members. We can assume she disembarked from her ocean voyage at the port of New York. She then proceeded west via the Erie Canal and then to Lake Erie. She was met at the dock at Sandusky, Ohio, by her brother Edward King and her future husband who had come there by horse and wagon. Loading her effects into the wagon, they headed back to King’s homestead. There Johanna stayed until, not long after, she and Jeremiah were married in the Catholic Church in Tiffin. Then she joined her new husband on his farm.
Despite the arranged nature of their marriage and a considerable difference in age, their union appears to have been a loving one, attested to by her bearing 13 children, of whom several died in infancy. One of those who survived was grandfather, Florence Sullivan, born in 1845.
Jeremiah died in 1875. As noted, his exact age was in some doubt. Johanna would live 12 years beyond his passing to be 78 years old and accounted upon her death in 1897 as one of the oldest residents of Sandusky County. The headline on her obituary read: “Was a Pioneer Woman.” “That section of the country was at the time a vast wilderness,” said the Fremont News, “and Mrs. Sullivan experienced all the hardships, trials and tribulations of early pioneer life.” [End of Part 2]
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