On January 4, 1907, my grandfather, John Patrick O’Mullan was born to Daniel William Mullan and Elizabeth Gallagher in Moyaver, County Antrim, Ireland. He was their third child, preceded by Elizabeth and Daniel and followed 2 years later by little sister Harriet. They christened him at St. Olcan’s church – where his father was christened and his family is buried.

Ballymoney

At the age of 3, in 1910, after a brief stay in Belfast, his family settled into a house on Castle St. in the town of Ballymoney – about 10 miles from Armoy. The house had 5 rooms and 2 windows facing the street. Its not clear why they moved, but Ballymoney was a larger town than Armoy so maybe it was a promotion for his father in the postal service, or maybe there were better schools for their children. We do know that his siblings Daniel and Elizabeth were enrolled in the Ballymoney Technical College, and probably he and his younger sister were as well.

War

In 1912, Britain was on the point of allowing home rule in Ireland when, fearing their minority status in an independent Ireland, many Ulster protestants signed the Ulster Covenant, formed the Ulster Volunteers and began importing German arms. But some protestants were in favor of home rule, and the largest gathering of them met at the Town Hall in Ballymoney in Oct 1913, about half a mile away from John Patrick’s house. He was not quite 7 when they signed the Alternative Covenant.

Its hard to say if the early nationalist turmoil would have been on the radar of a 7 year old, but the Great War that interrupted it certainly would have been. That war lasted from the time he was 7 until he was 11, and affected almost every household in town.

By the time WWI broke out, food was already a source of political tension. A lot of food was being grown, but mostly for export to Great Britain. The Irish had become dependent on cheaper overseas sources of food and with the German blockade, which started in early 1917, food shortages were widespread.

The population of John Patrick’s hometown was about 2900, and 15% of that population were young men between the ages of 15 and 34. Of the roughly 435 young men in town, 108 died in the war.

By 1918, Great Britain was dangerously low on troops and attempted to address the shortage by tying a bill enacting Home Rule to a bill allowing Conscription in Ireland. This angered both the nationalists and the unionists, and enlistment then slowed to a crawl. John Patrick was only 11 but his older brother would soon be eligible for the proposed draft, and his father was still eligible at the time.

Then in December, 1918 Sinn Féin won a landslide victory in the General Election. They refused to attend Parliament in Westminster, set up their own Parliament in Dublin, and declared Ireland an independent country. Ultimately, this led to a war for independence , 2100 deaths, and a treaty which resulted in the partitioning of Ireland in Dec 1922.

A short but bloody civil war  followed between those who did and those who did not accept partition. Casualty figures have never been made official, but its at least 1000 dead and possibly as high as 4000. That raged on until May of 1923.

John Patrick was 16.

Emigration

In February 1923, three months before the civil war ended, John Patrick’s father died of stomach cancer in the presence of his oldest son Daniel, at their home on 39 Union St., Ballymoney. Two months later, Daniel emigrated to America. Four months after that, the rest of the family would follow.

Sixteen year old John Patrick left the docks of Londonderry on the 27th of September 1923, with his mother and 2 sisters, aboard the S.S. California headed for New York. He was 5’8″ tall, with gray-blue eyes and dark brown hair. He’d been working as a postal messenger and his emergency contact was his Uncle Pat at the farm at Moyaver. They were headed to East Orange, NJ where they had friends who had previously emigrated.

In 1926, John Patrick was living with his family at 69 Long St. in East Orange. Don’t look for the house, its long gone now, but the 1926 Orange city directory tells us that John Patrick was working as a ‘clerk’, his brother Daniel was an ‘employee’ and his sister Elizabeth was a stenographer. By 1929, he had his own business listing in the Newark directory as a ‘manager’.

The 1930 census shows Daniel, John Patrick and Harriet living with their mother in an apartment at 265 North Park St, East Orange. Daniel was making radio tubes for Westinghouse, Harriet was a telephone operator and John was working as a salesman for a bakery –  although a second city directory for the same year calls him a mechanic. They had a boarder named Bernard Furey, 36, a gardener, also from Northern Ireland.

Home & Family

On September 19, 1931, John Patrick O’Mullan married Margaret Teresa Costello. He was 24 and she was 28. They started their life together at 92 Lincoln Place, Orange, NJ and within 4 years were living at 333 Avon St.  Newark, NJ with their daughters Margaret, Patricia and possibly Eleanor in tow.

In 1937, the family moved to 72 Boylan St., Newark NJ where they welcomed a 4th daughter Elizabeth, a 5th child and 1st son John, and a second son called Robert. The 1942 city directory has the family on Boylan St. but family memory suggests they left Boylan St. when Robert was about 6 months old, so perhaps in early 1941, for an apartment on Heyward St. in Orange, over Hershkowitz’s Grocery store.

They stayed in the apartment briefly waiting for 623 Thomas Street to become available, then moved into the Thomas Street house in 1942 or so. The last of their children, Daniel and Eugene, were born there.

On New Year’s Day of 1947 or 48, an ice storm caused a tree branch to fall on an electrical supply wire to the house starting a fire in the middle of the night. The family spent the night with neighbors but eventually moved back into the house.

When most of their children were grown, John and Margaret left Thomas St.. In the fall of 1961 or Spring of 1962, they bought a house at 92 Burchard Avenue, East Orange and lived there until they moved to a retirement community in Cheesequake Village, sometime in the 1970’s.

Margaret Costello & John Patrick O’Mullan. Photo: The O’Mullan Family

Work & Citizenship

In 1937, in the middle of the Great Depression, John Patrick was an employee of the WPA – the Works Progress Administration. The WPA was one of Roosevelt’s New Deal agencies and its goal was to provide one paid job to all families whose breadwinner had suffered long-term unemployment. Its hard to say what John Patrick was doing for the WPA but typically these were labor and construction jobs on public works projects, paying on average $41.57 a month. $11.4 billion was spent through the WPA in the construction of public parks, bridges, roads, and buildings between 1935 and 1943. Over the course of its existence, the WPA provided almost eight million jobs – 3 million in 1938 alone, its peak year.

Between 1938 and 1942, he was working as a public accountant, sometimes independently and sometimes for an insurance company. He had a business listing in the Newark city directory under Accountants & Auditors, and a residential entry as a public accountant. Around 1942, he transitioned from accounting to working as a machinist in a local brewery where he would spend the rest of his working life. With a growing family, the union pay was much better than he could otherwise earn.

The Orange Brewery, founded in 1901 on 119 Hill St. in Orange, would eventually produce Rheingold beer, but not until 1950. Before that time, it was owned by the Trommer’s Company and produced Trommer’s White Label Malt Beer.

There’s been some talk that John Patrick thought he was an American citizen because his mother told him she’d become an American when she was living in Boston as a teenager but by the 1940 census, he knew that wasn’t true. He registered in the census as an alien and in 1942, during WWII, he finally became an American citizen.

Death

On August 7, 1971,  John Patrick retired and moved with Margaret to a retirement community called Cheesequake Village, but – a smoker since the age of 9 – he later developed larynx and lung cancer. He died at the home of his daughter Eleanor on May 7th, 1978. He rests with his wife Margaret at St. Gertrude’s Cemetery in Colonia, NJ.