My grandmother Mary Josephen McQuillan Healy was born May 5, 1889 in County Meath, Ireland near the town of Drogheda. Her father John McQuillan grew up in the gatehouse of a "gentleman farmer" where "he met the scholars coming back from school." Her mother Catherine Murphy's family ran a bakery in Haggard's Cross. One of her two brothers, while delivering bread, met John McQuillan.
Catherine sold her interest in the bakery and that money was used for her, John and the infant Mary Josephen to immigrate to the United States later that year. While traveling in steerage the baby Mary Josephen contracted smallpox. The ship's captain ordered that the baby be thrown overboard to prevent contagion. Catherine held Mary tight in her arms and said they would have to throw her overboard with the baby. The captain relented and all three McQuillan's safely made the passage.
They moved first to Joplin, MO where John worked in the lead mines. He later obtained a job as a farmhand near Wilson KS. Mary Josephen met my grandfather Daniel Richard Healy in nearby Vesper, KS and they were married the day before Lent in 1911.
The Healy home in Lincoln KS sat on a deep lot with a second vacant lot. In the second lot Mary Josephen had a flower garden along the sidewalk, then a large area of grass where we did fireworks on the Fourth of July and in the rear a large vegetable garden. Behind the house was a garage (she pronounced "GAR age") and then a chicken coop and yard.
When Mary Josephen took care of her grandchildren, she did not leave them alone while she prepared meals. Instead, she had them in the kitchen, wearing aprons and helping peel and dice while she cooked the meal.
Mary Josephen preferred tea to coffee. She served oyster stew on Christmas Eve and made hot cross buns for Easter. As children we were often late for school on St. Patrick's day as she insisted everyone attend early morning Mass at St. Patrick's Church.
Mary Josephen had a framed picture of an American flag on a flag pole which picture had pride of place in her dining room. She was an avid supporter of John F. Kennedy when he ran for President and traveled to Wichita to attend a campaign appearance.
In the 1960s Mary Josephen determined to see the place of her birth. The trip was delayed because she had difficulty obtaining an American passport. John McQuillan had been Mr. Republican in Lincoln County, KS, had voted in every election but there was no evidence that he had ever become a naturalized citizen.
Instead, Mary Josephen's citizenship turned upon her marriage in 1911 to an American citizen. Her husband Daniel had been born in Lincoln County but there was no certificate of birth. Nannie Dillon, as a young girl, had been present at his birth and she testified before a Federal judge in Junction City KS who declared Mary Josephen's American citizenship and opened the way for Mary Josephen to obtain her passport and travel with her eldest daughter to the Olde Sod. They smuggled a handful of the olde sod back to St. John's Cemetery near Vesper to place on the graves of John and Catherine McQuillan.
In reality, the State of New Mexico is so incompetent that it cannot negotiate the application fee check in less than 4 weeks let alone process the actual application in 4 weeks' time. A supervisor said he could not be bothered with the status of a mailed application less than 6 weeks from its mailing date.
However, a private company can obtain your birth certificate from New Mexico in less than 48 hours and have it in your hands in 72 hours. This requires that you pay the $10.00 fee for New Mexico, a $16.00 fee for the private company and also an express delivery fee (the only delivery offered by the private company; this avoids the laws governing use of the U.S. mails).
The questions remaining are:
Why can a private company get a birth certificate within 48 hours when the state cannot do it for 10-16 weeks? Are state employees incompetent? Is there no competent management of the Bureau if Vital Statistics? Is no competent person unemployed in New Mexico? Who benefits from this bureaucratic delay?
This is the history written by Edna Meyer Healy from interviews with Daniel R. Healy:
-->"The Healy’s entered this country at Memphis, Tennessee during the Civil War period. The first Healy to arrive was Mike (Alice, his daughter later changed the spelling of their last name to Haley) and his Uncle, Tim Kyne who came over with Nicholas Whalen (a foster child) and worked on the Mississippi riverboats. Mike and Tim saved their money and sent back to Ireland, in 1864 for Mike’s widowed mother, Ellen Kyne Healy, his five brothers and four sisters. The younger children were John, Patrick, Owen, James, Joseph (Dan’s father), Sarah, Nellie, Mary, and Julia. The older boys worked at many things, one of which was helping to build the railroad west to Ellsworth and that is how the Healy’s came into this section of the country in 1866.
The government was building Fort Harker and needed lumber, so the government probably provided the sawmill which Ellen Healy and her sons and her brother, Tim Kyne set up on the Saline River near Rocky Hill – East of the present site of Lincoln. Ellen Healy and Tim Kyne had some of the first deeded land in Lincoln County. The selected 40 acres out of four different sections ( 80 acres for Ellen and 80 acres for Tim) in order to get as much timber as possible. (You had to have deeded land in order to cut a tree down on it according to the law.) They sawed the logs into lumber, and loaded it onto the government’s mule drawn wagons that transported it to Kanopolis where Fort Harker was being built.
The creek just east of Beaver creek (it is dried up now and is just a draw) was known as Healy’s Creek after Pat Healy drowned in June 11th 1867.
In late August 1868 John Healy volunteered to serve as a scout with Major Forsyth to fight the Indians. He received $75.00 per month as he furnished his own horse. (The scouts received $50.00 a month if the Army had to supply mounts.) On September 10th when word was received at Fort Wallace of an Indian raid, Major Forsyth, Lt. Beecher, Dr Mooers and 50 scouts headed northeast looking for Indians. On September 16th, they camped on the West bank of the Arickaree Fork of the Republican River. The next morning, at the first light of day the men were awakened by cries of “Indians”. A handful of Indians on horseback dashed through camp driving off two pack mules and a couple of horses. Moments later a large force of Indians were seen about two miles to the Northeast. They moved to the sandbar in the middle of the river making a circle with their horses and mules. In the battle that followed Lt Beecher and five other men were killed and John Healy and twenty some other men were wounded. Several scouts were sent out to get help which finally arrived on September 25th. The men had survived by eating putrefied horse meat laced with gun powder to make it more palatable.
In 1872, there had been high water on the Saline River and a log that had been trimmed and prepared for sawing had gotten away and floated down river and was deposited on Hubbard’s land. Hubbard had a grain mill. When John Healy went to get the log, Hubbard, who had a gun on him, told John not to tie that chain on that log – but John went ahead and did it anyway and Hubbard shot him. Hubbard then took off on horseback for Ellsworth, but a posse of men overtook him, brought him back and put him in the attic of his mill. That night Hubbard was killed by a mob.
Eventually all the timber was cut and Ellen, her brother, Tim and her sons abandoned their land and moved the sawmill and all of their effects to a new homestead west of Lincoln on the Saline River. Ellen Healy and Tim Kyne both homesteaded 80 acres a mile south of the Spillman Creek bridge so that they could cut the timber and float it down the river to the mill. But now no one had money to buy lumber. Occasionally someone would come to work for them in exchange for a slab or two of lumber for a roof. Since the sawmill was now useless as a way to make a living, it was probably sold to the Rees family who build a flour mill on the Saline River south of Lincoln.
Big Jim Flaherty had an easement to cross Ellen’s land to get his livestock to water. He had been warned to keep them out of Ellen’s cornfield. But one day he let them stray and the cows ate up the corn. So Joe Healy took matters into his own hands and shot a hole in Big Jim’s hat, the bullet taking a ridge of hair with it. When the judge in Ellsworth settled the dispute, he asked Joe why he didn’t shoot Flaherty. Joe answered that he didn’t want to hill him – he just wanted to scare him. At this time the railroad was built as far as Ellsworth and many herds of cattle were driven up by the cowboys from Texas to be loaded in cars for Eastern markets. The cowboys filled the town and roamed the streets and got into trouble. It was hard to get deputies, especially one who was so skillful with a gun as Joe was. So, as punishment for his misdeed, the judge made Joe a deputy marshal. He was to keep order among the cowboys which he did for 6 or 8 months. Then one day he was sent out to bring in an outlaw who was known to be in the area. He caught up with him and when he disarmed him he found that the outlaw possessed a particularly fine pearl handled six shooter. This Joe accepted as a bribe in return for which the outlaw was to go free and get clear out of the country. This he did, but the Marshall found out about it, and Joe was out of a job as a deputy.
The Irish not only settled west of Lincoln, there was also a group which settled south of Lincoln along the Elkhorn. One was John Lyden who was the first Lincoln County School Superintendent. He was an educated man who had acquired lots of cattle on his land South of Lincoln, and he aspired to own all the land from his farm to Lincoln. He had so many cattle that he couldn’t take care of them, so he hired other men to help him and Joe was one of these herders. He was 16 years old at the time. One day Joe took time off to go to Russell to visit his mother who married a man named McInerney and had gone to live there. Knowing that Joe was out of the vicinity, a group of men shot John Lyden, herded all his cattle to Ellsworth and shipped them out of the country. Joe always maintained that it wouldn’t have happened if he’d been there – they’d have been afraid of him and his guns.
Many Irish had settled in Denver, probably attracted by the mining in that area. Some had gotten out that far west by building the railroad and others were laborers and housemaids. Joe made trips back and forth taking jobs in Denver when they were available. There he met his future wife, Bridget Shelley, who was from Tipperarty, Ireland. Although she was educated, she was working as a housemaid. Joe brought her back to the Vesper Community to live. One of the stories about her concerned the time she made a pair of pants and shirt for her son, Pat who was 6 years old, but for his younger brother Dan, she made a dress. Dan was already taller and bigger than his brother and it made him so mad that he went out into the field and tore up his new dress by placing the material on a rock and beating it with another rock until it was in shreds. That was the end of dresses and from then on both boys wore pants.
There has always been school fights – and the Irish around Vesper were no exception. Having settled the entire bottom from Lincoln west to Vesper, there were four schools in the area. One south of the Saline River was known as “South Ireland”, one was in the town of Vesper; one was Northwest of Vesper and was known as “Old Vesper” and the one West of the Spillman Bridge was known as “North Ireland”. The South Ireland School was a dugout in the side of a hill west of the Catholic Cemetery. One of the requirements of a school house in those days was that it be located near water. When Dan was two or three years old, there came a big windstorm which tore off part of the roof of the school – making it necessary to get a new school house or repair the old dugout. A meeting was called to decide what to do; however, they couldn’t reach an agreement. One faction wanted to build a new school but locate it one mile east in a new location and the other one wanted to build it on the same spot. As they talked and argued and tempers rose, little Dan got fidgety and fussy, so his mother took him outside and let him play around in the water in the creek with his hands. A fight broke out inside the school house (Joe was one of the fighters) and a body came hurtling out through the North side of the School, so after calm had been restored, they really needed a new school and it was built in a new location. Later, around 1913, the four schools joined together and became the first consolidated school district in Lincoln County.
One day when Dan was seven years old, some child or children had kicked another child and thrown rocks all the way home. To settle the matter, Bridget Shelley Healy, who was pregnant, got into the buggy and started over to the neighbors. The horse bolted, the buggy overturned and she was dragged by the horses and killed. The girls – Nora, Mae, and Nellie were sent to an orphanage to be looked after by the nuns while Pat and Dan batched with their father. The Dillon’s, who had arrived from Ireland in the 1880’s, wanted to marry Nanny, their older daughter off to Joe. However he had taken “a shine” to her younger sister who was better looking. When his intentions became known, the Dillon brothers came over one evening to warn Joe to stay away from their younger sister. When they left, one of the brothers slammed the door real hard which made Joe angry and he followed them outside and beat the tar out of both Dillon’s. The next day, they had Joe arrested and a court hearing was held to commit Joe to the asylum in Topeka. He got away from the deputies, went home, strapped on 4 or 5 guns and started back to town. On the way he decided to go on to Topeka to see the Governor and straighten out the trouble. He drove his team and wagon to Ada, left the team and wagon with an acquaintance, and started walking to Minneapolis to catch the train hiding his guns in a corn shock on the way.
In Topeka, the Governor had been warned that Joe was on the way to see him and that he was wanted by the law. So when Joe greeted him by shaking hand with him, the Governor held on until help could be procured and he was then committed to the State Asylum. Joe’s daughter, Nora was sent to Moberly, Missouri to live with the Pigotts. Mae was sent to Philadelphia to live with the Behans and Nellie went to stay in Butte, Montana with the Joe Hanigans. These women were the sisters of Bridget Shelley Healy. Pat, 8 years old, and Dan 7 years old, stayed on at the homestead. John Linker was appointed as their guardian. He was married to Catherine Kyne, daughter of Tim Kyne, but seemed to take his duties lightly as he in turn had a young relative, Jack Haley (brother of Alice Haley) look in on them from time to time. Sometimes three weeks would pass between visits. He was a young man and often turned up drunk with other hoodlums who would shoot their guns in the dugout and scare the boys. Later Dan and Pat went from place to place and stayed with neighbors. Dan had formed a strong dislike for guns at an early age – “I never had any use for guns” he told me as I wrote down these reminiscences. Now as he lived around with people – some who drank and carried on into the night, he formed another dislike for liquor. As he was growing up he worked as a farmhand for other farmers and later formed a partnership with one until he could acquire his own land. Pat worked as a mechanic and carpenter.
While Joe was in Topeka, he worked as a stone-mason and helped build several of the limestone buildings which are still in existence. After a few years, about 1918, he walked off and since no one stopped him from leaving, he went our to Finney County in southwest Kansas where he bought 160 acres near Eminence, Kansas; built houses and worked for the manager of a sugar beet plant.
Homesteading has been mentioned several times in the narrative. Anybody could file for 80 acres if they settled on it and improved it. Many of the families received 160 acres as a homestead for joining the militia which was formed for local protection and law enforcement. The government could requisition the men at any time to go off to fight Indian battles. Many of the men had been in the Civil War and could homestead 80 acres if the land was near the railroad and 160 acres if it were 10 or 20 miles away from the railroad.
Ellen had lots of troubles and lawsuits. Every term of court, she was there for one reason or another. One day, after many years of this, she told the court crier, who came out on the courthouse steps and called “Hear ye, Hear ye……”, “One of these days you’ll cry those words and I’ll be dead and gone and there will be no one to take to Court!”"
Written by Edna Meyer Healy as told by Daniel R. Healy.
