FROM A FARM IN CARRIGKILTER · CHAPTER NINE
The American Dorgans
Marriage, Separation, and a Family Divided
From a Farm in Carrigkilter — The Dorgan Family of East Cork: Land, Migration, and Memory
By 1917, the child who had crossed the Atlantic as an infant was an adult.
William John Dorgan, baptized at Ballycotton in April 1897, had grown up not on a farm in East Cork but in Providence streets recorded in censuses and directories.
His parents had made the crossing.
His generation would have to make something different:
an American family life.
That story was not simple.
St. Patrick’s Church, 9 June 1917
On 9 June 1917, William J. Dorgan married Jessie Greig at St. Patrick’s Church in Providence.
William was about twenty years old.
Jessie was about seventeen and was recorded as a waitress.
Her parents were Alexander Greig and Catherine Sullivan.¹
The marriage joined another family to the expanding Rhode Island Dorgan network.
Only four months later, William and Jessie became parents.
Their son was born on:
9 October 1917.
He died six days later, on:
15 October 1917.²
No child survived the marriage.
The infant nevertheless belongs in the complete family history.
A Marriage Unravels
By the following year, the marriage was in difficulty.
The surviving record set places William and Jessie’s separation in the summer of 1918.
On 27 January 1920, Jessie filed for divorce.³
Eight days later, the 1920 federal census recorded William and Jessie in the household of Patrick and Mary Catherine Dorgan at:
457 Smith Street, Providence.
That census entry should not be interpreted as proof that the couple had reconciled.
The court chronology establishes that they had already separated and that Jessie had filed for divorce.
This is a useful reminder that census records capture who was enumerated at an address on a particular occasion; they do not always explain the relationships occurring within that household.
William’s Declaration of Intention
On 23 January 1922, while living at:
68 Bergen Street, Providence,
William filed Declaration of Intention No. 34783 as part of the naturalization process.
He reported that he had been born on 15 April 1897 at Churchtown, County Cork and had arrived in New York on 9 June 1897 aboard the Teutonic.
He also named Jessie as his wife, although her address was recorded separately.⁴
The immigration details agree well with the contemporary passenger evidence.
The reported birth date does not settle William’s birth chronology.
Fifteen April was his documented baptismal date at Ballycotton, and other records give different dates for his birth.
As elsewhere in this family history, later reported information must be preserved without being forced into agreement.
The First Marriage Ends
Jessie’s divorce was granted on:
4 January 1923.
The grounds were:
neglect to provide.
The decree became effective on:
6 July 1923
after the customary six-month interval.
Jessie was permitted to resume the surname Greig.
Her deposition described William as a chauffeur earning approximately $35 per week and stated that the couple had lived apart for years.⁵
The court record gives us legal facts.
It should not be used to invent emotional explanations for the failure of the marriage.
It tells us that the marriage ended.
It does not tell us everything that happened inside it.
A New Marriage Sequence
The summer of 1923 produced a tightly documented sequence.
On 3 July 1923, William Dorgan and Helen Louise McIntosh filed their intention to marry in Fall River, Massachusetts.
The clerk issued the certificate on:
9 July 1923.
The intention was numbered:
735.⁶
Between those two dates, another important event occurred.
William Joseph Dorgan Jr.
On 7 July 1923, William Joseph Dorgan Jr. was born at:
51 Pekin Street, Providence.
His parents were William John Dorgan and Helen Louise McIntosh.⁷
The chronology should be presented exactly as the records give it.
The marriage intention preceded William Jr.’s birth by four days.
The marriage followed eighteen days after his birth.
No purpose is served by smoothing that sequence into something more conventional.
The records are clear.
Fall River, 25 July 1923
On 25 July 1923, William and Helen married at:
592 North Main Street, Fall River, Massachusetts.
The marriage was performed by Joseph F. Delahanty, Justice of the Peace and Assistant City Clerk.
William was recorded as a chauffeur and gave his residence as:
61 Bergen Street, Providence.
Helen, age seventeen, gave her residence as:
51 Pekin Street.
The record named William’s parents as Patrick Dorgan and Mary Hartnett and Helen’s as Charles L. McIntosh and Ellen L. Dwyer.⁸
William reported Providence as his birthplace on this record.
That statement conflicts with his Irish baptism and passenger evidence and should not replace them.
The marriage record is excellent evidence for the marriage, residence, occupation and parentage.
It is not controlling evidence for his birthplace.
Three Children
William and Helen’s household included three children.
Their son:
William Joseph Dorgan Jr.
was born in 1923.
A daughter:
Helen Louise Dorgan
followed in 1924.
Their third known child:
Corinne Hope Dorgan
was born in 1927.
The current family chronology gives Helen’s birth as 19 August 1924 and Corinne’s as 28 October 1927. Those dates are strongly supported by later family and census evidence, although separate primary vital citations remain desirable.⁹
The household did not remain intact.
The 1927 Separation
Family testimony places William and Helen’s separation in 1927, when Helen was pregnant with Corinne.
The family account says that Helen and the children were taken into the household of her mother, Ellen, and stepfather, Joseph Connell, at:
956 Chalkstone Avenue, Providence.
The same family tradition also remembers a later attempt at reconciliation.
Those details belong to family memory and should be labeled that way.¹⁰
The documentary evidence independently confirms the resulting household.
In the 1930 United States Census, Helen and all three children were living at 956 Chalkstone Avenue in the Connell household.
William Jr. was six.
Helen was five.
Corinne was two.
Joseph Connell was head of household, and Ellen Connell was Helen’s mother.¹¹
The census proves where they were living.
It does not prove every detail preserved in the family account about how they came to be there.
A Decade Apart
The separation became legally final ten years later.
On 22 September 1937, the Providence County Superior Court granted Helen a divorce from William.
The grounds were:
neglect to provide
and
willful desertion.
Helen received custody of the three children:
William J., age fourteen;
Helen L., age thirteen;
and Corinne H., age nine.
Questions of alimony and child support were left for future determination. No later support order has been identified in the file reviewed.¹²
By then, William Jr. had spent much of his childhood apart from his father.
That separation would shape the next generation of the family.
William Sr. After the Divorce
The documentary record becomes thinner after 1937.
One important surviving record comes from 29 January 1940.
On his Social Security account application, William gave his address as:
Division Road, R.F.D. 67, East Greenwich, Rhode Island
and named his employer as:
Moriarty & Kay Oil Company
at 164 Allens Avenue, Providence.¹³
This is a strong contemporary work-and-residence anchor.
Later family recollections describe William in additional kinds of work, including mechanical, carpentry and oil-truck employment.
Those descriptions should remain family testimony unless matching contemporary employment records are located.
Between 1940 and 1969, the surviving documentary trail remains incomplete.
The absence should not be filled by assumption.
A Family Connection Lost
The separation between William Sr. and his son William Jr. became more than a household arrangement.
It became a family estrangement.
The exact course of that estrangement is preserved principally through later family memory rather than court or census records.
By the time William Joseph Dorgan III was growing up, he did not know his grandfather.
He did not know whether William Sr. was living or dead.
That changed unexpectedly in 1969.
A Name on a Charge Card
This episode belongs primarily to the later memory chapters, but it is also the natural ending to William Sr.’s family story.
In the summer of 1969, Bill was working in the men’s clothing department at the Shepherd Company in downtown Providence.
According to Bill’s own recollection, he noticed the surname DORGAN on the charge card of a customer, Ann O’Donnell-Dorgan.
Conversation revealed that her husband was Bill’s father’s first cousin.
She also told Bill something he had not known:
his grandfather was alive.
Her son, Tommy Austin Dorgan Jr., soon arranged an introduction.¹⁴
17 August 1969
On 17 August 1969, Tommy brought Bill to the Rhode Island Medical Center, then commonly called “Howard,” where William Sr. was recovering from a fractured hip.
William was seventy-two.
Bill was twenty.
A photograph taken during that meeting survives.
It is the only presently known photograph of grandfather and grandson together.¹⁵
The fuller personal meaning of that meeting belongs to Chapter Eleven, where family memory itself becomes part of the evidence.
For Chapter Nine, one fact matters most:
a connection that had been lost within the Rhode Island family was found again.
21 Beach Avenue
By that period, William Sr. was living at:
21 Beach Avenue, Warwick.
Bill later remembered picking him up there and bringing him to a family cookout at 85 Herschel Street in Providence.
That event is preserved in Bill’s memoir rather than in a contemporary public record, and its exact date has not been independently established.
After the 1969 encounter, the archival trail again becomes sparse.
William Sr. lived another fourteen years.
The End of William Sr.’s Life
William J. Dorgan Sr. died on:
22 February 1983.
His Providence Journal death notice, published on 24 February, identified him as the son of the late Patrick and Mary Dorgan and gave his residence as:
21 Beach Avenue, Warwick.
A private funeral was announced from the Winfield Funeral Home, 94 Beach Avenue.¹⁶
Family memory adds another detail.
William Jr. later told Bill that when he went to claim his father’s body as next of kin, he saw on William Sr.’s bedside table a Bible and the photograph taken of William Sr. and Bill in 1969.
That recollection belongs to family testimony.
It is not part of the newspaper death notice and should not be presented as though it were.
Yet as family memory, it carries its own kind of significance.
The photograph made at a rediscovered meeting had apparently remained with the grandfather until the end of his life.
From Irish Infant to American Grandfather
William John Dorgan entered the United States as an infant in 1897.
His adult life was entirely American.
He married twice.
He lost an infant son.
He worked as a chauffeur and later appears in oil-company employment.
His first marriage ended in divorce.
His second marriage produced three children and then another long separation and divorce.
His son grew up largely in another household.
For decades, the generations were divided.
Then, in 1969, a chance encounter reconnected grandfather and grandson.
William Sr.’s life does not fit a simple story of immigration followed by steady family continuity.
The American generations inherited more than the success of migration.
They inherited separation, remarriage, changing households, incomplete memories and relationships that had to be recovered.
The next chapter turns to the child who grew up inside that divided family:
William Joseph Dorgan Jr.
His life would be shaped by a very different set of records—
schooling,
war,
marriage,
police service,
family life,
and public work in twentieth-century Rhode Island.
Notes and Sources
1. William J. Dorgan and Jessie Greig marriage, 9 June 1917. St. Patrick’s Church, Providence. William was the son of Patrick Dorgan and Mary Catherine Hartnett; Jessie was the daughter of Alexander Greig and Catherine Sullivan.
2. Infant son of William and Jessie Dorgan. Born 9 October 1917 and died 15 October 1917. No child survived William and Jessie’s marriage.
3. Separation and filing for divorce. William and Jessie separated in summer 1918; Jessie filed for divorce on 27 January 1920.
4. William John Dorgan Declaration of Intention, 23 January 1922. Declaration no. 34783; residence 68 Bergen Street; reported arrival 9 June 1897 aboard the Teutonic. Reported birth date of 15 April 1897 conflicts with other evidence.
5. Jessie Greig Dorgan divorce. Decree granted 4 January 1923 for neglect to provide; effective 6 July 1923; Jessie permitted to resume Greig. Court testimony described William as a chauffeur earning about $35 per week.
6. Marriage intention — William Dorgan and Helen Louise McIntosh. Filed 3 July 1923; certificate issued 9 July; intention no. 735.
7. Birth of William Joseph Dorgan Jr. Born 7 July 1923 at 51 Pekin Street, Providence, to William John Dorgan and Helen Louise McIntosh.
8. William Dorgan and Helen Louise McIntosh marriage, 25 July 1923. 592 North Main Street, Fall River; Joseph F. Delahanty officiating. William was a chauffeur; the record names both sets of parents.
9. Children of William and Helen. William Jr. was born in 1923; Helen Louise Dorgan’s current family chronology gives 19 August 1924; Corinne Hope Dorgan’s gives 28 October 1927. Separate primary vital citations remain desirable for the daughters’ exact dates.
10. 1927 separation. Family testimony places Helen and the children in the Connell household at 956 Chalkstone Avenue after the marital separation. The specific circumstances and attempted reconciliation remain oral-history evidence.
11. 1930 U.S. Census. Helen and children William Jr., Helen and Corinne lived at 956 Chalkstone Avenue with Joseph and Ellen Connell. The census corroborates the household, not all details of the family account explaining how they arrived there.
12. William Dorgan and Helen McIntosh divorce, 22 September 1937. Providence County Superior Court; neglect to provide and willful desertion; custody awarded to Helen; alimony and child support reserved.
13. William Sr. Social Security application, 29 January 1940. Residence Division Road, East Greenwich; employer Moriarty & Kay Oil Company, 164 Allens Avenue, Providence.
14. Summer 1969 rediscovery. Bill’s first-person memoir records the Shepherd Company encounter with Ann O’Donnell-Dorgan and the connection through Tommy Austin Dorgan Jr. This is family provenance, not an archival business record.
15. Grandfather-grandson meeting, 17 August 1969. Rhode Island Medical Center; William Sr. recovering from a fractured hip; surviving photograph is the only presently known image of grandfather and grandson together.
16. Death of William J. Dorgan Sr. Died 22 February 1983; residence 21 Beach Avenue, Warwick; Providence Journal death notice published 24 February. Family memory concerning the Bible and 1969 photograph is preserved separately from the public death notice.
Continue the Family Story
Next: Chapter Ten — Service, Work and the Twentieth Century
William Joseph Dorgan Jr. grows up in the McIntosh–Connell household, trains as a Navy radioman, serves in the South Pacific, marries Mary Anne Gorman, raises a family, and builds a long career in Providence.
Explore the evidence behind this chapter:
William J. Dorgan and Jessie Greig · William J. Dorgan and Helen Louise McIntosh · Census and Directory Records · Military Records · Family Photographs