THE HEALY FAMILY
Here is what we know so far (4/11/2026) about our Healys.
They come from Cork City, 56 Clarence St to be exact. A letter from Elizabeth Healy pins down her location for the latter part of 1896 and the first half of 1897 in Ballincollig, a market town in Cork five miles west of the City of Cork on the Killarney - Macroom road just south of the Lee. The letter indicates that she is in touch with her father and her brother Batty (Patrick), so we can assume that they lived nearby at that time but not necessarily in Ballincollig. In the Fall of 1999 HAJ spent a week in Ballincollig but could not document the existence of our Healys there.
Family legend has it that our Healys were so poor "they went barefoot in the snow". Their mother, Mary Connolley, died (shortly?) before 1892. Denis reported in a document that she died of typhus. Their father, Denis, Sr, remarried (a rich? woman), too quickly to suit the children in Cork at the time. Perhaps this together with the return of Denis from British military service in Burma and India (2nd Battalion, Royal Munster Fusiliers) prompted the emigration to New York (to say nothing of the generally depressed conditions in Ireland).
Perhaps the decision to emigrate also had something to do with the recent death of Parnell, October 6, 1891. Family legend has it that Hannah Bone's sister, Tygeen, worked for Parnell as a bodyguard, running along behind his coach. She was a large woman, well over 6 feet tall. In any event, Mary, Katie and Denis came to New York on 12/15/1892. (Date?) We don't know what ship brought them or what the port of entry was.
We do know that Batty came later. In fact, Elizabeth's letter tells us he was still in Ireland in June 1897.
An undated letter from Batty from Sanford, Maine, possibly in 1901, indicates that Hannah Bone had not yet arrived. She eventually joined him as his wife some time after that in Sanford, where he worked in a "plush" mill where simulated persian carpets were made. Why Maine? Perhaps they knew some friends or relatives who were already there? Was it a coincidence that the bishop of Maine at the time was a Healy?
They may have also been in Boston for a time, later, before returning to Maine. Harry told a tale of a family trip to Boston as a young teenager. Bored with his family's company in Boston, he allowed the door to close on the elevated train with him still on the platform. Then he went off to see the sights of Boston that he was interested in, returning later to their lodging, no doubt to catch hell from his mother. Assuming Harry was 15, this event may have happened about 1922. Someone was in Boston they knew: Bat? Kate? Dennis? Someone else? (By this time Waldemar Jensen was almost certainly in the US.)
In the US Denis served in the US Army and then the US Navy, seeing action - if only in the engine room - on the USS Amphitrite in Havana Harbor and Puerto Rico in the Spanish American War and also on the USS Brooklyn in the Phillipine Insurrection and the Boxer Rebellion. Both Katie and Denis appear to have had a drinking problem. Both Mary and Katie worked as domestics when they first arrived.
Mary met Charles Jensen while working as a domestic in (or living in) a boarding house on Court Street in Brooklyn.
Per HFJ some children in Ireland died as infants and were not named. Per EJ Elizabeth then married an Englishman named Martin and went to Liverpool? We know from her letter and other docs that she first married Daniel Healy (another branch), who died in January 1897
Feedback: dfjensen38@gmail.com. . . . 6/07/2001 -- 4/16/26 . . . HOME