FROM A FARM IN CARRIGKILTER · CHAPTER EIGHT
Providence
Work, Family, and an American Household
From a Farm in Carrigkilter — The Dorgan Family of East Cork: Land, Migration, and Memory
The passenger lists carried the Dorgan family as far as New York.
The next surviving records place them somewhere very different from Carrigkilter.
Instead of acreage, annuities and farm buildings, the documents now record street addresses, rented houses, occupations, census households and city directories.
Patrick J. Dorgan had left Ireland in October 1896. Mary Catherine Hartnett Dorgan and the children followed in June 1897.
By the beginning of the twentieth century, the family was established in Providence, Rhode Island.
The Carrigkilter story had become an American household story.
39 Ashburton Street
The first detailed surviving American household snapshot comes from the 1900 United States Census.
On 4 June 1900, Patrick and Mary Catherine were living at:
39 Ashburton Street, Providence
with five children:
Anne, Michael, Patrick, David and William.
Patrick was recorded as a:
night laborer.¹
The change from Carrigkilter is striking.
Only eight years earlier, Patrick had been recorded as a purchasing tenant acquiring thirty-seven acres in fee simple.
Now his occupation was labor rather than farming.
The census also reported Patrick as thirty-nine years old and born in August 1860.
Those details belong to the record, but they do not resolve his birth chronology. Other records give different ages and dates, and no Irish baptism has yet settled the question.
What the census establishes securely is the family itself:
Patrick and Mary Catherine were together in Providence with their Irish-born children.
A Family Still Growing
The Providence household continued to grow.
A son, Timothy Joseph Dorgan, was born on 17 June 1902.
His life was brief.
Timothy died on 17 April 1903, at about ten months of age, at the family home at 39 Ashburton Street. The recorded cause was measles and capillary bronchitis, and he was buried at St. Francis Cemetery.²
The indexed Rhode Island record contains inconsistent age information, so the established family chronology should be retained rather than replacing it with the defective index.
Timothy joined John Joseph—the child lost in Ireland—in the complete family history even though neither survived into adulthood.
296 Charles Street
By 1905, the family was living at:
296 Charles Street, Providence.
The Rhode Island State Census recorded Patrick as a common laborer and noted that he had immigrated in 1896.
The original census card gave his birth date as 26 April 1860.³
That date is important because another later record would also give 26 April, although with a different year.
It is therefore evidence worth preserving.
It is not final proof of Patrick’s birth.
The 1905 household also shows that the family was no longer simply the group that had arrived from East Cork in 1897. Their younger daughter Mary was now part of the household as well.
Providence had become the place where the family continued to develop.
From Farm Work to City Work
The 1910 United States Census gives an especially useful picture of the transition.
Patrick and Mary were living at:
47 Osborne Street, Providence.
Patrick was employed as a laborer at a bleachery.
The Irish-born children were entering their own occupations.
Anne was a:
milliner.
Michael was a:
bench worker in a jewelry shop.
Their son Patrick was a:
tool-maker apprentice.⁴
These occupations show the next generation entering a very different working environment from the East Cork farm their parents had left.
The transformation did not happen in a single moment at Ellis Island.
It happened through years of work.
Carrigkilter had organized family life around land.
Providence increasingly organized it around wages, trades and city addresses.
125 Wayne Street
By the 1915 Rhode Island State Census, Patrick and Mary were living at:
125 Wayne Street.
Still in the household were David, William J. and Mary.
Patrick was recorded as a City of Providence laborer.
The return also contains apparently conflicting employment wording, indicating both that he was out of work on 15 April 1915 and that he was working on his own account. The phrases should be preserved as recorded rather than forced into an explanation the census itself does not provide.⁵
The household itself tells another story.
Some of the older children were no longer there.
The immigrant family was beginning to divide into separate adult households.
That process would become increasingly important in the years ahead.
Addresses as Family Evidence
Providence city directories and census returns allow the family’s movement through Rhode Island to be followed with unusual detail.
The addresses change:
Ashburton Street.
Charles Street.
Osborne Street.
Wayne Street.
Smith Street.
Bergen Street.
Later, Cranston addresses appear as well.
But city directories were compiled on schedules different from censuses. Information could be collected months before publication.
An address in one source should therefore not automatically be treated as contradicting an address in another.
The records are snapshots taken at different moments.
Together they reveal movement rather than confusion.⁶
457 Smith Street
On 4 February 1920, the federal census recorded Patrick and Mary Catherine at:
457 Smith Street, Providence.
Their son William and his wife Jessie Greig Dorgan were also enumerated in the household.⁷
That census entry becomes more complicated when compared with William and Jessie’s court records, because their marriage was already in difficulty.
That story belongs principally to the next chapter.
For Patrick and Mary Catherine, the importance of the census is simpler.
More than twenty years after arriving in America, they remained at the center of an extended family household.
Bergen Street
By 1925, Patrick and Mary Catherine were living on the third floor at:
61 Bergen Street, Providence.
Their daughter Mary was with them.
The same building contained another layer of family.
Their son David Dorgan and his wife Helen lived on the second floor with Helen’s father, James Doorley.
The Rhode Island census recorded Patrick and Mary Catherine’s citizenship status as:
“petitioning aliens.”⁸
Nearly three decades had passed since the family crossed the Atlantic.
Patrick had built a life in Rhode Island, raised children there and worked in Providence.
Yet his legal transition to American citizenship was still unfinished.
That would soon change.
Becoming an American Citizen
Patrick began formal naturalization proceedings late in life.
In April 1928, while living at 61 Bergen Street, he filed a Declaration of Intention.
By 1933, he was living at:
170 Richland Street, Cranston
and working as a:
stationary or station fireman.
His citizenship petition named two witnesses:
John H. Maguire
and
John H. O’Brien.
On 25 September 1933, Patrick signed the Oath of Allegiance and completed his naturalization.
His naturalization certificate was:
No. 3710408.⁹
The naturalization papers are valuable records of Patrick’s residence, occupation, witnesses and legal status.
They are less reliable for some facts about his early life.
They give a birth date of 17 March 1863 and describe an October 1897 arrival aboard the Majestic.
Both conflict with the contemporary passenger record establishing his October 1896 crossing aboard the Teutonic.
The later naturalization recollection must therefore remain exactly what it is:
later self-reported information.
It should not replace the passenger manifest created at the time of migration.
Three Generations Under One Roof
The 1930 United States Census places Patrick and Mary Catherine at:
79 Wyette Avenue, Auburn, Cranston.
Their household included their daughter Mary Catherine Dorgan Moriarty, her husband Raymond J. Moriarty, and their daughter Barbara Jane Moriarty.
Three generations were now living together.
Patrick’s occupation was recorded as a:
fireman / boiler-room worker.
The household paid $45 rent.¹⁰
Providence directories from approximately the same period give another address—103 Rosedale Street.
The difference should not be artificially reconciled. The census and city directories represent information collected at different moments.
What matters for the larger story is the progression.
Patrick had arrived as an Irish immigrant laborer.
By 1930, he and Mary Catherine were grandparents living within a three-generation Rhode Island family.
From Providence into Cranston
The records increasingly move outside Providence itself.
A 1932 Cranston directory lists Patrick at:
304 Bayview Avenue.
By 1933, his naturalization petition gave:
170 Richland Street, Cranston.
These addresses document a family no longer confined to the city where its American story had begun.
Providence remained the center of the early immigrant years.
But the descendants were spreading into Cranston, Warwick, East Greenwich and elsewhere in Rhode Island.
The same pattern that had once moved Dorgan children outward from Carrigkilter was now occurring on another continent.
Patrick’s Last Record
On 9 December 1937, Patrick J. Dorgan died at:
Division Road, East Greenwich, Rhode Island.
His death certificate reconnects the American immigrant with the East Cork family from which this story began.
It named his father as:
Patrick Dorgan
and his mother as:
Ann Flynn.
His wife was recorded as:
Mary Hartnett Dorgan.
His occupation was:
fireman, in the building industry.
His son David Dorgan supplied the information.
The principal cause of death was cerebral hemorrhage, with paralysis and bed sores recorded as contributory conditions.¹¹
Even at the end of Patrick’s life, the records preserve the unresolved birth-date problem.
The death certificate gives 26 April 1861.
The 1905 Rhode Island census gives 26 April 1860.
The agreement on 26 April is significant.
The year remains unresolved.
Patrick’s obituary appeared in the Providence Journal the following day, 10 December 1937.
It described him as a native of County Cork and a longtime Rhode Island resident, named his surviving family and announced burial at St. Ann Cemetery, Cranston.
Mary Catherine After Patrick
Mary Catherine survived Patrick by almost thirteen years.
Her final years took her beyond Providence and Cranston to the Spring Green section of Warwick.
She died on 23 November 1950 at 9:30 p.m. at:
34 Bellview Avenue.
She had lived there for approximately ten years.
Her son William supplied the information for the Rhode Island death record.¹²
The age reported on that record conflicts sharply with Mary Catherine’s documented baptism in Cloyne on 22 November 1866.
The baptism remains the controlling evidence for her early chronology.
Her funeral was held on 27 November 1950, from the J. F. Skeffington Chapel, followed by Mass at St. Peter’s Church in Cranston.
She was buried in:
St. Ann Cemetery, Cranston
Section 7, Lot 1123, Grave 1
with Patrick.
From Carrigkilter to St. Ann Cemetery
Patrick and Mary Catherine had begun their married life in East Cork.
Patrick had become a landowner at Carrigkilter.
The farm had been sold.
He crossed the Atlantic first.
Mary Catherine followed with the children.
Providence then supplied a new kind of documentary trail:
Ashburton Street.
Charles Street.
Osborne Street.
Wayne Street.
Smith Street.
Bergen Street.
Work as a laborer, bleachery worker and fireman.
Children entering trades.
Grandchildren appearing in Rhode Island households.
Citizenship.
Death certificates.
A shared grave in Cranston.
Carrigkilter did not disappear from the family story when the farm was sold.
It became the place from which the American family could trace itself backward.
And by the time Patrick and Mary Catherine were buried together at St. Ann Cemetery, their children had already begun creating the next chapter.
Notes and Sources
1. 1900 U.S. Census. Patrick J. and Mary Catherine Dorgan at 39 Ashburton Street, Providence, with Anne, Michael, Patrick, David and William. Patrick was recorded as a night laborer. His reported age and August 1860 birth detail conflict with other records and are not controlling.
2. Timothy Joseph Dorgan. Born 17 June 1902 in Providence; died 17 April 1903 at 39 Ashburton Street, aged about ten months. Cause recorded as measles and capillary bronchitis; burial at St. Francis Cemetery. Indexed age data contain errors.
3. 1905 Rhode Island State Census. Household at 296 Charles Street. Patrick was a common laborer and reported immigration in 1896. Original card gives 26 April 1860; the year remains unresolved.
4. 1910 U.S. Census. Household at 47 Osborne Street. Patrick worked at a bleachery; Anne was a milliner, Michael a jewelry-shop bench worker and son Patrick a tool-maker apprentice.
5. 1915 Rhode Island State Census. Household at 125 Wayne Street. Patrick was identified with City of Providence labor; apparently conflicting employment wording should be preserved rather than interpreted.
6. Providence and Cranston directories. The address sequence includes Ashburton, Osborne, Wayne, Bergen, Rosedale and Bayview. Directory publication lag means addresses should be read alongside dated census records rather than forced into an exact continuous chronology.
7. 1920 U.S. Census. Patrick and Mary Catherine at 457 Smith Street with William and Jessie Greig Dorgan. The separate court history of William and Jessie belongs to Chapter Nine.
8. 1925 Rhode Island Census. Patrick, Mary Catherine and daughter Mary at 61 Bergen Street; David Dorgan and the Doorley family lived in the same building. Patrick and Mary were recorded as “petitioning aliens.”
9. Patrick J. Dorgan naturalization file. Declaration in April 1928 at 61 Bergen Street; petition in 1933 at 170 Richland Street, Cranston; witnesses John H. Maguire and John H. O’Brien; oath 25 September 1933; certificate no. 3710408. Later-reported birth and immigration details conflict with contemporary Irish/passenger evidence.
10. 1930 U.S. Census. Patrick and Mary Catherine at 79 Wyette Avenue, Auburn, Cranston, with daughter Mary Catherine Moriarty, Raymond J. Moriarty and granddaughter Barbara Jane. Patrick was a fireman/boiler-room worker.
11. Patrick J. Dorgan death and obituary. Patrick died 9 December 1937 at Division Road, East Greenwich. His certificate names parents Patrick Dorgan and Ann Flynn, wife Mary Hartnett Dorgan and occupation fireman. The Providence Journal obituary followed on 10 December.
12. Mary Catherine Hartnett Dorgan death and burial. Died 23 November 1950 at 34 Bellview Avenue, Spring Green, Warwick; funeral and burial 27 November; St. Ann Cemetery, Cranston, Section 7, Lot 1123, Grave 1. Later age and birth information conflicts with her 1866 Cloyne baptism.
Continue the Family Story
Next: Chapter Nine — The American Dorgans
Patrick and Mary Catherine’s children came of age in Rhode Island. William John Dorgan Sr.’s marriages, work, family separation and later rediscovery carry the story into the first generations formed largely in America.
Explore the evidence behind this chapter:
Census and Directory Records · Emigration and Naturalization Records · Patrick J. Dorgan and Mary Catherine Hartnett · Children of Patrick J. Dorgan and Mary Catherine Hartnett · Death, Obituary & Cemetery Records.