My great-grandmother, Honora Brown, was born in Newark, NJ on November 23, 1872 to Charles Brown and Margaret Fay. She was christened a few weeks later on December 8, 1872 at St. James Catholic Church in Newark – the same church where she would marry her first husband John J. Costello 25 years later.
Charles Brown & Margaret Fay ← Honora Brown ← Margaret Costello
What’s in a name?
Honora Brown was a woman of many names. To avoid confusion, here’s a quick primer.
She was baptized ‘Honora’ and married under that name at the age of 25. In 3 censuses, between age 8 and 28, she was called ‘Lenora’ but when her oldest child was baptized, she was using the name ‘Eleanora’. By the time her second child came along, she was ‘Eleanor’ and seems to have stayed Eleanor for the rest of her life. Her family name was ‘Brown’. When she married at the age of 25, she became a ‘Costello’. After 14 years a widow, she remarried at the age of 47 and became a ‘Wagner’.
Charles Brown
Honora’s father, Charles Brown, who sometimes went by Charly, was a laborer born in Denmark around 1832. We know his parents were also Danish but we haven’t yet uncovered the clue we need to lead us to his home and family in Scandinavia – and that may be hard to do.
To begin with, Charles Brown is a very common name and it probably isn’t his real one. ‘Charles’ is an English form of his first name. In Danish, Swedish or German, it would be ‘Carl’ or ‘Karl’. Brown would more than likely be spelled ‘Braun’, ‘Brun’, ‘Bruun’, or ‘Bruhn’. Moreover, records of emigration were not kept in Denmark until after we know he had emigrated.
If Charles were Catholic, and I think he was – he baptized his children and married in the Catholic church – that narrows the geography considerably. Only 1% of Danes were Catholic and they were concentrated mostly in Schleswig-Holstein.
Two wars broke out in Denmark over Schleswig-Holstein: the first when Charles was about 10 yrs old; the second in 1864 when he was about 32 yrs old. Denmark lost 25% of her territory to Prussia after that second war – causing massive migration. Complicating things, many of these migrants were classified by US immigration as German or Prussian.
So, if you want to start digging for records and need a place to start, I’d bet that Charles came to America after the war in 1864 from somewhere in Schleswig-Holstein. That’s supported by the fact that he, in all documents, said he was from Denmark. Yet his daughter said that he was from Germany in her 1902 wedding record. By then, Schleswig-Holstein was solidly German for 35 years.
Margaret Fay
Honora’s mother, Margaret Fay, was born in Ireland about 1838, and was married under the maiden name ‘Fay’ – not ‘Fahey’. I believe she came to America on October 10, 1850.
Only 2 Margaret Fays are in the immigration record before 1868 – a time when we know our Margaret was already in America. The first one was 6 years too old and traveled with what looks to be her husband and child. The second one looks to be our girl and she traveled alone – at the age of 12 – on the S.S. Ellen Maria from Liverpool to NYC, calling herself a ‘laborer’.
Understanding why a 12 year old girl would be sent to fend for herself on another continent requires a little context. From 1845 to 1852, Ireland was in the grip of the ‘Great Famine’, although the word famine doesn’t really apply. Ireland was still producing enough food to feed the population but continued to export about 30-50 shiploads of food per day throughout that period. Crops didn’t fail generally, as they do in a famine – just the potato crop was blighted. But 1/3rd of the Irish population was dependent on the potato for basic nutrition and couldn’t afford to buy anything else. In the end, counties lost between 20-30% of their populations. Conservatively, over 1 million people starved to death.
In 1838, the New Poor Law Act came into effect in Ireland. It included government funding for emigration of the poor to Canada, America or Australia – a number of private charities followed suit – and a series of ‘workhouses’ were built between 1838-43 to house the indigent poor. Children who entered the workhouse were considered ‘orphans’ even if they had one or more parents living. They became wards of the Poor Law guardians, to be disposed of as the guardians saw fit.
In the year of Margaret’s emigration, a workhouse system intended to accommodate 94k people at cramped capacity. It was holding 264k people. To cope with this severe overcrowding, they sent large numbers of young girls abroad, particularly to Australia and America where it was assumed they would live with relatives or find work in domestic service.
During the Famine, 75 percent of the Irish coming to America landed in New York. In 1847 alone, about 52,000 Irish arrived in the city which then had a total population of 372,000. That same year, over 53,000 Germans arrived as well. It’s estimated that 4.5 million Irish arrived in America between 1820 and 1930. The city was, to say the least, crowded.
We know something about conditions on the S.S Ellen Maria. Steerage passage cost 16 pounds 17 shillings and 6 pence for an adult – or about $82.12 – an enormous amount of money at that time. Because Margaret was 12, the Poor Law only had to pay a half-fare. Each adult was provided with 3 quarts of water daily, and 2½ lbs bread, 1 lb flour, 5 lbs oatmeal, 2 lbs rice, ½ lb sugar, ½ lb molasses, and 2ozs tea weekly – but children, like Margaret, got a 1/2 portion. They had to bring their own utensils for eating and drinking, and provide their own bedding. Moreover, because ship’s provisions weren’t always reliable, they were encouraged to bring their own supplies.
We don’t know how she came to be on that ship but, as hard as it is to believe, she would have been considered lucky.
Childhood
Whoever their families were, whatever troubles they left behind, Charles and Margaret made their way to America, found each other, and married on Christmas Day, 1868. We know from the civil record that they were married by Reverend Thomas M. Killeen, who was a priest at St. John’s Catholic Church in Newark, NJ from about 1868 to 1870 and the church record tells us their witnesses were Michael Murray and Catherine Hayne.
Honora had 2 brothers and 4 sisters. Mary Ann, the eldest, was born a year after her parents marriage. John came a year after that. Honora was the third child, followed 2 years later by a brother, Peter, who died at the age of 3. Her younger sister Sarah was born in 1875, followed 2 years later by Maggie, and 3 years later by Lizzie.
The family moved to Van Buren Street in Newark, NJ the year that Honora was born and lived there at least until 1895. But while they stayed on Van Buren St, they never stayed in any one house for very long. They started out at 101 Van Buren, moved to 93, then 99, then 107, and finally 69 Van Buren.
Honora’s father, who was forty when she was born, passed away when she was only 25 years old in 1897. He is buried in Holy Sepulchre Cemetery, where his son Peter is also buried. Honora married 7 months after her father passed.
Her mother, Margaret, probably passed away on 25 February, 1904.
Marriage and Children
Honora married John J. Costello on April 27, 1898 at St. James Catholic Church in Newark, NJ. He was a 26 year old blacksmith and they moved into his parents home at 80 Jackson St., where they stayed through the birth of their first 3 children.
William, their first son, was born a year after their marriage but died as a young child, certainly before the age of 10, and possibly much sooner than that. Uncovering William was a surprise to some of the family, so he may have passed before his siblings ever knew anything about him.
John J. Jr. was born in 1901, followed by Margaret 2 years later, and Eleanor 2 years after that.
By June of 1905, the family moved into their own home at 88 Prospect St. but, sadly, after only 8 years of marriage, Honora lost her husband to pneumonia and kidney failure.
Three Sisters on Plum Street
In the aftermath of her husband’s death, Eleanor moved to a house at 23 Plum St and started taking in boarders.
Don’t look for the house now – don’t even look for the street – it’s gone. At the time, it was near the New Jersey Law School and several other colleges – a good location for boarders – but those colleges merged over the years and Plum St. was demolished and absorbed into the Rutgers University campus. It was somewhere near what is now Raymond Ave.
Eleanor’s daughters came with her to Plum St., but her son John J. moved in with his paternal grandparents William & Bridget and his father’s brother Anthony at 69 Vincent St. for at least some part of the time between 1906 and 1920.
Eleanor’s sisters Sarah (called Sadie) and Margaret were her first and longest boarders. Eleanor ran the house, while the sisters worked for ‘C T Co.” – the Clark Thread Company (1866-1949). Clark Thread was built on both sides of the Passaic River in Newark with the larger complex on the east bank, known as East Newark, and bounded by Central, Grant, Passaic, and Johnston Avenues. At its peak, it employed 3,000 people.
Fred Wagner
1920 was a turning point for the family. Son, John J. , was back in the house and sometime between 1918-1920, both of Eleanor’s younger sisters moved out. Her eldest sister, Mary A. Moore, moved in with her 2 daughters – Mildred Keesey and Mrytle Keesey. Their father was Mary Ann’s first husband, Millard Keesey of Pennsylvania, an iron factory worker.
This was also the year that Eleanor married for the second time at the age of 47. Fred Wagner was an auto-factory coverer and one of her boarders. They married on November 9, 1920 at Sacred Heart Cathedral in Newark.
As with her first husband John, Eleanor lost Fred after only about 8 years of marriage and by 1929 she was once again listed as a widow on Plum St in the Newark City directory.
In the End
In 1930, after 23 years on Plum St, Eleanor, now 58, moved in with her grown daughters to 94 Smith St. The younger Eleanor was working as a hospital nurse and Margaret was working as a policy clerk for Prudential. She would marry John P. O’Mullan the following year.
By 1938, age 66, Eleanor was living at 27 John St. in Kearney with a widow and the widow’s daughter, both named Annie McLoughland. Also with them in the house is a man named John Heron. The only connection I can find between Eleanor and the women is that the younger Annie McLoughland was an employee of Clark Thread Co, as were 2 of Eleanor’s sisters and her son John.
She went into the hospital just after Christmas for a problem with her appendix and specialists were called in. While there, she contracted pneumonia and passed away on January 2, 1939. She rests in Holy Sepulchre Cemetery, East Orange, NJ.
