Irish-American Nurses

In 2019, a number of DNA matches appeared whose Crown ancestors trace back to the County Leitrim townlands of Sweetwood Lower, Sweetwood Little, and Cloonagh.  All of these places are a virtual stone's throw from the other.  Next came a flurry of correspondence between U.S. and Irish contacts, including some story-telling.  Here's one clip:

There were two unmarried brothers Jimmy and Tom Crown living in the little house beside Crown's Bridge in the townland of Cloonagh.

It didn't take long to identify that this reference applies to Martin Crown, shoemaker of Cloonagh, and his wife, Sarah Waters.  The baptism records tell us this couple had the following children:  John, Mary, Michael, Bridget, James, Ellen/Helen, Catherine, Thomas, and Sarah.  As of the 1911 census, James and Thomas (aka Jimmy and Tom) were living at home in Cloonagh with their elderly widowed mother.

I then tried a reverse search in U.S. records in hopes of catching any family members who might have emigrated:  were there any U.S. Crowns with parents Martin Crown and Sarah Waters?  There was one match to that query for a Michael Crown who arrived in the U.S. in 1903 on his way to his brother John.  The names of both Michael and John appear in the family group of the Cloonagh Crowns.  The passenger list, however, curiously included a reference to a state hospital.  Wonder what that means?

I subsequently fell across a family tree with a Crown relation who supposedly worked at a state hospital on Long Island, citing this wonderful book as a source.  What?  Now that I look, there were three Crown women who lived out on Long Island in communities where state hospitals were:  Helen Crown Moran, Catherine Crown Johnston, and Sarah Crown McHugh.  Hmmm, these are all names of girls in the family group of Martin Crown and Sarah Waters.  Interesting, but this evidence isn't quite enough to say there is a connection between Long Island Crowns and Cloonagh Crowns.

So turning back to Michael Crown who arrived in NY in 1903.  He apparently married in NY and had one child there who died as an infant.  Michael subsequently moved across the river to work in a pencil factory in Hoboken.  He had six children there before he was killed in 1936 when struck by a car while crossing the street.  His obituary mentioned three surviving sisters:  Mrs. Harry Johnston (Catherine), Mrs. O. McHugh (Sarah), and Mrs. Patrick McMurray (Mary).  Two of these would be our Long Island Crown nurses.

Because of the increasing DNA matches, we know that Crowns from the Drumlease civil parish were somehow related to my ancestor, Richard Crown of Pollboy, but the exact connection still eludes us, for now.  And yet thanks to correspondence with Philadelphia relations, descendants of Malachy Travers and Brigid Crown, we know that two g-granddaughters of our Richard Crown were also nurses at Friends Hospital in Philadelphia,  Elizabeth "Babbie" Travers Doherty and Tressa Travers Lynch.  This photo was so kindly shared by James Doherty, an enthusiastic family historian who corresponded with me before his passing in 2018:

Elizabeth Ann Travers Doherty, top step left. and Tressa Travers Lynch, far right

Does nursing just run in the Crown family?  Hardly.  It's interesting to learn that single Irish women outnumbered Irish men among the immigrants arriving at Ellis Island after 1892.  These women were intelligent and independent, wanting to take charge of their own lives, and nursing was a career that welcomed them. Many left the profession after marriage, but their skills, spirit, and compassion have carried on to present day.  As luck would have it, another DNA match has recently joined our growing ranks of Crown descendants, a retired psychiatric nurse who now lives in Australia.  She clearly follows other Crown descendants who found purpose in the care and treatment of mental health patients, those especially struggling through bleak times in their lives. The character of such women emphasizes, then and now, that helping each other is a heritage that belongs to us all.