The McCoys

I haven’t written a genealogical post in quite a while so how about I write about the McCoys?

My maternal grandfather’s mother’s maiden name was Sarah McCoy. She was born around 1856 and thereby hangs a tale. You see, Sarah had a remarkable, magical talent. For each ten years (the time between the decennial censuses) Sarah somehow managed to age only nine years. At the time of the 1880 census she was 24. When the 1900 census was taken (the 1890 census was lost in a fire) she was 42. When 1910 rolled around she was 51. And so on. This wonderful trait is one she passed down to her children: my grandfather Owen showed the same marvelous characteristic.

Sarah was widowed at 27 when my great-grandfather, George Blanchard, died young of an abcess of the liver, leaving her with four young children and not much else. By all accounts Sarah was straitlaced (literally) and her sons, at least, rebelled and left home quite young. My grandfather, Owen, went into vaudeville. My great-uncle, Charles, joined the circus as a roustabout, maybe as a driver. He was a big, strong guy who later became a St. Louis policeman. My other great-uncle, George, disappeared, by family tradition moving to the Northwest. I’d love to find some record of him.

I know that in 1880 in St. Louis George (an engineer whatever that means), Sarah, and their children, Owen, Gertrude, George, and Charles, were living with Sarah’s mother, Margaret (or Mary, probably Margaret Mary or Mary Margaret), and her brother, Tom. I have no record of Tom after the 1880 census. He simply disappears.

Until very recently that’s all I knew of the McCoys. But a few months ago my sister gave me an ingenious idea and I’ve managed to trace the McCoys at least back to 1850. In 1860, according to the federal census for St. Louis, Sarah was living there with her father, Owen, her mother, Margaret, and her siblings, Phillip, Owen, and Maryanne. Even better, in 1850, according to the federal census for Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, the McCoys were living there. There is a bare possibility that the O. McCoy and his wife in the 1840 federal census for Allegheny were my great-great-grandfather and -mother—I have no way of telling. Further back there’s the barest possibility that Owen was one of the McCoys living in Allegheny County at the time of the 1830 federal census. I just have no way of knowing.

There are a number of interesting things about the Mccoys. McCoy, which means “son of Hugh”, has a number of variations and is a Scots-Irish name. Most McCoys are from Ulster. Since Phillip was born in 1842 here in the United States, my McCoys were not “famine Irish”—Irishmen who came over here during the great influx that accompanied the potato famine in Ireland which began in 1845. Indeed, all of my Irish immigrant ancestors predate the famine.

The McCoys seemed to move around a great deal, from Pennsylvania to Missouri, possibly to Chicago (where my great-grandparents married). I have no doubt that they were following work but what work were they following?

The McCoys are the most proletarian of all of my ancestors, Owen having been a day laborer as were his sons with the exception of Tom, who was a teamster, and I’m proud of them. They’re the only family of my ancestry who don’t seem to have lived by their wits.

I owe a lot to my great-grandmother, Sarah McCoy Blanchard. She kept her little family together under extremely difficult circumstances. I probably owe to her the slight brogue with which my mother speaks and which, occasionally, creeps into my own speech as well in the form of a very light lilt or cadence. I also probably owe her my Catholicism. Sarah was the most Catholic of Catholics with a Catholicism tinged with Jansenism as was common in Ireland in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. That, no doubt, is what drove her sons away from home.

I don’t have any pictures of the McCoys. Perhaps if I come across some descendants of Sarah’s older siblings I might find some. So, if you know any McCoys from St. Louis or Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, ask them….