As stated before it appears from maps and from the location of the only Catholic Church in the Township that most of the early Irish Catholics lived in the Landenberg-Kaolin-New Garden Village areas: Civil wars flared frequently in Ireland between English Protestants and Irish Catholics for reasons too numerous to cover here. Protestants were treated little better than Catholics and were the chief rebels in the early 1700s when agrarian revolt was greater in northern Ireland than in the south. The Protestant Irish Parliament was more limited, and more corrupt, than the British Parliament. Literary and scientific activity was conducted in English and was a part of English cu1ture with nothing distinctively Irish about it. The Catholic religion and the Irish language were outcast, persecuted things.
Ireland became a land of rent-paying peasants as landlords moved to England and spent rents and invested there, and steadily drained the wealth of Ireland. Dublin became depleted; Ireland was bled white. Cultivation degenerated more and more into potato growing and pig feeding as Irish morale decreased. It has been written that except for the consumption of whiskey when it could be got, and a little fighting, family life was the only amusement. The Irish married and bred. The population of the country was 2,845,932 in 1785, jumped to 5,536,594 by 1802, and by 1845 reached 8,295,061, at which point the potato gave way and there was the frightful famine. Many died; many emigrated elsewhere, especially to the United States.
During the Winter of 1846-47, the distress caused by the crop failure awakened the sympathies of people all over the world, and reached even into Chester County. Public interest in the plight of the Irish was high and on February 5, 1847, a public meeting at the Court House in West Chester led to the appointment of committees, including one in each Township, to speak to and solicit subscriptions from the people of the County to aid their cause. West Chester headed the list by early March with pledges that totaled $534.92. Shortly thereafter, New Garden's committee reported it had collected $300.00. They had, also, purchased from millers of the Township fifty barrels of flour which was sent to Philadelphia for immediate shipment to Ireland. Additional bounty - corn meal, wheat flour, rye flour, barrels of pork and beef, and bushels of peas - collected throughout the County went to Cork, one of the most depressed areas. Receipt was acknowledged with the statement, "Never did a gift come more opportunely; our own funds are all but spent, and our government has ordered all relief works to be suspended. In a few days more our district would have been subjected to the horrors that are now, and have been for months, sweeping away thousands upon thousands of the Irish population..."
Irish writers and those who visited Ireland to appraise the situation of the peasants even before the potato famine struck reported them even then sunk to "the very extreme of human wretchedness," and one who had studied first-hand the plight of the American Negro in slavery described conditions of Irish peasants as far worse than anything he had observed in America. The many descriptions written after the famine were heartbreaking. They wrote of nearly naked people grubbing frozen roots from frozen fields; parties of tall, brawny men stalking by with fierce, vacant scowls as if realizing that this oughtn't to be, but knowing not who to blame; and little children sitting in the weak winter sunlight, for they could not stand, with bloated yet wrinkled faces and fleshless limbs, who would never grow up to be men and women. Of the thousands who left Ireland, hundreds never reached the Promised Lands. The ships were called, appropriately enough, "Coffin Ships," and from twenty to over fifty percent of the passengers died on the various voyages. Many who survived were not permitted ashore because of pestilence, but were herded onto coastal islands where more died and were buried in trenches. Those who reached America and found employment and established homes helped other family members as well as friends do the same thing.
The 1851 tax records of New Garden Township list a few names that are identifiable as early Irish Catholic families - Peter Connel, Charles Callahan, Dennis Gleeson, Thomas McCallough, George Crawford, Patrick Donhue, Michael McLaughlin, Timothy Nolan, and Farrigan Dugan. Several were added in the next six years - Joseph Kelly, James Galligar, Michael Giddy, Patrick Meloney, Matthew Shay, Michael Grady, Dennis Mahoney, James Gown. Each year thereafter found additional names and by 1870 the names that are most familiar to us today had appeared - McMahon, Moynihan, Kalaher, Desmond, Shehan, Mealey, Lafferty, Galway, Diller, Duffie, Fahy, Twomey, Sheridan, O'Neal, Leary, Quill and Sullivan. Added still later were Slavin, Farkasch, Lyons, and O'Brien. The spelling is as it appears on the Township records. In many cases the immigrants did not read or write well, and spelling was made by the writer as he heard the name pronounced. In most cases the "O" or the "Mac" or "Mc" that preceded a name was dropped and never added again. While some of the names do not appear on the tax records until the late 1800s, the families lived here earlier but owned little that was taxable.
Many came to work with the railroad. Some helped build the line through Toughkenamon and continued working for that company when construction was completed, while others worked later on the Wilmington and Western Railroad to Landenberg, both in its construction and in its operation and maintenance. Others were drawn by employment at the clay works of Kaolin. A great many worked as farm laborers. Some women and children may have sought employment at the mills in Landenberg, but generally they did domestic work. Much help was given these families by Friends of the area who extended the relief that had begun in Ireland, itself. It is said that they accepted the same responsibility for the Irish Catholics as they did for other Quakers, and helped them prosper. They lent money on mortgages at the going rate of interest, but were patient when times were hard; lent horses when one was lame; helped tend sick animals; planted and harvested if a neighbor became ill. There seemed to be no self-consciousness about religious differences, but it is said that the Irish Catholic sometimes had an occasional laugh at the Quakers for "observing punctiliously the requirements of their religion without letting it interfere with their worldly practicality."
The work on their farms was often done by the numerous children in the family if father went elsewhere to a daily job. The only holidays for many were Sundays and Christmas and an occasional pattern (picnic) in the Summertime. But, weddings and christenings and, of course, the wake provided an opportunity to meet for the great Irish arts of story-telling and singing, and a little tippling to brighten the occasion. Children were not raised on nursery rhymes, but on stories of the "wee folk" - fairies and leprechauns - and ghosts and the devil and the banshee, told first-hand by those who had witnessed their doings, or in whose presence the banshee had announced forthcoming doom. Parents often resorted to speaking in Gaelic for discussing those things children shouldn't hear. When father took produce "to town" (Wilmington) on market days, he often started just after midnight to be there for the first early customers. If the weather was bad or "dark of the moon" he left on the afternoon before and slept through the night under horse blankets. A candy stick or a few ginger cakes, or an orange or banana if in season, were brought home for the children.
One family that came early and stayed long is the Sheehan family. Timothy Sheehan came to America on a sailing vessel that docked in Philadelphia in 1851 accompanied by a brother, William, and a friend, Dennis Lynch. They walked to Kaolin where another brother, Thomas, was working for he had arrived a year earlier. Timothy went to work for a farmer at Toughkenamon and spent the rest of his life in New Garden Township. He met and married Joanna O'Brien in 1857 and they became the parents of six children. Their son, Daniel, later recounted many stories they had told of their voyage from Ballyvourney, County Cork, and nearby Bantry, to the United States. In spite of hardship and terrible storms, etc. the trip took only six or seven weeks. Two of their children died in childhood and a son, John, went to California while still a young man. A daughter, Mary, married Francis Hyde and son, Daniel, grew up to become a farmer. He married Margaret Kelleher.
Daniel Sheehan was an ardent Democrat who, promoted temperance and education. He was always interested in community affairs. In 1900 he moved to the general store in Kaolin and became Postmaster of the Village until the office was closed. His daughter, Anne (Wood) taught at Landenberg School for many years while sons, Daniel F., Jr. and T. Joseph, operated the feed and supply business there. Joseph's wife, Helen Kelly Sheehan is well remembered as Postmistress in Landenberg for she spent many devoted years there.
Margaret Kelleher Sheehan was the daughter of Michael Kelleher and Alice Callahan. They married in 1861 and settled first near Hockessin, and later near Landenberg. Four of their eleven children died when a scarlet fever epidemic swept the area. The Kelleher name is extensive throughout our Township but many of the families are unrelated while others have only distant family connections. Two brothers who came early and stayed were James and Jeremiah Kelleher of County Cork. They were distantly related to Michael.
James Kelleher came first to the Kennett Square area and met and married Elizabeth Kelleher about 1903. Elizabeth had arrived shortly "after the big snow" the first time, returned to Ireland for awhile, and once again came to the United States. After their marriage, they lived at Broad Run until purchasing their Starr Road farm in 1910. His early work on farms brought him $12.50 weekly, while his wife recalled that domestic work paid $1.50 per week plus board. Their daughter, Johanna, now lives at the Starr Road farm along with her niece and her husband, Mr. and Mrs. Charles Blevins, and their four children - three generations yet living in the house of her parents. James Kelleher was a lover of auctions and conversation who bought and sold cattle extensively. Elizabeth Kelleher was a cousin of Daniel Kelleher who had settled earlier on Sharp Road.
Jeremiah Kelleher married Ellen Connell when he settled in New Garden Township where he remained until his death. His son, J. James, married Frances Folger who bore him two sons, W. Thomas and R. Jerry, who yet live here with their families. James Kelleher spent most of his working life farming, but did other work, too. Several years were spent working for the Township, and his son, Thomas, has served as Township Secretary since 1962. D. John Kelleher, the other son of Jeremiah, married Agnes Kelly and moved from the family farm to West Grove. He had always hauled milk for the dairy and is well known to the many farmers of the area.
Jeremiah's wife, Ellen, was the daughter of John Connell and Hannah Twomey. John Connell credited Daniel Kelleher with aiding him to get to America. He and Hannah had several other children, among them John "Tibbie" Connell whose colorful presence is known to many in West Grove and surrounding areas. "Tibbie's" present wife, M. Elizabeth Lamborn Connell, is the granddaughter of Peter Connell, one of the early taxpayers in our Township. After leaving Dublin, Peter Connell went to England and later came to the United States from there. When he lived in New Garden Township, it was near the railroad for his children walked "the long trestle" to go to Lizzie Sharpless School on London Tract Road.
Hannah Twomey Connell's parents, Michael and Mary, the parents of five children, were indirectly related through marriage to William Sheehan and came here at the urging of that family. They moved here from Massachusetts to the little house close by the Friend's Cemetery.
Mark Hughes Sullivan, father of William W. Sullivan who operated the feed and supply business in Landenberg before it was owned by Sheehan Brothers, hailed from near the village of Banleer, County Cork, in the early 1840s. He met Julia Gleason of Ballyvourney, also, and after their marriage settled in nearby London Grove Township. His tenth and youngest child, Mark, was a noted writer who penned among many things a very descriptive story of his early childhood there.
Many of these and the families which follow are related, either directly or through marriage. Information on some is sketchy and has been pieced together with difficulty by children and grandchildren who sought it.
Martin Dillon arrived in the United States between 1850 and 1860 from County Wexford and made his way to New Garden Township where he worked on the railroad. His son, Edward, was the father of seven children including another named Martin who in turn fathered four - Martin, Jr. who operates the Avondale Diner and whose son, Martin (Pat), represents the fifth generation of that name within the Township; a twin brother to Martin, Jr., James, who lives in Florida; and two sisters, Mary (O'Connell) and Margaret (Markel) who live in West Grove. A daughter of the first Martin, Anna, married Frank Lafferty. Edward Dillon and his young son supplied the bark of willow trees that was necessary in the production of gunpowder to the DuPont Eleutherian Mills in Wilmington.
Michael Lafferty's arrival here was delayed to permit his wife to come first. Mary Magdalene Kelly Lafferty and Michael of County Mayo were at the docks when she found her papers were missing. Michael gave her his, for she felt it would have been impossible to face her son and parents, again, for goodbyes. Their son, Peter, was forced to remain in Ireland since no one under fifteen years of age was permitted on the voyage. Mary Lafferty was cared for by four young women of Philadelphia on board ship during the six weeks journey. They helped her find employment when they landed. Mary was joined by her husband and they came to Kaolin to be with his brothers, James, Peter, John, and Frank. James Lafferty had been the first to arrive in the area. Michael worked on various farms and at the Spencer Kaolin Works with his brothers. The family lived in "Dutch Row" until that house became too small for the parents and ten children born at Kaolin. They then moved to "the little brown house" on the Spencer estate, and later to their big farm nearby. When Graham Spencer died, Michael Lafferty purchased the property from his widow. Their son, Louis, moved into, the mansion house while two other sons, Hugh and Frank, moved to other houses on the property. The oldest son, Peter, was brought to America by Mary's brother, Hugh Kelly, when he reached age fifteen. Many of the Lafferty children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren live in and around Kaolin today. A daughter, Margaret, who married Christopher Vandegrift, built her home on the foundation of "the little brown house" that had burned and has lived there for 51 years. Her sister, Agnes, widow of the aforementioned Raymond O'Neal, has lived in her same house for fifty years. Clay has given way to mushrooms and several family members have entered that business. Frank was the first to do so, followed by Louis and others, and now by their sons and grandsons.
John and Cornelius Moynihan each owned a farm off Sawmill Road in Landenberg by 1873 and may have been brothers. Little has been found of Cornelius who may have moved to West Grove shortly thereafter. John Moynihan was a Section Foreman on the railroad whose crew maintained the area from Avondale to Landenberg. He married Julia Haley and had a son, Daniel, who went on to practice medicine in Chester; and a daughter, Josephine, who taught at Avondale School for many years. John's brother, Andrew, also farmed near Landenberg. He was interested in astronomy and had a stargazing room atop his home.
The McMahon family was here prior to 1870. William, of County Claire, married Mary McGrath and farmed for many years on Sawmill Road. His oldest of seven children, Robert, who married Cathleen Connell was a Foreman on the Railroad. Another son, Thomas, was a cattle dealer in Landenberg in partnership with William Turner and, also, the first rural mail carrier from Landenberg Post Office. He said he took the job "because nobody else wanted it." Land for St. Francis Xavier Church was donated by the McMahon family.
George Reardon moved to his farm, "Oakdale," near the Lyceum House after he married Hannah Lynch. His parents had settled in Hockessin when they arrived from County Cork. At one time he was a local Tax Collector whose horse, it was jokingly said, stopped at each house along the way of any trip he made in the Township. He moved near Toughkenamon later and served as Township Supervisor, then as a Director of Kennett Bank when he retired.
Cornelius Quill farmed in Landenberg. He lived in Philadelphia after leaving Ireland and came to Laurel Heights Road from there. His son, Timothy, worked on the railroad and moved elsewhere, while other sons, Cornelius and Dennis, farmed the old New Garden Inn property after purchasing it. They were known as very good men with the soil who planted and cultivated "by the Signs."
Michael O'Neill lived near New Garden Meeting House in 1858. During a certain portion of each week he sold dry goods and other items from his wagon throughout the neighborhood and was "at home" on Saturdays to wait on customers. Nothing further is found of him which is unfortunate, for the Irish peddler has become such a tradition that his story would probably be an interesting one.
The family lists could go on endlessly, for there are so many more who added so much with their sturdy farms, their political involvement, the color and contrast of their lives with such fun-loving ways and family devotion. These few selected are only representative of many.