Mary (McGrath) Gray (1840 - 1907)

Born Jun 1840 in Ireland

Descendants

Died 21 Oct 1907 at age 67 in Thomaston, Maine

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Biography

Mary was born in 1840. She passed away in 1907.

"The grandfather on my mother's side, Michael Quinn, was a stonemason and from all account an excellent one. When the potato famine of the '40s struck Ireland, he and his wife Mary crossed the Atlantic and settled in St. John, New Brunswick. Mary's mother's two brothers, Hugh and James, came with them. Hugh was a sailor addicted to the bottle. He called on my mother once years later, but was too deep in his cups to give any accurate family information. James was the agent of a trading company which dealt extensively in Indian wares and artifacts. His job was bringing goods from the Indian trading stations north of the city to ships at St. John's wharf, a job which necessitated carrying on his person a large amount of money. One night he was robbed and murdered and his body thrown into the St. John River. His mother sought help from every available source to find the body. After days of fruitless search she in desperation went to a fortune-teller, who told her to make a small basket out of reed and rushes, place a lighted candle in it, and set it adrift on the river. Under the exact spot where the basket came to a stop, she would find her son's body. She carried out these instructions to the letter. Accompanied by her family and many half-doubting curious neighbors, she anxiously followed the candle downstream. When the basket veered toward a bend in the bank and finally came to rest against a growth of alders, they drew near, hardly daring to look down into the water. A bold neighbor stepped in, peered about, and shouted, 'Here he is!' "

The Quinns had three children, Katherine, Hugh, and Agnes, all of whom were born in St. John. Soon after the birth of the third child an epidemic of diptheria carried off the father, Michael Quinn, at the age of twenty-seven. This would have left his wife and children alone and friendless had it not been for Michael Fleming... Fleming became the guide and friend of the Quinn family.

With Michael Fleming as advisor and helper, the widow Quinn and her three children came to Spruce Head, Maine. She put her children in the village school and went to work in a big boarding house that was filled with teamsters, blacksmiths, and stone workers. People from all over the county came there for Sunday picnics. Among these visitors was a widower named Patrick Gray, who cast an eye on the young Widow Quinn, soon proposed marriage, and carried her off to his lonely home in Thomaston.

My mother was the eldest of Mary Quinn's three children. She was ten years old when she came to the States. She attended the village school, married my father at nineteen, reared seven children, and spent all her short life in their service... She died at forty-six of cerebrospinal meningitis, a short time before the medical profession discovered a serum to cure the disease.

The second member of my mother's family, Uncle Hugh, was a wanderer over the earth. He closed his aimless career by enlisting in the American Army, and was shipped off to the Philippines to fight against the insurrection of Aguinaldo. He must have served well as he was promoted from private to corporal, but was finally killed and buried in Iloilo on the island of Panay.

The third and youngest member of the family was Aunt Aggie. She married a widower who was much older than herself and who treated her more like a child than a wife. Aunt Aggie and Uncle Ernest would bring their little girl Helen to visit us every Sunday and stay all day."^[1]

Sources

1. ↑ Snow, Wilbert. Codline's Child: The Autobiography of Wilbert Snow. Wesleyan University Press. Middletown, Connecticut. 1968, 1974. pp 5-10. ISBN 0819540692

• 1880 USC Thomaston, Knox, ME shows living with husbsnd Patrick S. Gray, birth place Ireland and birth year 1840.

1900 USC shows same spouse and location, but also includes her grandson C. Wilbert Snow who was living with her while attending high school in Thomaston. I knew Wilbert and his auto bio gives this detail.