The Records

The earliest record of Terrence in Queens County. He declares his intention to become a citizen and renounces allegiance to Queen Victoria. He signs with his mark, so he could not then write his name, and the name on his 1856 papers is in the clerk’s hand.

Terence swore five years’ residence in the United States, one year in New York, and that he had arrived before his eighteenth year. Bernardus Hendrickson and Denis Moloney swore to the same “according to their information and belief.” The papers give no arrival year, ship or place of birth beyond allegiance to Victoria. Ancestry indexes the deposition as 9 October; every date on the papers is 10 October.

Lists “T. O’Bryen, R. R. Hotel” with the Jamaica Hotel, the Pavilion and the American Hotel. This is the Railroad House his obituary says he opened after working as chief stableman at Remsen’s. The sheet is undated; the date is a cataloguer’s estimate.

Terence, 25, born Ireland, with real estate of $5,000 and personal estate of $1,000. No occupation is entered for him. Two women named Ann O’Brien, 24 and 22, both Irish-born, are in the household; the census gives no relationships. James Henry, born 15 July 1860, is not yet listed.

A Terence O’Brien, 28, born Ireland, enlisted at New York City on 13 May 1861, mustered in as a private of Co. G on 27 May, was absent sick in February 1863, and mustered out with his company on 4 June 1863; “also borne as Trance O’Brien.” His age and birthplace fit Terrence of Jamaica, and the researcher identifies him as Terrence. The abstract gives no residence, and the Jamaica draft enrollment of June 1863 lists no former service, so the identification awaits a record that names Jamaica.

Terrence O’Brien of Jamaica, 31, inn keeper, born Ireland; no former military service entered. The page defines Class I as all men 20 to 35, so a man of 31 on the Class II list is an anomaly, not a sign of marriage.

The Union Hotel on Fulton Street near Church Street in 1864, with Henry, Timothy and James O’Brien also listed in the village.

Terrence’s first wife, and the Ann O’Brien, 24, of the 1860 census. It names her father, Thomas Higgins, which makes the Thomas Higgins Jr. of the 1875 estate file her brother. Her death in 1864 means the daughters born in 1866 and 1870 cannot have been hers unless their birth dates are wrong; who their mother was is an open question.

Assessed $25 as a retail liquor dealer and $20 for a hotel with a rental value of $400: $45 in all.

The Excise Commissioners, sitting the day before, licensed “Terence O’Brien, Jamaica,” with other Jamaica dealers.

A Mrs. Bridget O’Brien had mail waiting at the Jamaica post office. With the fire report two months later and her 1869 death notice, it places Terrence’s mother in the village by 1866.

Locates the Union Hotel two doors west of the Dutch Church on Fulton Street, and places the landlord’s mother in the house. The fire, on the night of Sunday 12 August, destroyed uninsured liquor; the paper thought it deliberate.

Terence O’Brien, Francis McNeeley and William Gilchrist were charged with carrying on a distillery at Hempstead without paying the special tax. A deputy collector testified the tax was unpaid; Philip Hart said O’Brien had employed him at the distillery. At the April hearing a second witness said he carted five barrels of whiskey from the distillery, seized on 4 February 1867, to O’Brien’s premises in Jamaica. These are charges and testimony at preliminary hearings; the outcome has not been found.

Lightning on the night of 13 May destroyed the $200 two-piece flag-staff in front of T. O’Brien’s hotel.

The same event: “A liberty pole, which cost $200, in front of the hotel of T. O’Brien, Jamaica, L. I., was shivered to pieces during the storm on Monday night.”

Terrence, hotel, Fulton near Church, with Henry (gardener), Timothy (laborer) and William O’Brien (clothier). The same page lists William H. Onderdonk, surrogate.

Names Terrence as Bridget’s son. Her age, 67, places her birth about 1802. Her maiden name, husband and birthplace are not given.

Still the hotel keeper on Fulton near Church Street in 1870, and listed among Jamaica’s livery stables with the Durlands, Francis McHugh and J. S. Remsen. The livery fits the stableman his obituary describes.

The Union Hotel on the south side of Fulton Street just east of Church Street, beside the Reformed Church: the same spot the 1866 fire report describes.

Date of death and funeral from his late residence on Tuesday at one o’clock. No age is given.

Chief stableman at Remsen’s hotel; opened the Railroad House, then the larger Union Hotel, the half-way house to Rockaway. He “had resided in the village nearly forty years” and died suddenly at about two o’clock on Saturday morning. No age is given.

An administration, not a will: Terrence died intestate. Application filed and order made on 4 January 1875.

The key document of the case. Higgins, the girls’ maternal uncle, lists Terrence’s only next of kin as four minor children and says where each was living. Its line placing James Henry “in Newport Kentucky with his uncle Patrick O’Brien” is the only record linking the Jamaica family to Kentucky. It states a residence, not a court placement, and it does not say whose brother Patrick was.

Letters issue to Thomas Higgins, “general guardian of Elizabeth O’Brien and Mary Ann O’Brien, two of the minor children,” on a bond of eight hundred dollars. William C. Hendrickson and George C. McKee are appointed to appraise the personal property.

Higgins and two Hendricksons of Jamaica bind themselves in $800 for the faithful administration of the estate. Each surety swears he is worth eight hundred dollars.

Higgins swears to discharge the duties of administrator. He signs as Thomas Higgins Jr.

The fullest account of the find. Terrence, believed penniless, had told Father Farley of valuables he meant for his children and died before the priest returned. On the morning before Christmas 1875, Thomas Slowey, repairing the old hotel’s kitchen ceiling, found a calico package laid across two laths: $11,000 in West Virginia railroad bonds. Higgins, as administrator, had Slowey before the Surrogate on 26 January. The headline says “wall”; the text says ceiling. The article misdates the death to December 1874.

A short report of the find. It repeats the “December, 1874” death date of “Good Luck,” so it may derive from it.

The end of the hearing on the application to compel Slowey to account for the bonds. The Surrogate found that O’Brien’s heirs could not establish a case. It gives the value as $8,000 and the Surrogate as “Haynes”; the administration file shows the Surrogate was Alexander Hagner, and “Good Luck” gives $11,000.

Seventeen years on: “The Hastings building was formerly a noted road house. It was erected by Terence O’Brien, who carried on the hotel business for a number of years and died in poverty. William Hastings took the property for debt.”

The earliest record of the family in Newport, four and a half years before the deposition. Patrick, 40, railroad conductor, born Ireland, a citizen, with his wife Mary and six children born in Indiana and Ohio.

Pat. O’Bryan, 48, foreman in the Ohio & Mississippi railroad shop, with Mary and eight children in the same order as 1870. James Henry is not in the household.

Patrick O’Bryan, locomotive engineer, born May 1836, immigrated 1850, naturalized, owns his house; married 43 years; Mary the mother of ten children, nine living.

Mary O’Bryan, 65, of 619 Patterson Street, died 26 October 1905; buried St. Joseph New, Price Hill.

Patrick, 80, widowed, born Ireland, immigrated 1849, naturalized, living on his own income in the house he owned, with daughters Margaret, 40, and Jane, 35. Margaret was the informant on his death certificate three years later.

Widower, locomotive engineer, born 5 May 1830 in Ireland. Father and mother: “Dont know.” Informant Margaret O’Bryan of the same address. Buried at St. Joseph New Cemetery, Price Hill, 25 November 1913.

Patrick O’Bryan, 83, father of Rev. George O’Bryan, a resident “for almost half a century” and for many years a locomotive engineer. No parents, siblings or New York relatives are named.

“For more than 50 years a resident of Newport.” Funeral at the Church of the Immaculate Conception; burial in St. Joseph’s Cemetery on Price Hill. No parents, siblings or New York relatives are named.

Both name their father as Patrick O’Bryan and their mother as Mary McNamara. Both have the same informant, Margaret Collins, so they count as one witness to Mary’s maiden name.

Once attached to Patrick of Newport, now set aside. This Patrick was “aged 22 last March” (born about 1834) and first arrived on 4 October 1851. Every Newport record makes Patrick older, gives him a different arrival year, and places him nowhere near the Cleveland court.

The boy who was in Newport in 1875: born 15 July 1860, three weeks after the 1860 census, a scale manufacturer in Brooklyn at his death. Parents Terence O’Brien and Ann Higgins, both born in Ireland.

Mary Ann, born at Jamaica, daughter of Terence O’Brien and Anne Higgins, married Martin Smith, an Irish-born plasterer, on 24 May 1888. Her age next birthday, 24, places her birth about 1864, before her mother’s death in September of that year. A James O’Brien signed as witness.

Mary Ann, widow of Martin Smith. The informant gave her father as “Thos O’Brien,” born U.S., her mother as unknown and her birth as 8 March 1866; her own 1888 marriage names her parents as Terence O’Brien and Anne Higgins and implies a birth about 1864. This certificate carries little weight for her parents or her age.

Elizabeth, born on Long Island, daughter of Terence O’Brien and Ann Higgins, married Patrick S. Foley, an Irish-born widower, on 10 August 1902. She gave her age as 29; if Ann Higgins was her mother, as this and her death certificate say, she was at least 38.

A teacher, widow of Patrick Foley. Parents Terence O’Brien and Anne Higgins, both born in Ireland, as on her 1902 marriage; her sister Mary Smith made the arrangements. The birth year given, 1870, is too late for a daughter of Ann, who died in 1864; Elizabeth’s stated ages ran low all her adult life.

Miles, 8, at school, living as the grandson of Anthony P. Beadle, a French-born farmer, and his wife Anastatia, born in Newfoundland to an Irish mother: his mother Cornelia Bedell’s parents. By 1880 he had moved from his great aunt’s care to theirs.

Born at Jamaica on 28 March 1873; a machinist and scale maker. Parents Terrance O’Brien and Cornelia Bedell. His father’s birthplace is given as U.S., an informant’s error.