Uncovering Thomas J. Mahoney: The Long Road to My 3rd Great-Grandfather

For quite awhile now, my 3rd great-grandfather Thomas J. Mahoney was little more than a handful of vague facts on my family tree. He was an Irish immigrant who showed up in Connecticut by 1860, raised a large family, worked every job he could to keep them afloat, and died in Worcester in 1920. I knew the broad strokes, but not the story. Not the man.

And definitely not the names of the parents he left behind in Ireland ... unless they came with him to the United States back in the 1850s.

Like so many Irish lines, the Mahoneys were swallowed up in the great silence left by missing parish books, burned civil records, and the chaos of the mid-19th century. I've searched on and off trying to figure out where in Ireland Thomas was born, and who his parents were. The answers always felt one document out of reach, and might be one of those things I'll have to leave to a professional genealogist in Ireland.

All the same, I keep digging.

My nights for the past few weeks have been spent buried in newspaper archives, cross-checking every mention of a Mahoney in the Norwich and Worcester areas. I flipped through U.S. Census pages line by line, zooming in on faint handwriting. I combed through street listings, vital records, burial notices — anything that might help link one stubborn Mahoney to another.

And finally, the last couple days, things began to click.

Pinning Down the Dates, the Moves, the Man

Census data had always given me the rough outline.

• Born May 1842 in Ireland.
• In the U.S. by 1855 or 1859 — census reports conflict here.
• In Norwich, Connecticut by 1860, a teenage laborer just starting his life in America.

But today, thanks to finally finding his death certificate, that vague birth month finally became a real date: May 2, 1842.

The obituary has added even more color. It describes Thomas as one of the strongest men in Norwich during his younger years, working as a steamer driver who handled the horses for the Wauregan engine company during fires. This wasn’t just a man who lived through the 19th century. This was a man who ran toward burning buildings.

From Norwich, the family probably followed work wherever the mills needed labor.

• 1870 Census – Thomas and his wife Bridget O’Sullivan are in Norwich with their early children. Thomas is a laborer; Bridget is “keeping house.”
• 1880 Census – They’ve moved to Richmond, Rhode Island, where Thomas, and sons John and William, all work in a woolen mill.
• 1900 Census – The family is now in Worcester, living at 140 Cambridge Street. This is where things get confusing, because Thomas’s son — also named Thomas — is head of household, and his own son named Thomas. But everyone fits: my 2nd great-grandfather Thomas (1871–1958), his wife Nora, their three young children, and the older generation of Mahoney brothers all working woolen-mill jobs.
• 1910 Census – Thomas, now widowed, is living with his son William at 80 Temple Street.
• 1920 Census – He appears as a patient at the Worcester State Hospital, likely during the final decline of his long illness.

On August 27, 1920, he died at the home of his son Daniel at 212 Franklin Street. His obituary said simply: after a long illness. His death certificate listed arteriosclerosis with broncho-pneumonia as a contributing factor.

After all those years in Connecticut and Massachusetts, he made one final journey back to Norwich, where he was buried beside his wife, Bridget.

Bridget O’Sullivan: A Brief, Bright Thread

Bridget was born in Ireland in 1844, the daughter of Eugene O’Sullivan. Her mother’s name remains one of the lingering mysteries. She and Thomas married sometime before 1864, most likely in Connecticut. She died of pneumonia on March 24, 1900, just 56 years old.

Her funeral notice describes a woman deeply loved. Dozens of floral tributes: “Dear Mother,” “Mother,” “Mother.” Four sons carrying her casket. Her body returned to Norwich — the place where the Mahoney's American story began.

The Breakthrough: Finding Thomas’s Parents

Today, after cross-matching death records, burial entries, and likely family clusters, I was finally able to identify the parents of Thomas J. Mahoney: 

• Father: yet another Thomas Mahoney, born in Ireland
• Mother: (first name unknown) Leonard, born in Ireland

For a line whose origins had been a black hole for so long, even these two names are monumental. And the Leonard surname, which is strongly associated with County Cork, reinforces the growing theory that Cork is the homeland of this Mahoney branch.

No townland yet. No parish. But a county and two parental surnames are more than I had even this morning.

Genealogy is often described as solving a puzzle, but it rarely feels that neat. It’s more like pulling threads out of dust, hoping one leads somewhere. Today, finally, a thread did. Now I continue digging to see where this latest thread will lead.

I’m actively researching both sides of my family tree and writing full family histories so these stories aren’t lost to time. Much of my ancestry leads back to Ireland, where records become difficult to trace without the help of professional Irish genealogists. Any contributions go directly toward funding this research, obtaining hard-to-access records, and preserving our history for future generations.

If you’d like to support the project, you can contribute via Venmo at: @ShaunMoriarty. Thank you for helping make this work possible.

Great-Uncle Philip unlocked by AncestryDNA connection

AncestryDNA rest results have paid some dividends pretty quickly after enabling me to contact a previously unknown second cousin, and learn of the man she only knew as "Grandpa Far Away."

My grandfather, James Mahoney, was one of five children born and raised by Thomas Mahoney Jr., and Agnes St. John in Worcester. All five were born during the Roaring 20s and raised in the Great Depression. My grandfather was the youngest of the litter, born 25 June 1929 — some four months before the Wall Street Crash that officially began the Great Depression. I've had some information regarding some of his siblings, but two have largely remained enigmas: Thomas (born 1924) and Philip (born 1926). All I had for either of these guys was their dates of birth, first name of their spouses, and when they died. No maiden names for their wives, no idea on who their children were, no idea where they passed away, what they did for a living, or anything else.

Through one particular AncestryDNA match, I was able to connect with Jennifer, my great-uncle Philip's granddaughter. She has been able to fill me in a bit with the maiden name of Philip's wife, Pauline, and the dates of her birth and death. From there, I quickly found her obituary, which gave me a good deal of brand new information. Through this cousin, I was also able to learn of Philip and Pauline's four children, further confirmed through Pauline's obituary.

In Pauline's obituary, Philip is not mentioned whatsoever. Instead, it mentions a second husband who had passed in 1997. Turns out that soon after their fourth and final child was born, Philip had decided he was not happy with the family he had carved out for himself. He drained the family bank accounts, took up with a neighbor, and left the family flat. He moved to Arizona at some point, probably as part of this seemingly abrupt abandonment of his wife and kids, and, my newfound cousin asserts, was later known only through cards as "Grandpa Far Away." Through the U.S. Public Records Index, I was able to confirm Philip living in three different cities in Arizona. In 1978, he's in Phoenix, and then he's in Glendale and Peoria in the 1990s. I was also able to confirm what was assumed, that he died while in Arizona.

In the early 1980s, Pauline would marry a man who had seven children through a previous marriage. Between them, that would be 11 children, and eventually many grandchildren. Pauline passed away in 2012, at the age of 82.

Buoyed by this wave of new information, I spent a little more time with public records searches and city directories, and so forth. I found that in the 1950s, Philip was working at Wyman-Gordon in Worcester, residing with Pauline on Tower Street. I uncovered his social security number.

Most exciting of all, I found his school yearbook photo from 1944. Beneath Philip's name is open white space, which seems quite vacuous when compared to the classmate next to him, who was a multi-sport athlete, a member of the Student Council, Chairman of the Ring & Pin Committee, and a member of the group U.S.N.R.

Finding my 3rd great grandfather in an insane asylum?

Is it true? Is this Thomas Mahoney in the looney bin the same Thomas Mahoney that is my 3rd great grandfather?

While doing some cleaning up of my family tree, I was going through U.S. Census data to confirm city residences and add in the street addresses, when available. The street addresses were not something I had bothered much with in the past, but with my recent genealogical reboot, it has become a tool I've incorporated to both help corroborate other sources and data, but also to give me a better idea of the world these ancestors lived in, and how that world looks today.

This evening, I was cleaning up my 3rd great grandfather, Thomas J. Mahoney. Born in May 1842 in Ireland, Census data indicates he came to the United States in 1855. He married a Bridget Sullivan, born 1844 in Ireland, and together they had five sons. Each of these boys were born in Connecticut, presumably in Norwich or its surrounding area. Just a few years after Patrick, the youngest child of the family, is born in Connecticut, the family is listed in the 1880 U.S. Census as residents of Richmond, Rhode Island, a town just more than 25 miles east of Norwich. By 1900, however, the family is about 70 miles north, living on Cambridge Street in Worcester, Massachusetts. Worcester is the city my grandfather's family, the Mahoney clan, called home for multiple generations.

While I have a decent amount of data on Thomas Mahoney's children living in Worcester, his time in the city is not terribly well documented thus far. In 1900, at age 58, he is widowed and living on Cambridge Street with the family of his son, Thomas. He is working as a day laborer.

I have no date of death for Thomas, so I began to look for him in the U.S. Census after 1900. I found a Thomas Mahoney in the 1920 Census, but I was immediately curious upon seeing the hand-written Census form: "Mahoney, Thomas. Patient."

Patient? Where? What happened?

Before I bothered going down this rabbit hole, I decided to seek confirmation this was the right guy.

Age? 78. That would put him as born circa 1842. That's a match.

Birthplace? Ireland. That's a match.

Birthplace of parents? Ireland. That's a match.

Marital status? Widowed. That's a match.

Everything appeared to be a match, leading me operate on the assumption that there is a very strong likelihood that this is my Thomas Mahoney.

He was listed as being on Belmont Street, so I began flipping back through the earlier pages looking for more information. After a few additional pages, I finally looked at the top of the page. "Name of Institution: Worcester State Hospital."

I had an inkling, but wanted to confirm that it perhaps wasn't just another name for one of the several hospitals in Worcester. A quick Google search confirmed what I already believed to be the case: Worcester State Hospital, sometimes known as the Worcester Insane Asylum, was a mental institution that closed its doors in 1991, more than 150 years after it first opened its doors.

In the end, operating under the belief this is the right man, I'm left wondering what happened.

Was he legitimately insane? Was it an issue of a 78-year-old man battling dementia or Alzheimer's Disease? Perhaps he was just viewed as a burden to his kids, who shuffled him off to the mental institution. Any of the above are viable possibilities.

I'm skeptical I will ever be able to learn what happened and why Thomas was placed into Worcester State Hospital. Any surviving records are surely not public. Barring it stemming from some sort of major incident that would've been found newsworthy, his admission to the asylum is not likely to be recorded in the newspapers. To my knowledge, there are no Mahoney family papers or diaries whatsoever. All the same, I will continue to dig in hopes of uncovering the circumstances.

Further Corroboration

The next step was to begin trying to see if I could find Thomas in either the 1910 or 1930 U.S. Census data.

I was immediately skeptical that he would be found in the 1930 Census after being found in the asylum in 1920. He'd be 88 by 1930, which was another factor making it increasingly unlikely he'd be found. Ultimately, no luck finding him in the 1930 Census.

As for the 1910 Census, there was no reason to believe he wouldn't be uncovered. I did find a Thomas Mahoney that seems to be a fit. Widowed, born in Ireland, and aged 68. Check, check, and check. Immigration year is listed as 1859, four years after what was listed in a prior Census report, but that doesn't seem to be terribly uncommon a discrepancy. This Census entry shows Thomas living with a son, William A. Mahoney, at 80 Temple Street in Worcester. Thomas does indeed have a son named William, and certainly the Worcester residency makes perfect sense. Furthermore, Cambridge Street and Temple Street are just about two miles apart, so this seems to work. The problem, however, comes with the rest of the Census data in comparison to what I previously had on file on William.

William, according to the original genealogical information, was born in Connecticut in May 1867. The 1900 Census data in Worcester clearly shows William as being born in Connecticut in May 1867, and that he's 33-years-old as of the Census recording in June 1900. However, the 1880 U.S. Census in Rhode Island, shows William as Connecticut-born, but aged 15 in June 1880 — that would put him as a newborn around 1865. This sort of discrepancy in Census data is not all that uncommon.

Regardless of whether William is born in 1865 or May 1867, the William A. Mahoney found in the 1910 U.S. Census is aged 37 — which means he would have been born circa 1863. Additionally, he's reported as having been born in Massachusetts, whereas the other Census data is clear that he should be listed as Connecticut-born. This William is married to a woman named Catherine, and is reported as having been married to her for nine years. Together, they have a son, Arthur, born about 1901. Also living with them is William's father, Thomas, as previously mentioned. Additionally, William's brother Daniel is living with the family on Temple Street. This seems to be a match to my previously existing data, though the birth year is slightly different. In this Census data, Daniel Mahoney is also born in Massachusetts, and is listed as 29-years-old, putting him as being born about 1881. In the previously uncovered Census data, Daniel was born in Connecticut in June 1875 (per the 1900 Census). The 1880 Census shows him as aged 6 and born in Connecticut; further corroborating the 1900 data.

Ultimately, this William and Daniel living with their father Thomas could be my 3rd great grandfather Thomas and two of his sons. It may very well not be them either, however. To find out, I will have to take a fresh look at William and Daniel to see what can be further confirmed and what seems to be erroneous information from data collection years ago.