Happy Crown Anniversary

It took awhile, but I finally found the marriage record of my ancestors, Patrick Crown and Ann Clancy in Clooneclare Parish, County Leitrim, Ireland on 9 July 1860.

I almost missed this record for two reasons:

1. the spelling of the Crown surname. As I have suspected, the original spelling was Croghan (see previous post).
2. this particular priest appears to have written what is normally a "C" as a "K" !!! So Croghan appears written as Kroghan and Clancy appears as Klancy. I don't have much explanation for that. Although the record is written in Latin, it wasn't, to my knowledge, a Latin rule to interchange the letters "K" and "C".....

I can't quite make out the witnesses to this marriage. The first seems to be Charles Meehan (Patrick's mother's family) and the second could be a Maria Clancy.

So here we are, 156 years later. Without Patrick and Ann, there would be no me blogging about Crown relations.... Patrick and Ann had five kids before leaving Ireland around 1870, including a set of twins. Only three of those five survived to adulthood:

• Sarah Crown McDermott, who died shortly after giving birth to her first child
• Richard and Charles, both, apparently, life-long bachelors.

Patrick and Ann never returned to Ireland (that we know of), and lived the rest of their lives in Brooklyn, NY, adding four more children to the family, two of whom survived:

• John J. Crown - the first child of the next generation to be born in America, my g-grandfather, and
• Annie Crown Connors, who also left many descendants.

Happy Anniversary to our gg-grandparents!

Claiming McDermotts

In searching through the old Brooklyn Eagle newspaper for something else entirely, I ran across the death notice of a Sarah Crown, died Dec 19, 1894, daughter of Patrick and Ann, and wife of Patrick McDermott! I was surprised by this because we last saw Sarah Crown as single in the 1892 NY census. So she had not been married long, but had she had any children?

The answer is yes, George Patrick McDermott, born on  5 Dec 1894, two weeks before Sarah's death. George's father, Patrick McDermott, later remarried and had more children, and most other genealogies include George as a son of Patrick and his second wife. But no, George P. McDermott definitely had a Crown mother who was born in County Leitrim, Ireland. And George went on to live a full life, joining the service during WWI, then marrying and having five children and a number of grandchildren before his death in 1951. It will be fun to see if we can find some living descendants from this newest Crown cousin.

Note: George McDermott was alive during at least half of my grandfather's lifetime.  Is this where the name George came from?

So this is quite the news for our branch of the Brooklyn Crown's. We have believed that from the nine children of Patrick and Ann, only two of the nine had their own children whose descendants carry on today - namely John J. Crown (my ancestor), and Annie Crown Connors. Ahhhh, but now we know there was also Sarah Crown McDermott who died shortly after the birth of her first child. How sad a day it must have been for Patrick Crown, by then a widower, to lose his oldest daughter who was so recently married and still so young (30). But Sarah's son, George P. McDermott, was the only grandson Patrick would know before his own death in 1903 (two granddaughters would also come along from John J. Crown before 1903). Even so, Patrick's will made no mention of any grandchildren .....

Sarah Crown McDermott is buried in the Crown family plot at Holy Cross with her parents and a number of her siblings.