FROM A FARM IN CARRIGKILTER · CHAPTER SEVEN
Leaving Ireland
Two Voyages Across the Atlantic
From a Farm in Carrigkilter — The Dorgan Family of East Cork: Land, Migration, and Memory
On 13 August 1896, Patrick J. Dorgan’s farm at Carrigkilter was sold.
A little more than two months later, his name appeared on a passenger list at Queenstown.
The land records that had followed the Dorgan family for half a century were about to give way to a different kind of document.
A ship’s manifest.
Queenstown, 21 October 1896
On 21 October 1896, Patrick J. Dorgan left Ireland aboard the Teutonic, bound for New York.
The passenger record identifies him as:
Patrick Dorgan
Age:
40
Nationality:
Irish
Last residence:
Ballylanders
Ship:
Teutonic
Departure:
Queenstown — 21 October 1896
Arrival:
New York — 28 October 1896.¹
The recorded age of forty would suggest a birth around 1856.
It does not settle Patrick’s birth year.
As earlier chapters have shown, later records give several conflicting dates for his birth. The passenger age should therefore be preserved as information recorded in 1896 rather than converted into a definitive birth date.
The other unexpected detail is Ballylanders.
The Ballylanders Question
Patrick had just sold his farm at Carrigkilter.
Yet the passenger manifest did not record Carrigkilter, Ballycotton, Cloyne or Midleton as his last residence.
It recorded:
Ballylanders.
At present, no surviving evidence tells us why.
We do not know how long Patrick had been there.
We do not know with whom he stayed.
And no record yet establishes whether Ballylanders represented a brief stop between the Carrigkilter sale and departure, an employment connection, a family connection, or something else entirely.
The manifest gives us the place.
It does not explain it.
That makes Ballylanders one of the smaller but genuine mysteries in the migration story.
Seven Days at Sea
Patrick reached New York on 28 October 1896 aboard the same ship on which he had departed Queenstown one week earlier.
That arrival is the first secure documentary event placing the direct Carrigkilter branch in the United States.²
Later in life, Patrick’s American naturalization papers would remember his immigration differently, giving another year and another ship.
Those later recollections are part of his record and should be preserved.
But for the actual crossing, the contemporary 1896 passenger list takes precedence.
Patrick Dorgan left Queenstown on the Teutonic on 21 October 1896.
He arrived in New York on 28 October.
That much is established.
What happened immediately after his arrival belongs to the opening of the American story.
His family, however, was still in Ireland.
The Household Divided by an Ocean
Patrick’s departure did not complete the family migration.
It began it.
Mary Catherine Hartnett Dorgan remained in Ireland with the children.
The surviving evidence therefore shows not one family crossing but a staged migration.
Patrick traveled first.
Mary Catherine and the children followed later.
The records prove that sequence.
They do not tell us why the family chose that arrangement.
It would be easy to assume that Patrick went ahead to secure employment or housing before sending for his wife and children. Such arrangements were common among immigrant families.
But no document yet discovered states that this was Patrick’s plan.
The family history should therefore stop where the evidence stops.
Patrick crossed first.
Mary Catherine followed.
The reason for the interval remains undocumented.
One More Child in Ireland
During the months between Patrick’s departure and Mary Catherine’s crossing, another child entered the direct line.
The working family chronology presently places William John Dorgan’s birth on 11 April 1897, although later American records disagree about his exact birth date.
The firmer Irish record comes four days later.
On 15 April 1897, William John Dorgan was baptized at Ballycotton Chapel.
His parents were Patrick J. Dorgan and Mary Catherine Hartnett Dorgan.
His sponsor was:
Margarita Roche.³
That baptism is particularly important to this history.
William would later become the grandfather whose family line leads directly to the Rhode Island generations.
Yet his first securely anchored record belongs not to Providence, Warwick or Cranston.
It belongs to East Cork.
To Ballycotton.
Only weeks later, he would cross the Atlantic as an infant.
William’s Birth-Date Problem
Like his father, William accumulated conflicting birth dates in later records.
The current working chronology uses 11 April 1897 as his birth date.
His baptism on 15 April 1897, however, is the stronger contemporary Irish event and should remain separate from the later disagreements about the precise day of birth.
One later naturalization record would even report 15 April 1897 as William’s birth date—the same date as his baptism.
That illustrates why later American records cannot simply be harmonized into a single chronology.
The Irish baptism tells us what happened on 15 April.
William John Dorgan was baptized at Ballycotton Chapel.
The exact birth date remains a separate evidence question.
Queenstown Again
On 2 June 1897, Mary Catherine Dorgan arrived at Queenstown with five surviving children.
They were:
Anne Theresa Dorgan
Michael Joseph Dorgan
Patrick Francis Dorgan
David Andrew Dorgan
and the infant:
William John Dorgan.
They too boarded the Teutonic.⁴
John Joseph Dorgan, baptized in December 1895 and remembered in the family chronology as having died in infancy, was not among them.
The passenger manifest recorded Mary Catherine as:
Mrs. M. Dorgan
Her occupation was given as:
housekeeper.
Her recorded age was:
28.
Her last residence was:
Midleton.
Again, the manifest must be read carefully.
Mary Catherine’s Age
Mary Catherine’s recorded age of twenty-eight does not agree with her documented Cloyne baptism of 22 November 1866.
If the baptism belongs to the woman on this passenger list—as the surrounding evidence strongly establishes—then the manifest age is too young.
It should not be used to create a new birth year for her.
The passenger record remains excellent evidence for the voyage, the household traveling with her, her recorded last residence, and the date of migration.
It is weaker evidence for her age.
This is another example of why family history cannot simply copy every number from every record and assume that they all agree.
They do not.
Midleton
Mary Catherine’s manifest gives her last residence as Midleton.
That entry should likewise be preserved for what it says and no more.
It does not erase the family’s documented connections to Carrigkilter, Ballycotton, Cloyne, Garryvoe or Churchtown South.
Nor does it establish how long Mary Catherine and the children had been in Midleton before departure.
The record gives their last residence.
It does not provide an itinerary for the months between Patrick’s departure and theirs.
By June 1897, however, one thing was unmistakable.
The remaining household was leaving Ireland.
9 June 1897
The crossing lasted one week.
On 9 June 1897, the Teutonic reached New York.
Mary Catherine and the five children arrived together.⁵
The family migration that had begun with Patrick the previous October was now, in its transatlantic stage, complete.
Two voyages.
The same ship.
Patrick in October 1896.
Mary Catherine and the children in June 1897.
The records do not prove the reason Patrick sold Carrigkilter.
They do not explain Ballylanders.
They do not tell us exactly where Mary Catherine lived during the months after Patrick departed.
But taken together, the land and passenger records establish a remarkably clear sequence:
The Carrigkilter farm was sold.
Patrick left Ireland.
William was baptized in East Cork.
Mary Catherine and five children followed.
And the direct family line crossed the Atlantic.
What They Carried With Them
The passenger manifests record names, ages, occupations and places.
They cannot tell us what memories of East Cork traveled with the family.
That evidence survives differently—in later family recollections, photographs, correspondence, cemetery records and, more than a century later, the return of descendants to Carrigkilter and Ballymacoda.
For the moment, however, the documentary story ends at a port.
On one side of the Atlantic stood the places that had defined the family thus far:
Carrigkilter.
Ballybraher.
Cloyne.
Ballycotton.
Garryvoe.
Churchtown South.
On the other side was a place that would soon become equally important to the Dorgan story:
Providence, Rhode Island.
The farm had been left behind.
The family had not left its history behind with it.
Notes and Sources
1. Patrick J. Dorgan passenger record, October 1896. Patrick departed Queenstown aboard the Teutonic on 21 October 1896 and arrived in New York on 28 October. The manifest records him as Irish, age forty, with last residence Ballylanders. The age is not controlling evidence for his birth year, and the record does not establish how long he had been in Ballylanders or with whom.
2. Patrick’s arrival in New York, 28 October 1896. The contemporary passenger record is the controlling evidence for this crossing. Later naturalization documents contain conflicting immigration information and should not replace the 1896 manifest.
3. William John Dorgan baptism, 15 April 1897. Ballycotton Chapel, County Cork. Parents Patrick J. Dorgan and Mary Catherine Hartnett; sponsor Margarita Roche. The current working birth date is 11 April 1897, but later records conflict, so the baptism should remain the firmer Irish event.
4. Mary Catherine Dorgan and children passenger manifest, June 1897. Mary Catherine and Anne Theresa, Michael Joseph, Patrick Francis, David Andrew and infant William John departed Queenstown aboard the Teutonic on 2 June 1897. Mary was recorded as Mrs. M. Dorgan, age twenty-eight, housekeeper, with last residence Midleton. Her recorded age conflicts with her 1866 baptism and should not be used to establish her birth year.
5. Arrival in New York, 9 June 1897. Mary Catherine and the five surviving children arrived aboard the Teutonic. Together with Patrick’s 1896 voyage, the records establish a staged family migration; they do not by themselves establish why Patrick traveled first.
Continue the Family Story
Next: Chapter Eight — Providence
The passenger lists end at New York. The next records place Patrick, Mary Catherine and their children in an American city of mills, workshops, rented houses and changing addresses: Providence, Rhode Island.
Explore the evidence behind this chapter:
Emigration and Naturalization Records · Patrick J. Dorgan and Mary Catherine Hartnett · Children of Patrick J. Dorgan and Mary Catherine Hartnett · Carrigkilter Research Hub