The Kenny Women of Chicago
The Kenny Women of Chicago
The men in this family left a loud record. Thomas P. Kenny made battalion chief and got his picture in the Tribune; his brother-in-law Thomas Flynn built a quarry company and put his sons to work in it. The women left a quieter one — a marriage line, a column in a census, a cause of death — and it is the quieter record that holds this family together. Margaret Connors Kenny brought four children from Prince Edward Island and lived her last twenty-five years in her daughter's house. Her daughter Catherine raised ten children in that house with her mother upstairs. And two sisters from the Kerry flats, Maime and Nell O'Connor, married the same man eight years apart.
A Wedding on an Anniversary
Catherine Kenny was born on Prince Edward Island on 8 July 1869, the eldest of James Kenny and Margaret Connors' four children and the only one old enough to remember the Island. She was not quite three when her father died. She came to Chicago as a child, and on 26 November 1890 she was married at Old St. Stephen's — the same parish where her aunt Mary Connors had married Francis Murphy nineteen years earlier, and where the family's Chicago life had begun.
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Register of Marriages, Old St. Stephen's, Chicago, 1890, page 23. The Flynn–Kenny entry is the fourth line: "Nov 26 — Thomas P Flynn & Catherine Kenney — Daniel Flynn & Nora McGarry — Quinn." Six marriages share the page.
| Parties | Thomas P. Flynn · Catherine Kenney |
|---|---|
| Date of celebration | 26 November 1890 |
| Witnesses | Daniel Flynn · Nora McGarry |
| Priest | Quinn |
| Parish | Old St. Stephen's, Chicago — page 23 |
Marriage register, Thomas P. Flynn and Catherine Kenney, 26 November 1890, Old St. Stephen's, Chicago, p. 23. Illinois, Chicago, Catholic Church Records, 1833–1925.
The Date She Chose
James Kenny married Margaret Connors at Covehead on 26 November 1866. Their daughter married Thomas Flynn in Chicago on 26 November 1890 — twenty-four years to the day. Catherine was twenty-one and her mother was in the city. The register records a date, not a reason, and there is no document in this file that says she picked it deliberately. But a wedding day is chosen, and this one fell on the anniversary of a marriage that had ended in a Covehead graveyard eighteen years before.
Her husband was Chicago-born. Thomas P. Flynn came into the world on 22 February 1868, the son of Thomas Flynn and Bridget Hassett, who had come from Tipperary; his widowed mother was living with the young couple by 1900. In that year's census he gives his occupation as paving inspector. Ten years later he is a granite quarries contractor and an employer. By 1920 he is president of the quarry company, with his eldest son as vice-president and his third son as secretary. The family moved up in a single generation, and the house they moved up into is the one this episode is really about.
The House on Harvard Avenue
Three census takers called at the Flynn house — in June 1900, in April 1910 and on the third of January 1920. Read their three sheets side by side and a whole domestic arrangement comes into view, one that the family had always described but never proved.
| 1900 — Town of Hyde Park, ward 32 | |
|---|---|
| Thomas P. Flynn | 32, b. Feb 1868 Illinois · paving inspector · married 10 years |
| Catherine | 30, b. July 1869, Canada · 5 children born, 5 living · immigrated 1881 |
| Children | Raymond (1891) · Mary C. (1893) · Thomas (1896) · James F. (1897) · Hugh W. (1899) |
| Bridget Flynn | mother, 52, b. Aug 1847 Ireland, widow · 9 children born, 4 living |
| Margaret Kenny | mother-in-law, 60, b. May 1840, widow · 4 children born, 3 living |
| Hugh D. Kenny | brother-in-law, 26, single, clerk |
| 1910 — 6554 Harvard Avenue, ward 32 | |
| Thomas P. Flynn | 42 · granite quarries contractor, employer |
| Catherine M. | 40 · 10 children born, 9 living |
| Children | Raymond D. 18 · Mary C. 16 · Thomas 14 · James F. 12 · Hugh W. 11 · John 8 · Lawrence 7 · Margaret C. 5 · Robert K. 2 |
| Margaret Kenney | mother-in-law, 74, widow |
| Hugh D. Kenny | brother-in-law, 35, single, office clerk |
| Frank Murphy | cousin, 35, single, b. Illinois |
| Also in the house | Mary Dwyer and Annie Mahoney, maids |
| 1920 — 6544 Harvard Avenue, ward 32 | |
| Thomas P. Flynn | 51, owns the house · president, quarry company |
| Cathryn | 50, b. Canada · father's birthplace: Newfoundland |
| Children | Raymond D. 28 (vice-president) · Mary C. 26 (stenographer) · Thomas P. Jr. 23 (secretary) · James F. 22 (cost clerk) · Hugh W. 20 · John J. 18 · Lawrence E. 16 · Margaret C. 15 · Robert K. 10 · Eleanor 8 |
| Margaret Kenny | mother-in-law, 80, widow |
| Hugh D. Kenny | brother-in-law, 46, single, bookkeeper |
1900 US Census, Cook County, Illinois, Town of Hyde Park, ward 32, ED 1037, sheet 21, family 388. 1910 US Census, Chicago ward 32, ED 1382, sheet 11A, family 247. 1920 US Census, Chicago ward 32, ED 1961, sheet 2A, family 31.
Twenty-Five Years Under Her Daughter's Roof
Margaret Connors Kenny is in that household in 1900, in 1910 and in 1920, entered each time as the mother-in-law, and she was still there when Catherine died in January 1925. The family history written by her great-granddaughter says Margaret "made her home with daughter Catherine Kenny Flynn." Three census takers, twenty years apart, wrote the same thing down without knowing they were confirming anything.
The 1910 sheet confirms two more lines of that family history in a single stroke. Margaret's bachelor son Hugh D. Kenny is in the house — he is in all three returns, unmarried from twenty-six to forty-six — and so is Frank Murphy, "cousin," aged thirty-five, the son of Margaret's sister Mary. His age gives a birth about 1875, which matches the "Frank jr. 1875–1926" written in the reference column of the family group sheet, and which disposes of the age of seventy-six adjudged on his 1926 death certificate by a hospital clerk.
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The 1910 return for 6554 Harvard Avenue. Margaret Kenney, mother-in-law, is on the line below the youngest Flynn child; Hugh D. Kenny and Frank Murphy follow her. One sheet of paper holds three generations and two branches of the family.
Ten Children
When Catherine died, the Chicago Tribune named every one of them.
"FLYNN—Catherine M. Flynn, nee Kenny, beloved wife of Thomas P. Flynn, mother of Raymond D., Mary C., Thomas P. Jr., James F., Hugh W., John J., Lawrence E., Margaret C., Robert K., and Eleanor L., daughter of Margaret Kenny, sister of Thomas P. and Hugh D. Kenny. Member of St Thomas court No. 89, W.C.O.F. Funeral Wednesday, Jan. 28, 9:30 a.m., from her late residence, 6544 Harvard-av., to St. Bernard's church. Interment Mount Olivet."
Ten names, where this series had recorded nine. And the notice does something the censuses cannot: it puts the relationships in print — "daughter of Margaret Kenny, sister of Thomas P. and Hugh D. Kenny" — in a newspaper, six months before her mother died. Until this notice was found, every statement about Catherine in this file came from a single typed page.
The arithmetic of those ten is worth following. In 1900 she returned five children born and five living. In 1910 she returned ten born and nine living — and Eleanor, the youngest, was not born until about 1911. So eleven children were born and one was lost, somewhere between 1900 and 1910, in the years when the family was moving up in the world. The Tribune names the ten who survived her. The eleventh has not been found.
She belonged to the Women's Catholic Order of Foresters, St. Thomas court No. 89 — a mutual benefit society that sold life insurance to Catholic women at a time when most companies would not. Her funeral left her own front door and went to St. Bernard's, the church next door to the house, exactly as the family history said.
Two Sisters from the Kerry Flats
The second thread of this episode belongs to two women who married into the family rather than out of it, and who married the same man.
James O'Connor and Ellen Casey were raising five children on North Halsted Street in 1880 — in the district the family called the Kerry flats. The census taker found them on the second of June.
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James O'Connor, 38, labourer, born Ireland; Ellen, 40; and five children — James 14, born in New York; Ellen 10; Timothy 9; Mary 7; Daniel 4, the last four all born in Chicago. The household matches the family narrative exactly, including the detail that there was no brother John.
The Ellen of that line, aged ten, was known all her life as Nell. The Mary, aged seven, was Maime. And Maime's own baptism, which the family group sheet left blank — the compiler never found it — is in the St. Stephen's register for 1873.
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St. Stephen's, corner of South and Sangamon, Register of Baptisms 1873, page 25. "Mary Ann — James Connors [O'Connor] & Ellen Casey — born May 25" — baptized 1 June 1873, sponsors Timothy Culleton and Johanna Conners. Maime O'Connor has a birth date for the first time.
The family story about these two sisters begins earlier than either of their marriages. Nell left school around the fourth grade and went to work in a bindery on the near West Side to help at home, and she told her children afterwards what she did with her first wages: she bought a doll for her little sister.
On 11 April 1894, Maime married Thomas P. Kenny at Old St. Stephen's. One of the two witnesses was her sister.
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Old St. Stephen's, Register of Marriages 1894, page 27: "April 11 — Thomas P Kenny & Mary O'Connor — 216188 — Laurence Walsh & Nellie O'Connor — Egan." The Nellie O'Connor who signed as witness would marry the groom eight years later.
What happened between those two dates is the hardest part of this family's record. Maime bore five children in seven years. Mary lived two days in May 1895. Margaret was born on 26 March 1901, baptized on the twelfth of May with her uncle Daniel J. O'Connor standing sponsor, and died in September at six months old. Maime herself died in August 1901, between her daughter's baptism and her daughter's funeral.
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Registrum Baptizatorum 1901, page 16, entry 4: Kenny, Margaret, born 26 March 1901, baptized 12 May; parents Thomas Kenny and Mary O'Connor; sponsors D. J. O'Connor and Katherine Kuel; minister M. F. Hallinan. Her mother had four months to live, and the child herself had six.
The Doll, and What Came After
Nell O'Connor bought her little sister a doll with the first money she ever earned. She witnessed that sister's wedding in April 1894. And on 14 June 1902, ten months after Maime's death, she married the widower and took on the raising of Maime's surviving children — Eleanor, James and Thomas Jr. She was their aunt before she was their stepmother, and she had known them since they were born.
Nell — Ellen Xavier O'Connor — was born in Chicago on 25 March. Her year is given as 1869 on the family group sheet and as 1870 in the family narrative; the 1880 census, which puts her at ten, supports 1870. She lived until May 1955 and is buried beside her husband at Southern Memorial Park in Miami. The two children she bore him are the last generation in this episode.
The Granddaughters
Mary Frances Kenny was born in Chicago on 5 February 1905 and baptized at St. Sylvester's. She was educated at Our Lady of Lourdes, worked at Children's Memorial Hospital, and served as secretary to the Secretary General of the 1926 Eucharistic Congress — the largest religious gathering Chicago had ever held. She married John Francis Molony on 15 June 1927 and died at Park Ridge on 4 October 1970. Her daughter Mary Ellen Molony Brady compiled the family group sheets, typed the narratives and carried a pocket notebook to Prince Edward Island, and without her there would be no series to write.
Margaret Katherine Kenny was born in Chicago in 1908 — not 1907, as several records have it; her own baptismal certificate, issued from the register in 1968, and the family group sheet agree on 1908. She married Thomas Hamall. She lived until 1985.
Between Margaret Connors, born on a tenant farm in Covehead, and her great-granddaughters in Chicago there are four generations and one unbroken line of women, and the distance travelled is best measured in the documents: a leasehold of eighty-four acres at third quality; a laundry taken in by a widow; a stenographer's job in a quarry office; a secretaryship at an international congress.
1925
Catherine Flynn died at home on Harvard Avenue on 24 January 1925, of a dilatation of the heart that had lasted twenty days, with a chronic nephritis of two years behind it. She was fifty-five. Her husband signed the certificate.
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Certificate no. 2296, registration district 3104. Birthplace: Prince Edward Island, Canada. Father: James Kenny, born Prince Edward Island. Informant: Thomas P. Flynn, 6544 Harvard Avenue. Burial at Mount Olivet, 28 January 1925.
Two things on that certificate are worth reading as what they are. It gives her birth as 8 July 1870, where the 1900 census and her own family's record both say 1869 — the informant was her husband, filling in a form about a childhood in another country. And it gives her mother's maiden name as "Margaret Kenny," which is her married name. A man of fifty-six, on the day after his wife of thirty-four years died, writing down what he could.
Margaret Connors Kenny outlived her eldest child by six months. She left Harvard Avenue and went to her son Thomas on North Ashland Avenue, and she died there on 21 July 1925. The Tribune called her a pioneer.
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"Battalion Chief Kenny's Mother, a Pioneer, Dies." She had buried a husband on Prince Edward Island in 1872, a fifteen-year-old son at Calvary in 1885, a daughter-in-law in 1901, a grandson in 1920 and her own daughter six months earlier.
Three Graves, Six Burials
Margaret bought the north half of Lot 6, Block 44, Section S at Calvary Cemetery in June 1893. It holds three graves. Six people are buried in it.
| 17 May 1895 | Mary Kenny — two days old |
|---|---|
| 23 Aug 1901 | Mary "Maime" O'Connor Kenny |
| 23 Sept 1901 | Margaret Kenny — six months old |
| 27 Jan 1920 | Thomas P. Kenny Jr. — twenty, of influenza |
| 23 July 1925 | Margaret Connors Kenny |
| 4 Feb 1893 | Lawrence Kenny, fifteen — moved here from an 1885 grave |
Calvary Cemetery interment card, Form No. 107, owner Margaret Kenny, north part of Lot 6, Block 44, Section S; purchased 23 June 1893.
Four of the six are women and children. Maime lies with the two infant daughters she buried and with the mother-in-law who outlived her by twenty-four years. Margaret's sister Mary Connors Murphy is on the other side of a single line, in the south half of the same lot, which her husband bought five months before Margaret bought hers.
The One Who Is Not There
Catherine is not in that lot. She was buried at Mount Olivet, on the South Side, with the Flynns — her husband followed her there in 1936. The daughter who kept her mother's house for twenty-five years, and in whose front room her mother lived, lies four miles and one cemetery away from her. It is not a mystery. It is what happens when a woman marries: she goes into her husband's ground. But of all the facts assembled in this episode it is the one that says most about what these women's lives actually cost and contained.
What This Episode Does Not Know
When the family reached Chicago. Five records give five answers across twelve years — 1875 from Margaret's obituary, about 1877 from the family narrative, 1880 from two censuses, 1881 from three people in one household in 1900, and 1887 from her son Thomas in 1930. What is fixed is the bracket: Margaret was godmother at Covehead in March 1874, and her son Lawrence was buried at Calvary on 24 September 1885. Episode 8 sets the problem out in full.
The eleventh Flynn child. The 1910 census says ten born and nine living, with Eleanor still to come. One child died between 1900 and 1910 and has not been identified.
Margaret's own birth. The 1900 census gives May 1840. The family group sheet says 4 February 1840, her PEI notebook the sixth of February, and three Chicago censuses imply about 1836. No Island baptism has been found for her.
