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More than anyone I have been researching, I have to say, Daniel Meehan has me baffled as to what his true story is –
- whether there were one or two Daniel Meehans
- whether there was a Daniel Meehan aka Daniel Shanahan or a
- a Daniel Meehan and a Daniel Shanahan or
- whether there was only one Daniel Meehan but were his parents John Meehan and Margaret Shanahan OR Timothy Meehan and Bridget Shanahan.
- was he/they born in 1832/4 or 1843?
- It would seem that he enlisted in the army in order to fight in the civil war, under the name Daniel Shanahan (Shanahan being his mother’s maiden name) because he didn’t want his parents to know he was going to fight in the American Civil War.
Naturally, this caused a problem when it came to pension time. He also has several doctor’s notes and surgeon’s certs plus numerous affidavits for one thing or another. I have a lot of documents, discovered by a cousin also researching, on ancestry.com to do with Daniel Meehan’s invalidity pension claims etc. but many are hand written and I would need a clear head and quite a bit of concentrated time to go through them all in detail and try to get the evidence in them for me to reach a conclusion.
The following document is one of the details clouding the issue. It is for a Daniel Meehan born in 1836 in Bruree, County Limerick, Ireland, to parents John Meehan and Margaret Shanahan.
It seems that Daniel who married Mary Tierney says he went by the name of Daniel Shanahan during the army period of his life and applied for invalidity pension in that name, then made an affadavit about changing his name because of his young age, rendering the above birth cert not his. He has affadavits from several people attesting to the fact they knew him under both names as the same person. Then, you will see further down the page that his death certificate names Timothy Meehan and Bridget Meehan as his parents and his age as 67 in 1914 making his birth year 1847. Are we dealing with two different Daniel Meehans or two different Daniels. I welcome help from anyone who can clarify this and the email is infosheacollins@gmail.com
1869: Daniel Meehan married Mary Tierney in New York City, New York, on March 17, 1869, (St. Patrick’s Day), when he was 33 years old in St. Bernard R C Church, West 14th St., New York. Daniel’s trade was that of a cooper – carrying on the family tradition.
Mary Tierney’s father was Mortimer Tierney (1820 – 1884) and Mary was born in Co. Clare in 1843.
Children of Daniel Meehan and Mary Tierney
1866: John Meehan was born in 1866 in New York City, New York, at the age of 14 was working in a cooper’s yard.
Daniel Meehan lived at 110 North Sixth Street in Brooklyn, New York, in 1880. The building has been replaced by a new one.
An Article in “The Brooklyn Daily Eagle” 14 Feb 1896: Not sure if this is Daniel the father or Daniel the son, who would have been 16 at the time.
I am not sure how many of the city directories below are for Daniel Meehan married to Mary Tierney….
1879
1885
1886
1890
1896
The 1900 Census places the Meehan family renting a home at 181 Bedford Avenue in Brooklyn, New York City. All of Daniel’s children were still single—except for Katie, who was now listed as a widow.
Also under their roof was young John Pinhoffer, just 6 years old, born in April 1894 in New York—Daniel’s grandson (Katie’s child?). Daniel himself was working as a cooper, while Timothy had taken up work as an ironworker. Maria, meanwhile, was employed as an engraver—a respectable trade for a young woman of the time. I have search for a Pinhoffer who would fit as the father of 6 year old John and husband of Katie or anyone else, to no avail.
Mary Tierney Meehan passed away on December 14, 1902, at the age of 59 at 181 Bedford Ave.. The doctor listed nephritis uraemia as the main cause of her death, with chronic heart failure noted as a secondary condition. It must have been a slow, wearing illness — one that likely took hold quietly and gave her family little choice but to watch helplessly as it ran its course.
In 1905 we have William Meehan, son of Timothy Meehan and Bridget Shanahan, saying in a sworn affidavit that he is half brother to Daniel – on the other hand it may just be saying that, even though they were only cousins they were so close they were as good as brothers. Yet another puzzle in this story…
217 Cooper St,. is now a church
From reading quickly through the documents I do have, it seems to me that Daniel had quite a lot of health issues that may not have been readily recognised at the time and experienced quite a lot of pain and discomfort that he just increasingly became used to and I have a lot of sympathy for him because on top of not being well, it would also appear that his financial state was not secure at all. I will try to do some more sorting out at some stage. For now I am moving him from being the son of John Meehan and Margaret Shanahan to being the son of Timothy Meehan and Bridget Shanahan based on his death certificate and those that are listed as his remaining kin at the time of his death.
Daniel Meehan’s final years were marked by the quiet decline that so often accompanies a long life. His death certificate tells a story the man himself may never have spoken aloud: hypertrophy prostate cystitis, and a dilated heart—ailments that brought discomfort and fatigue, slowly wearing away at his strength. Listed too is “senility,” a word of the time that likely pointed to confusion, forgetfulness, or a soft retreat from the world around him. These conditions hint at a man once strong and capable, now enduring the common afflictions of old age with what I hope was some measure of dignity and care.
Looks like Daniel didn’t get his headstone…..
Descendants of Daniel Meehan and Mary Tierney
