St. Patty's Day Series - Maggie Mullarkey

Maggie Mullarkey was my husband's great great grandmother. She was born in Tobercurry, Sligo, Ireland on August 15, 1866 to Michael Mullarkey and Catherine Kelly. She arrived, alone, in New York on May 18, 1888 but her mother and most of her siblings also came to the US. They lived in DePere, Wisconsin.

On Christmas Day, 1892, she married Rudolph Schneider in Milwaukee, and they were in Racine by 1900. They had children Henry, Caroline, Veronica, Theresa, Loretta, Leo, Florence, and Paul.

Sadly, she died shortly after childbirth when Paul was born, on May 18, 1904 - 16 years to the day after she arrived in this country. The most tragic part of the story is that Rudolph, unable or unwilling to care for all of the children Maggie left behind, dumped them all off at an orphanage. By 1910, all of the children had died or been adopted except for my husband's great grandmother Veronica "Vera." She was still living at the Sisters of St Dominic orphan home and would continue to be in the care of the Catholic church throughout her teens. She was very close to becoming a nun, until for some unknown reason she left the church, moved to Detroit, and married.

This prayer card, sent to me by my mother in law's cousin Debbie, is one of the saddest and most poignant objects I've seen in my adventures in genealogy. The sloppy signatures of children far too young to be without their mother brings tears to my eyes and breaks my heart.



Maggie's life was short and unrewarding. She braved the journey overseas, married, and bore 8 children in 11 years, only to die before seeing any of them grow past childhood. Her children were abandoned, renamed, and separated from each other. Her husband quickly remarried and had a new family, with seemingly little remorse for the family he left behind. I can only hope she knows that we honor and appreciate her, and that her legacy did not die with her.