When in New York: Irish Ancestors in Hells Kitchen

Even with all other travel in 2022, I had the chance to visit New York City four times last year.

I am a nostalgic person who loves to travel which, when mixed with my fascination with family history research, leads me to plan trips around key landmarks connected with my family.

As far as I know, only one line of my family ancestors spent any significant time in New York. In the 1880s and 1890s, my second great grandparents William and Anne Tormey (formerly Burke) lived in what is now present day Chelsea and Hells Kitchen. William worked as a brakeman on the railroad, quite possibly the same line that is now what New Yorkers call the “High Line”.

Walking the High Line (November 2021)

It is hard to picture what the area looked like compared with how it looks now, with Hudson Yards and so many new modern, glass buildings. (The nearby Tenement museum in Bowery is a must see if you want to see what life was like for the average person in the city at the turn of the century.)

William’s daughter, my great grandmother, Mamie Tormey (my father’s grandmother, Mamie Hoffman) was likely baptized at St Paul the Apostle near Lincoln Center. While my dad and I cannot find her birth certificate, we did find one for one of her two brothers, James.

Baptism Record for Mamie’s brother, James Tormey from 1890

Just southwest of Central Park and built in 1858, St Paul’s is an imposing church now dwarfed by a skyscraper next door. I had the chance to walk by the church for the first time last June on a walk from Central Park to Hells Kitchen.

Front of St Paul the Apostle on 59th Street (Photo from June 2022)

Fun fact: Anna Nalick (of “Breathe (2 AM)” fame) recorded her last album at St Paul the Apostle. (https://www.annanalick.com/about/)

Why and when did the Tormeys come to New York? The journey started in Ireland when William’s parents, Dennis and Bridget Tormey left Ireland during the famine (1840s) and moved to Liverpool, England. They spent the next 30 years here, having eight children, including my ancestor William. Dennis worked as a shoemaker and they lived in Birkenhead, across the river from Liverpool.

England and Wales Census, 1851 Showing the Tormey Family in Birkenhead

After Dennis’ death in 1873 (cause unknown), the Tormey family soon moved to New York as they appeared in the city as early as the 1875 census. (New York State had their own state census periodically between 1825 through 1925.) Once there, their oldest son, William met Annie Burke, my second great grandmother and they were married at City Hall in November 1886.

William met a similar fate to his dad – a young death and possibly at the age of 35 in 1890. While finding a valid death certificate is difficult, William’s death was almost certainly a work accident while working on the railroad. As I walked the High Line, I could not help but wonder how close by he had potentially had his work accident. While this type of death sounds extreme by today’s standards, at the time, the leading cause of all deaths for Irish immigrants were work-related accidents. (“The Irish Way”, James Barrett p. 115)

From here I try to imagine Annie, now a single mother with three young children under the age of 4, trying to take care of her family in Manhattan in the 1890s, presumably in a tenement. Although we do not know exactly where they lived until 1900, it is likely that Annie relied on some family in the area, like her older sister Mary.

Photo of Annie Tormey (Burke); date unknown

Annie eventually had to make the difficult decision to send her three children upstate to St Dominic’s orphanage in Rockland County. My great-grandmother and her two brothers were living there in 1900. The children who lived there were labeled as “inmates” in the census.

1900 Census for St Dominic’s; Children Labeled as “inmates”

Saint Dominic’s Home is a Catholic agency founded in 1878 by the Blauvelt Dominican Sisters “as a home for immigrant children abandoned on the streets of New York City.” More recent “inmates”, although no longer called this on census records, recounted their experiences at St Dominic’s in this NY Times article from 2006.

Mamie and her brothers spent at least two years in the orphanage and were discharged back to their mother, Annie in February 1902 to the address 335 W Thirty Eighth St, in the Garment District. (The current building on this site was built in 1926.)

The only reason we know this is because my dad asked his mother to write down some dates that she remembered from her mom, Mamie. This shows how important it is to ask family members to write things down!

Emma Kopaskie (Hoffman)'s Dates on St Dominic's for Mother and Uncles

My dad was seventeen when his grandmother, Mamie died. Understandably, he relayed that his grandmother did not talk much about her childhood, including her time in the orphanage. By the time he was older, Mamie started developing dementia; he remembers her always carried a duster in her hand and calling everyone “Sonny”.

Family history research often leaves you with a lot of gaps to fill – you have to make best guesses of what life was like or why they were propelled to make the decisions they made. But imagining what life may have been like when I travel is a fun way to try to attempt to fill in some of the missing pieces.