Early Life
No pictures of Bridget are known.
Her father was Michael Quinn, her mother, Betsy (sometimes ‘Bessie’) Curby (sometimes ‘Curley’).
She was born in (choose only one!):
- Vermont,
- Troy, New York,
- Ireland, or
- Milwaukee.
The only conclusion we can draw here is that ‘Bridget Quinn’ was a quite common name. Not very helpful. A birth certificate would sort matters out but none could be found.
We’ll treat Milwaukee as her birth place for the purely pragmatic reason that several documents tell us Bridget’s birth place was Milwaukee. The other possibilities each have no more than one or two document references. SEE BELOW–INCONSISTENCY?
Adding up references is hardly a sophisticated methodology but it’s the best we can do until more documents come online.
Family
James O’Donnell and Bridget Quinn married on May 6, 1869, when he was 24 and she, 21.
According to Father’s genealogical notes, they had ten children, eight of whom survived infancy:
| William | b. 1869 | d. 1943 | Age 75 | ||||||||
| Alice | 1871 | 1871 | 7 Months | ||||||||
| James J. Sr.--Dad's Father | 1873 | 1955 | 82 | ||||||||
| Elizabeth O'Donnell Henderson | 1874 | ? | ? | ||||||||
| Edward | 1875 | 1939 | 64 | ||||||||
| Michael | 1877 | 1954 | 77 | ||||||||
| Catharine O'Donnell McDermott | 1879 | 1927 | 48 | ||||||||
| Mary O'Donnell Owens | 1880 | 1962 | 82 | ||||||||
| Margaret O'Donnell McCormack | 1882 | 1965 | 83 | ||||||||
| Patrick | July 29, 1884 | August 3, 1884 | 5 Days |
Acquaintance Followed By Marriage
One serendipitous if minor discovery in the 1860 Census is that Bridget and her future husband knew each other as children. James, 16, was then living at number 29 with his father William and also working as a laborer. Bridget, 12, was living a few doors away at number 25 with her mother and four siblings. (The street name isn’t given.) We don’t know how well they knew each other but know each other they almost certainly did. Living only a couple of doors apart they must have had at least a nodding acquaintance with each other.
It’s agreeable to think that their romantic relationship blossomed out of a friendship, or even a casual familiarity with each other.
Death
Bridget died at 36, on September 15, 1884. The cause of death, according to her death record and the news accounts derived from it, was alcoholism, but there is good reason to believe this verdict to be tainted by stereotypes about the Irish and drink at a time when anti-Irish sentiment was still widespread.
It wouldn’t be far fetched. Ten children in fifteen years couldn’t have been easy, and if the newspaper stories of his occasional scrapes with the law are any indication, her husband could be rough around the edges at times. Still, all of her eight children who lived to adulthood and whose dates are known had lengthy and apparently normal lives, something not typical of children born with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. Even the later-born children, the ones who would have been most affected by late-stage alcoholism, lived long, unexceptional lives.
We can’t be certain this far removed and absent any medical evidence, but the coroner’s conclusion of alcoholism may be justly viewed with skepticism. More telling is her death just six weeks after the birth of her son Patrick, who lived only five days, suggestive of death following complications from childbirth in a time before antibiotic drugs.
Four years after her death, James married Susan Reddy Collopy (1847-1915), who brought her three Collopy children to the household, and together they added two more of their own.
James’ children had him buried next to Bridget (left). They then put up an imposing memorial obelisk. Susan Collopy O’Donnell chose not to disturb the two and was buried a little behind and a little apart from them.
Picture Gallery
