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Jane Dwyer
1891 -
Jane was born in Kilkelly, Co. Mayo, on 23 September 1891, to Michael Dwyer and Margaret Reilly. She was one of 11 children, 6 boys (one of whom was my father Luke) and 5 girls.
1901 Census
She wasn't in the Ballyhaunis house in 1911 when that census was taken. That didn't surprise me as I had reason to believe that she had gone to the USA by then. I was surprised, however, that she was not there in the 1901 census, as it had been suggested to me that she did not emigrate until in her teens.
I eventually found her in the 1901 census at her grandparents' homestead in Cappanahanagh in East Limerick. I don't know if she had been "farmed out" there or was just visiting. The house in Ballyhaunis was not large and there was pressure on the children to leave and seek employment as soon as possible. At that stage she was 10 and described as a "scholar", a general indicator of pre-employment status.
Emigration
Although I knew she had emigrated to New York at some stage, I didn't know when or precisely where she went initially. I had, many years ago, met her son Bill O'Connor, a prosperous NY attorney, along with his wife [x] and their daughter Marie-Chris. Unfortunately, at that stage I had no great interest in the family history as such and didn't ask any of the questions I would now. However cousin Colette is collecting information on the O'Connors and that may shed some more light on things.
SS Baltic
Meanwhile I have traced a record of Jane's emigration to New York. She sailed from Queenstown (now Cobh) on 21 August 1908, on a ship named SS Baltic, and arrived in New York a week later. The ship was built at the Harland and Wolff shipyard, in Belfast, in 1904 for the White Star and Dominion lines. In 1904-5 it was the largest ship afloat. It plied the Liverpool - New York route, calling in at Quenstown. It had the capacity to carry almost 3,000 passengers, of which 2,000 were in third class (or steerage). [On Jane's trip, there were some 1,300 steerage passengers boarding at Liverpool and a further 140 at Queenstown. Of the Queenstown boarders, 8 (including Jane) were from Ballyhaunis.]
Unlike another famous ship built at Harland and Wolff for the White Star line, the Baltic survived to become a troopship in World War I. It was finally scrapped in Osaka, Japan, in 1933. As a footnote to history, the captain of the Baltic sent a marconigram to the captain of the Titanic on 14 April 1912 reporting icebergs and field ice at the coordinates where the Titanic subsequently crashed. The Titanic received the message at 1.40pm and hit the iceberg later that same evening.
Jane's record
The ship's manifest (passenger list) records a lot of information on each individual passenger. From this we can glean the following.
Jane (mistranscribed as Janie) was 17 years old and she listed her occupation as servant. She could read and write, and came from Ballyhaunis. She lists her nearest relative as her father, in Main St., Ballyhaunis (though they actually lived in Barrack Street, just off the Main St.). She paid for her own passage (suggesting an independent source of income). She had $10 in her possession. She had not been to the USA before and was now going to her uncle, Joseph McBride, at 668 157th St. New York.
She had all the right answers to the "subversive" questions, some of which the USA authorities ask to this day: she had never been detained in a prison or almshouse; she was not a polygamist; nor was she an anarchist! She did not have any offer of employment in the USA.
As far as her health and appearance went: she was in good physical and mental health; she had no deformaties, nor was she crippled; she was 5'5" in height; of brown complexion with dark brown hair and blue eyes; she had no "marks of identification".
Jane's fellow travellers
Her 7 fellow-travellers from Ballyhaunis consisted of 2 men (aged 18 & 23) and 5 women (aged from 19 to 31). The men were described as labourers and the women as servants. All were single. With the exception of the 2 eldest women, none had been to the USA before, and all were going to join siblings, 4 to NY, 2 to NJ and 1 to PA. The women included two Greally cousins.