Chapter 2

Hard Times

Two years after bringing the boys to Buffalo, Maire was concerned about keeping them fed. She believed strongly in God, but was a very practical woman. For months, she had struggled to provide for the three of them. One night in mid-summer after Jack had left the supper table, Pat asked for more to eat. Jo stopped clearing the table and looked at Maire washing dishes at the sink, wondering what her response would be. Maire regarded the boy with a pained expression. “I’m sorry, love,” she said, shaking her head. “There isn’t any left.”

“Why didn’t you make more?” asked the boy.

Maire choked and answered that she couldn’t. There was no more.

“But I’m still hungry,” Pat complained.

Maire looked over at his brother. “And you, John? Are you still hungry, too?”

John slowly nodded. Grimacing, their grandmother shook her head again and turned to resume stacking dishes in the sink. She reminded Jo to bring her the rest of the supper dishes and utensils.

Maire went to bed that night, but did not sleep, sick at heart that the boys had to go without food. She had done all she could, worked her fingers to the bone, but it wasn’t enough. Maybe God was trying to tell her something. After lying awake for hours, she saw what Divine Providence had already given her. At four in the morning, she fell into a sound sleep. That evening after supper, she said nothing to the boys, only that she was going over to see her cousin, Theresa.

Theresa Haggerty had migrated from County Cork at age fifteen and spent four years in London, where she became quite literate serving as a nanny to a wealthy family. She accompanied the eldest son and his young family across the ocean to Vermont, but left them within a year when he approached her sexually after his wife became pregnant for the third time in three years.

Theresa had relatives in Buffalo and moved there in 1830 at age twenty. Two years later, she accepted the proposal of Colin Haggerty, who had settled in the First Ward after completion of the Erie Canal. While not abusive as some husbands were, when he wasn’t working, Haggerty drank heavily. Unlike many women in the Ward, Theresa did not accept his behavior passively. Their home became a house of coldness, tension, and hostility over the next few years.

Theresa was a few inches taller than Maire, with dark hair, a thin frame, smiling face, and piercing green eyes that looked intensely interested in everyone she addressed.

She was now forty-two and had lived alone for eight years, ever since losing her husband in 1844 after eleven years of marriage. Coming home from a late evening of drinking, Theresa’s man had staggered into the Buffalo Creek at the foot of Alabama Street and drowned.

Theresa was pleasant to one and all and her neighbors looked out for her and guarded her home. She worked in the law office of Nathan K. Hall, including the two years he spent in Washington as Postmaster General, and then upon his return when he was appointed federal judge. She had grown close to the judge and one of his partners, the future president, Millard Fillmore, when she nursed both men’s wives during prolonged illnesses. Hall had incorporated her into his home. His son and four daughters called her “Aunt Theresa.” In 1844, ten years after he had formed a partnership with Fillmore, he started her in his practice as an assistant clerk. Her neighbors learned they could take counsel with her whenever they had dealings with government.

In her personal life, she protected her privacy and independence and never took in boarders. She didn’t need them to get by and she did not want them.

Theresa considered herself lucky and did not remarry. She had a tidy bank account that served as her rainy-day fund from a small insurance policy Hall had taken out on Colin through his church. She enjoyed warm relationships within the Hall family and was happy with the work she was doing in his law office. She had a diverse social life through work and St. Bridget’s Parish, where she helped tend the altar linens. Still, she rued the fact that she had never had children.

When her grandsons got home from school a week later, Maire called them into the kitchen and sat them down at the table. She had put off what she was about to tell them as long as she could. A little troubled by feelings of guilt, she fumbled for the right words to say what she had decided. John and Pat knew from experience that a somber expression meant she was about to talk about something serious.

Seating herself opposite them, she regarded them both with a tender gaze. She laced the fingers of both hands together on the tablecloth. Drawing in a deep breath, she began. “Boys, I have something to say. Listen now, carefully.

“There’s little money in me apron to feed the two of you. Remember, your Uncle Jack contributes enough to feed only Jo and himself. And winters he can’t do that because he’s out of work. You know I shop and cook for all of us and we all eat together, but ‘tis I who really feeds us three. I pay our fair share toward the rent and upkeep of all of us. I wouldn’t have it any other way. I’ve never been a burden on Jack since I came to live with ‘im. Even then with Jack and me both workin’, it’s not enough to feed us proper.”

John stared at his grandmother as she spoke; his brow lowered as he tried to absorb what she was saying, but he just wasn’t getting it. Pat refused to look at her, choosing instead to look down at his feet. He didn’t understand where she was going either, but he didn’t like it.

“Just last night,” Maire continued, “the two of you said again you were still hungry. By the way, so were the rest of us.” She straightened in her chair. “Somethin’ had to be done.” She paused still looking for the right words. “I talked with your Aunt Theresa. She says she could keep one of you. It should be you, John, said I, because you’re a year older and the break will come easier to you. I love you like my own soul, but love won’t fill your plate. Do you grasp it, boy?”

John did not want to understand. He would miss neither his cousin nor his uncle, who stayed pretty much to himself, but he could not imagine life away from his grandmother and his brother. He turned away as tears flooded his eyes. Pat looked on silently, mouth open at the sudden news and at his brother, crying out of control.

Maire rose. She was feeling all the hurt in John’s heart and placed her hand on his shoulder. John pulled back slightly but then leaned in to her touch. Her voice quivered. “Now, John, don’t cry. Aunt Theresa, you know, lives only two streets away on Mackinaw. An extra bedroom has she you’ll have all to yourself, lad. She refuses to take in boarders because she doesn’t need the money.” She was pleading now and the hurt of the situation was choking her voice. “That tells you a lot. Pat will call on the way to school every mornin’ and you two can stroll home together and play every afternoon. So it won’t be so bad.”

Her voice quivered. “Of course, I expect you to visit me every day to see if I have an errand for you: tend the chickens, pick up material from Mr. Levy, deliver a vestment. You know what I mean.”

John blurted out through his crying, “I don’t care! I want to stay here with you, Gram.”

She raised her tone and in a loud, trembling voice said, “John, listen, lad.” She was beginning to shout, angry not at John but at their plight. “The food on the table tonight tells it all. There wasn’t enough. The two of you are growing boys, eating like hungry young pups. And that’s the way it should be, John.”

She gained control once again and steadied her voice. “Aunt Theresa has a good job at President Fillmore’s law firm downtown.” She forced a smile and said, “No doubt, you’ll come to know some of her important friends. She’ll be able to take you places you’d only see from the outside with the likes of your granny. Excitin’ ’twill be, son.” She thought to herself, This is all wrong. Mother of God help us!

Maire hesitated for a few seconds, steeling herself for any further response from either boy, but except for sniffling, John made no sound. Pat sat stiffly, a frightened expression on his face, and said nothing.

Maire forced a smile and found additional words. “I hope there’ll be food enough so we can all eat dinner here every Sunday. Theresa has always wanted a son of her own. She’ll be after treating you like the son the Lord never gave her.” That was true, she thought to herself. In a month or two John would see it was all for the best.

The weight of her words now hit John fully. He felt abandoned once again, just as he had when his parents died. He was losing his grandmother, who meant more to him than anyone else in the whole world. He was sick to his stomach. He hardly knew Aunt Theresa. No matter how nice she would be to him, she was not his gram. He was terrified at the thought of separation from her. After slowing his crying and wiping his nose with his hand, he suddenly broke out again, crying even louder. He stammered and shouted, “But I don’t want to go to Aunt Theresa’s.” He repeated again and again, “I don’t want to go . . . I don’t want to go . . . I don’t want to go.”

Gram said nothing—in truth, she had run out of words to say—and only held him tightly. When he stopped crying after several minutes, she said, “John, take my hand and let’s go over and see where you’ll be livin’. Pat, come with us. Aunt Theresa is a grand lady and you’ll be needin’ to get to know her better, too.”

Maire and her grandsons walked two blocks to Aunt Theresa’s flat. The walk helped calm their feelings, but there was still a whale of hurt, anger, and fear in all three hearts.

Theresa greeted them warmly, exclaiming how nice it was of them to visit her. She looked up questioningly at Maire, who nodded toward John. Clapping her hands, Theresa asked if the boys would like cookies and milk. Neither boy smiled at the offer and only grunted when they were served. Theresa and Maire let their impoliteness pass. They knew how difficult this was for them.

The two women talked about the unusually pleasant weather, Maire’s new order for a surplice from St. Louis Church, and the law case Theresa was writing up. Maire raised her voice and pointed out to Theresa that John had gotten the cloth and delivered the surplice all by himself, but she could see that John was not buying her effort to build him up.

After an appropriate amount of time for the visit, Maire stood up and announced matter-of-factly that it was best they be going. She did not want to impose on Theresa any more than they already had. Theresa frowned and waved away her cousin’s statement, but stood up. This visit was at an end. Theresa asked John to visit her every day after school, as soon as she got home from work.

John did as Theresa asked. He visited her three times that week. His first visit was awkward and Theresa was hard-pressed to get him talking, but by the third visit, John chattered on about his school day without much prompting from his aunt. Bonding was beginning to take place.

That first day, Theresa sent John home with a half loaf of bread. She would have sent a whole loaf but did not want to offend her cousin’s pride. She excused the gift by asking John to tell his gram she was afraid it would go stale before she could eat it all. “Better you have it than it go to waste.” After the second visit, John brought home a small packet of stew meat.

Eight-year-old Patrick, enjoying the taste of meat for the first time in a week, declared that if Theresa was giving them food then there was no reason for John to leave. Maire shook her head. “No, my love, I’m sorry, it doesn’t work that way. If John lives here, he’s mine to feed. I must talk to your aunt about the food she keeps giving us.”

A week later in mid-August, Maire walked to Theresa’s with the boys once again, John pulling a wagon borrowed from PM, loaded with clothes and a few personal items.

As Pat returned home with Gram but without John, hurt swelled in the pit of his stomach, in spite of all Gram was trying to say. He was sad beyond words and blind angry with Gram.

“Gram, we’re a family and John should be here with us.”

“Pat, a family we’ll always be. A few streets can’t take that away. You’ll see.”

He left the house that afternoon and walked aimlessly through the Ward, until he encountered a gang of six boys from school. He played Mr. Fox and jacks with them till well after dark and momentarily forgot his hurt and anger. The gang called themselves the “Rounders,” a name given them by an old Irishman from the Flats when rebuking them for their rowdy behavior. Each section of the Ward had its own name. Among First Warders, they didn’t come from the Ward; they came from Hakertown, Rogues Hollow, Uniontown, or the Flats. The poorest came from the Beach, a shantytown of several hundred shacks on the lake.

Their leader was a boy Pat knew only by his nickname, Bugsy. He liked Pat for his brash ways and willingness to plunge into whatever adventures he suggested.

After playing with the Rounders for a few days, Pat joined them roaming the farmers’ market on Elk Street. He got John to come along. The boys dashed into this jungle of colorful vegetables and small animals, enclosed by walls of horse-drawn wagons on each side. Subtle plant smells and pungent, fresh horse manure flooded their noses. They peered at baskets of apples, pears, peaches and plums, squash, turnips, carrots and corn, animals hanging limp by their feet or squawking in their pens, clothes, pots and pans, and myriad other household items. Over the voices of their neighbors, the sounds of neighing horses and chickens clucking wildly as their heads were twisted, farmers shouted: “Fresh corn, beans, carrots, and potatoes . . . golden juicy peaches from the shores of Lake Ontario . . . rabbits, ducks, chickens slaughtered this morning.”

The gang ran in and out of the stalls. One distracted a farmer by knocking over a basket of tomatoes. The rest grabbed produce from the other side of the stall. Then they all ran.

After a half hour of these antics, Pat grew bolder. He climbed up on the back of a wagon and began tossing pears from a bushel basket to his pals. Cursing profusely, the farmer lunged at Pat and almost caught him, but the boy evaded him, laughing like a fool.

As Pat moved out front of the gang with his devil-take-the-hindmost deeds, Bugsy grew resentful. He was big for his age and traded on his size to become leader of the gang. When they had run a distance from the market, Bugsy pushed Pat to the ground. “Get lost, ye termite, or I’ll bust in yer face.”

Pat’s face was red with embarrassment and anger. John pulled on his sleeve and the two walked off. Seeing a paving brick by the side of the road, Pat picked it up and turned back toward the gang. John said, “Pat, let’s go home. We don’t want any more trouble today.” John was afraid that the gang would beat his brother to a pulp and him as well. Pat ran back toward Bugsy who was walking in the opposite direction and walloped him over the skull.

Bugsy fell to the ground screaming in pain and holding his head. Before Pat could hit him again, John and the other boys rushed him, wrestled the brick away, and held him to the ground. Bugsy lay flat out on the ground, rubbing his head and moaning. He had only one true friend among the boys, and that friend stood off to the side. The rest of the boys resented the way Bugsy bullied them and did nothing except break up the fight. Pat was furious with his brother and the other boys. He struggled to break their grips, but could not. Finally, he gave in, relaxed, got up, and walked away.

The next day, John had a long talk with his brother. Pat understood it was futile to fight with Bugsy and his gang. He knew John was right. Gram would be deeply disappointed in him if he got into trouble with the boys’ parents or, worse, with the police.

From that point on, a truce reigned between Pat and Bugsy. Both acted as leaders, but were careful to defer to one another when decisions were being made.

John dropped out of the gang, uneasy with their rowdiness and thieving, but said nothing to his grandmother or aunt about his brother or the gang.

The next night, Pat came home with a rabbit. John had been visiting with his grandmother and was just leaving. Pat cut open the rabbit and yanked out its organs. On a hook on the chicken coop in the back yard, he hung it up to bleed. “We’ll eat this bunny tonight, if we figure out how to skin it. But we’ll need a couple of potatoes and carrots,” he said. John skinned the rabbit. Pat went back to the market and begged vegetables from a sympathetic farmer who was just pulling a tarp over his wagon. As he walked home, he thought to himself, I can tell tales and beg with the best. He was very proud of himself.

“I suppose this rabbit shed its skin and hopped up to you on Elk Street, and the vegetables on his back, so as we’d have a full meal,” chided Maire.

“No, Gram,” maintained Pat wearing an expression of angelic innocence. “A farmer was closing his stall and wanted to get rid of ’em. We happened to be standing there. He asked us if we had anyone to cook them up. John said you, Gram, often cooked for a whole village in Ireland.” Maire laughed. What he alluded to without knowing it was a custom called a “spree.” She knew the boys had only the faintest idea of what a spree was.

Since there was nothing but two onions and some flour in the pantry, she didn’t press the issue. At least John would have a farewell meal worthy of the name. Gram sent John over to fetch Aunt Theresa. The meal, with the six of them eating all they wanted, eased the transition a bit. Pat put his angel act in his memory bank for future use.

Over time, the boys got used to parting ways at the end of the evening, but that first departure brought on clenched faces and tears.

In June of 1852, at age fourteen, Jo left school after the eighth grade and went to work as a clerk at Sherman’s Dry Goods Store at Main and Swan Streets and added a few helpful dollars to the household. Something clicked with Maire when Jo started working that Pat should not be sharing the same bedroom with her. She began to look at Jo differently and noticed the changes that had come over her body. Not one to dally over decisions, she talked to her brother and the same evening switched bedrooms with Pat. She now slept with Jo.

Over the years, Maire Joy became the delight of many of the Buffalo Irish clergy, telling at parish socials the same stories that had made her so popular in Mallow. She befriended Bishop John Timon at St. Patrick’s Church at Ellicott and Broadway in 1847 and continued their friendship at St. Joseph Cathedral, which the bishop dedicated in 1855.

The bishop—once Prefect Apostolic of the Republic of Texas—was stocky, short, only five feet, with a large head of wavy white hair and a broad, severe face set off by big round, piercing dark eyes. He had a preaching voice that rocked the ushers standing in the back of church.

In late 1855, before leaving for Europe, the bishop was looking for an event that would build on Irish culture. He had participated in a spree on his last trip to Ireland and imagined a similar event that would raise money to cope with the social evils of the community and, above all, raise Irish pride and self-respect. He believed that a spree was no substitute for proper institutions to care for his poverty-stricken flock, but he also wisely noted to Father Martin Corbett, whom he had placed in charge of the St. Vincent de Paul Society on Fulton Street and one of the few priests he trusted, that nothing could substitute for self-respect. That surpassed anything money could buy or build.

He knew Maire had organized sprees in Mallow, so she would be the right person to consult about putting on an Irish festival in Buffalo. Maire attended mass almost daily. One morning he approached her after mass. “Maire, my heart is sick with the evils besetting our community. Our people have lost their soul and their way. Back in the old country, the spree was the way to spring the people out of their grief and sadness. Do you think we could do it here?”

“Sure I don’t know why not, Your Excellency! Are all the seanachaithe dead and gone? Don’t we have the best entertainers in America? We could bring in pipers, singers, dancers, and seanachaithe from New York and Chicago. And we could start it with a parade along the Canal to the cathedral.”

“Maire, I love the way you think. I’ll have Father Corbett start talking to you about this grand event. Will you help us?”

“You needn’t ask. T’would be the pleasure of me life to do it, Your Excellency.”

On a Saturday in early 1856, Pat wheeled home in PM’s wagon one of the biggest watermelons Maire had ever seen. “Now where did you get that, son? I know they don’t grow in the fields off Catherine Street!”

“Gram, they leave some of them in box cars coming up from the South. See, this one’s got a slash in its side. So the fancy ladies don’t want it and the men in the market can’t sell it.”

Maire had her doubts, but she knew when Theresa and John came over for dinner on Sunday she would have something special to serve them. She was also tired from sewing and delivering a chemise on the West Side. Today she just didn’t have the persistence it took to question Pat and to wade through his half-truths.