County Fermanagh makes up one of the six counties of Northern Ireland, the portion of the island that is still under British control, and one of the four Catholic majority counties. It is mostly rural, with rivers and lakes, grasslands, mountains and bogs. The average summer temperature is 65 degrees and is moderate throughout the year.
What was not moderate was the tension between Catholics and the Calvinist (Presbyterian) Orange Men, or Protestants, who taunted the Catholics by marching past their homes, and sometimes forcing Catholics to meet in caves and secret places in the rural countryside. This tension continued into the 20th Century where several acts of violence occurred between IRA and Protestants in the county.
In the rural village Gortgall, in the parish of Boho, about seven miles from the only real town in the county, Enniskillen, Stephen Cassidy (b. est. 1784) and his wife Catherine Britton (1788) had four sons: Thomas, b. 1805; Edward, b. 1807; Philip, b. 1809; and James, b. 1810.
James married Margaret McElroy (b. 1810) - probably from a Catholic family who had moved to Ireland from Scotland once it had become protestant or perhaps a Calvinist family. Sometime in the late 1820s, James and Margaret left Ireland for the United States.
On 23 Mar 1830, in a trial in Enniskillen, his brothers Thomas, Edward, and Philip were convicted by the British court of killing a horse, and sentenced to life in imprisonment. They were given the opportunity to choose banishment to the British penal colony in Australia. Placed on the ship Hercules 3, the brothers arrived in Sydney Cove on 21 Oct 1830. Thomas and Philip married and had families in Australia. They were given conditional pardons in 1846. Their descendants continue to live in that country. Edward disappears from public records.
James Cassidy and his wife Margaret settled in the Hudson River Valley north of New York City.
I assume they were joining Irish who had been attracted to the region because of the need for laborers on the Ohio and Erie canals. From the Irish Archives:
Work on the Ohio and Erie Canal, which began in Cleveland in 1825, attracted droves of newcomers to the area. Individuals of Irish descent were undoubtedlyalready numbered among the pre-canal settlers. ... But the first notable influx of Irish immigrants was prompted by the need for laborers to dig the canal.
In 1828, James and Margaret had their first daughter, Catherine Agnes, in the village of Guilderland, outside of Albany, New York.
Sources: Jefferson D. Horan Family Bible; Australian Convict records, 1850, 1860, and 1870 U.S. Census - Catherine Agnes Cassidy.
Copyright by Donald R. Temples, 2015
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