Dairy of James Burke-Gaffney
.... detail to be added ...
Chapter 13
I hear of him occasionally through Sister Columba who corresponds with his wife. I believe they have two very fine sons and one daughter. I do not know their names. These with Annie's children are nephews and nieces I may never know and my children may never know these cousins.
Next follows Louise, my youngest sister. I have not much to tell about her personally. She was about Monica's age now. when I saw her last, and of course she hardly recollects me in her early days. I have faithfully endeavoured to awaken a sisterly feeling for me in her heart by writing to her from time to time. She never replied to any of my calls for friendship -- a little over a year ago I wrote her on receiving photograph of her which my Rev. Cousin Father Tom Gaffney sent me merely to see and return to him. He said she was "the best and finest of all the Gaffneys". I had an enlarged copy of this picture made before returning it to Father Gaffney, and on the strength of this made another attempt to open a correspondence with her but failed, as I learned from Columba -- to whom she sent my letter, saying she had no desire to correspond with me, she did not have any affection for me as a brother. That when she struggling to gain an independence, studying to become a trained nurse, I neglected her and gave her no help. This was a complete surprise " I never heard of any of these struggles, nor had she ever appealed for any assistance I would have been only too happy to share any means I had were I asked, as I did in Charles case, and on other occasions. So her silence toward me is based on diametrically contrary reasons than of Charles' silence. I always heard from my brothers that her independence was very disagreeable to them. She persisted in training for a contrary to the wishes of our family, who do not appreciate this independence of a young woman who chooses to learn an honorable profession, as we do in this country. I suppose from my recollections of the pride of birth so strongly felt in Ireland, they considered she was following a menial service not suitable to the dignity of the family. Thank God I no such feelings of pride, and doubt if I ever had. I would have been only too glad to afford her all the assistance in my power if asked by her. She is now head nurse in Providence Hospital I believe in the City of Cork. She is an advanced Nationalist of the most extreme type, I learn.
This is why cousin Gaffney may have thought her the best of the name, as he was a most enthusiastic ultra Irishman himself. In a recent letter to my daughter Clare from her cousin Ned Gaffney of Dublin, he described her as being "off" on most subjects and said the only sane thing about her was the fact of her being his Godmother. I believe she is so thoroughly Celtic in her ideas that she dresses in some queer style of the middle centuries of the Christian era. Maybe shell come round yet, as Longfellow says , which may be applicable to her case: "We must be patient and assuage the feeling we may not wholly stay; By silence sanctifying not concealing, etc." I mean to keep silence with her for some little time before I write her again.
And the last of the family was poor Frank. The youngest and perhaps the perhaps the brightest. He was like our Richard Malcolm when I bid him goodbye for the last time on earth. A bright little fellow very much Richard in appearance, manner and disposition. As the baby of the family he was naturally the pet, but was by no means a spoiled child. He showed great mechanical tastes for one so young, which afterward developed into genius, I learn. At the last breakfast I had at home I asked him if he would miss me. With tears in eyes, but a broad smile on his lips he answered, "Yes, but you are going to leave me the key of your workshop. This was a precious charge I promised to place in his care. From my earliest years I had a taste for mechanics, and had accumulated a large number of tools and light machinery with which I fitted up a workshop in the ruins of the old castle of Port Royal at our home. This building was battered down by Cromwellians on account of its having sheltered King James who gave it the name of Port Royal. The original name in Irish being Partree or the "King's Portion" in English -- hence James' equivalent of the Celtic name. We were living in what was known as the "Dower House" which escaped destruction, being a few hundred yards away in the woods from the older castle.
Chapter 14
Well, to return to Frank. I was not home during his schooldays, but I believe he was mostly instructed by my father who had then retired from public service, and had plenty of leisure to devote to Frank's education. And right well must he have done it, as Frank's success in the engineering profession was phenomenal in so young a man. He was first engaged in Government work in Ireland. Then he was sent to Egypt in connection with drainage and water-works in that vast country, afterwards he was sent to Singapore. Here he rose rapidly until he became head of all government works in the British possessions there. He returned to Ireland on vacation in 1899 or 1900 and married Gertrude Haggerty of County Cork, a very rich and beautiful young lady. I may remark here that it is a singular coincidence that both my brothers, Tom and Frank, wrote me on announcing their approaching marriages that they were first attracted to their future brides by their fancied resemblance to photographs of my wife Agnes which I had sent them previously. I was married four or five years previously to Tom and many more years before Frank. I have since heard from visitors to Ireland that Jennie, Tom's wife, did bear a striking resemblance to Agnes. I have not yet me anyone who has seen Agnes and Gertrude, so I do not know if they are so much alike. As I set the pace it surely shows I had good taste in choosing a wife.
Poor Frank did not live long to enjoy his happy wedded life: he died on the 6th of September, 1904, at a summer resort north of Singapore, of an abscess on the liver -- a disease incident to that tropical climate, leaving a dear little boy, Edward, called after his grandfather. Frank was Commandant of the Royal Engineers, Member of the Council of Colonial Governments, and many other offices which entitled him to the preface of "Honorable". Gertrude seemed inconsolable for some years since his death. She has written me the saddest letters I ever read, and I have always tried to impress her that such grief was immoderate. She is young however, and time will naturally heal the deepest wounds of the heart, if born with Christian resignation. Although her address is always "Fort William" Cork, Ireland, she has been traveling around England, Ireland, and France for the past two years, since her return from the far East.
This then closes the chapter of my brothers' and sisters' biographies.
Appendix
James' nephew Lt. Col. Jack Burke-Gaffney, completed his own record of the Gaffneys in 1956. The following extract from that story gives a brief description of Jamestown life.
"In April 1871 James followed his brother Edward to the United States. . . James (took) up employment with the Victoria Railway, Lindsay, Ontario, Canada, where he remained for some years before returning to the States. In 1878 he became resident engineer to the George Creek and Cumberland Railroad, and went to Cumberland, Maryland, to live. Two years later he married Agnes Coulehan, a daughter of Judge Coulehan, and thereafter made his home in Cumberland, where he reared his family. Of the eleven children born to them they had the misfortune to lose six before they reached maturity, only one of the five boys and four of six girls reaching adult age.
In 1906, after nearly thirty years, James gave up his appointment with the George Creek and Cumberland Railroad, and accepted appointment as resident engineer with another railroad company, the Norfolk and Southern Railroad. This proved to be a most unfortunate change, for the following year a financial panic swept over the United States and many companies went to the wall. The Norfolk and Southern failed to weather the storm, and in 1908 it went bankrupt. James returned to Cumberland and set up in private practice as a consulting engineer.
It was a difficult time of life for this misfortune to have overtaken James. He was sixty-two years old. He had six surviving children, none of whom was yet in a position to add to the family revenue, and most of whom were of school age or under. These were, Clare, who had recently taken up the study of professional nursing, and was with the Sisters of Charity, Baltimore; Josephine, Gerald, Monica and Richard, all still at school; and finally Kathleen, as yet not of school age. With such responsibilities, it would have unnerved many a strong man to have to face the problem of having to set up on his own. But James, a deeply religious man, never failed in his faith that God would provide. He had the great advantage of being well known and respected in Cumberland, and so in due course began slowly to build up a private practice. It was a hard struggle, and so it came as a great relief when in 1912 he was appointed City Engineer to the city of Cumberland.
Although now back on a salaried job all was not yet well with James. For although his professional qualifications were unimpeachable, he was the possessor of one characteristic which, in view of some of the city fathers of those days, was not only an unnecessary, but even an undesirable characteristic. This was the characteristic of integrity. Shortly before he had been appointed, the City Council had voted a half a million bond issue for the construction of a new water supply for the city. They had employed an 'eminent' New York engineer to have entire charge of the engineering and construction work. This eminent man employed inexperienced men on the job, and failed to supervise the work as he should have done. When James inspected progress on the work and afterwards reported his dissatisfaction with it to the City Council, he was told that it was none of his business.
But his charter as City Engineer made him responsible for approving the monthly estimates before payment. James had the last say and would not pass them until he was satisfied. The discovery of an error of five thousand dollars, previously passed as correct by a predecessor, which James insisted on having deducted from the next estimate, opened the eyes of the Council, so that James' exposure of graft and the stand he had made was made an issue at the next election for City Commissioners. Fortunately James' friends were returned to office and he was re-elected city engineer for another two years. He left the employment of the City in 1916. James died in Cumberland in 1917. Only five of his children survived him to comfort his wife Agnes in her loss, for to the great grief of those devoted parents, their son Gerald had died in 1910, in his sixteenth year. Agnes survived her husband for another sixteen years and died in 1933.
As an added postscript: On the date I close this revival of James' biographies, his youngest daughter, Kathleen Louise (Sister Monica Clare, CSC) is approaching her 99th birthday in the Holy Cross Convent, Notre Dame, Indiana. We have recently corresponded.