Bridget's children

Angel · Post by **Angel** » Fri Jun 10, 2005 8:50 am

I tried to find out in the archives if anyone discussed this before, but I couldn't find anything. We know that Bridget got married and we know what her husband's name was. Does anyone know if Bridget had children and, if she did, where her descendents are? It would be very interesting to talk with her family to see if they heard anything about the Borden affair from her or her kids.

Edisto · Post by **Edisto** » Fri Jun 10, 2005 12:18 pm

None of the authorities on the case seem to believe that Bridget had children. It's my impression that she married rather late in life, so that may explain the lack of issue. (I'll research the matter and post more later.) I've always thought Bridget a rather mysterious figure and wondered what might be gleaned if somebody thoroughly researched her background. She supposedly had a number of siblings in Ireland and almost surely had nieces and nephews. Some of them might have some information about her, if they could be located. When I visited the B&B in 1998, there was a man there who said he was related to Bridget. He might be a good place to start, assuming he really is a relative.

beckygoddess · Post by **beckygoddess** » Fri Jun 10, 2005 1:19 pm

edisto, that would have been George Quigley, brother of Dave Quigley. Dave is a cook at the B&B. George's grandfather was on the FR Police Dept. George used to tell everyone he was related to Bridget but when pressed, had no bonafides. There used to be a picture of Officer Quigley framed in Bridget's room, but when we were there last it was no longer in the room or anywhere in the house. I think it may have been retrieved prior to the new owner's taking possession of the property.

I had heard that author Leonard Rebello, tracking from Bridget's Will and other documents, visited her relatives in Montana. It's interesting that in her Will (which I posted here) she made bequethes to nieces and nephews which all appear to be from her husband's side.

I don't think Bridget and her husband had any children.

augusta · Post by **augusta** » Fri Jun 10, 2005 1:44 pm

How can you tell if they were from her husband's side if both of their last names were Sullivan?

beckygoddess · Post by **beckygoddess** » Fri Jun 10, 2005 2:23 pm

I don't "know" Augusta. I said it "appears". I'm not aware (haven't seen any documentation) that any of Bridget's nieces and nephews she may have had or who may have lived Cork County, Ireland ever came to Montana. In Bridget's bequests, when she names her nieces and nephews, she states they are from "Butte, Montana", not anywhere in Ireland. I suppose she had brothers and sisters who had children, but I don't think any of them are the legatees in her Will. But do I "know" that for a fact? No, I do not. Do you have any documentation that would indicate legatees in her Will are on her side? I would be interested in your sharing that. :)

theebmonique · Post by **theebmonique** » Fri Jun 10, 2005 7:42 pm

Augusta, I believe your question was a fair AND interesting one. I guess is could be possible that if Bridget had brothers who came to this country and had children who lived here...they would be named Sullivan as well...right ? So then nieces and nephews named "Sullivan" could possibly have been from either side...pending more reasearch...right ?

Tracy...

Edisto · Post by **Edisto** » Sat Jun 11, 2005 1:45 pm

This is the third time I've tried to post this. I hope it works this time!

I've done a bit of research on Bridget Sullivan since my earlier post. Although I've found nothing that would prove or disprove categorically that she died without issue, I have found some evidence that she didn't marry until she was approachng middle age. While that doesn't prove anything, it does make it less likely that she had children.

First, let me speak to the intervening post by "Ms Know-It-All." The fact that you don't think Bridget had children carries about as much weight as that undated fragment that you got from the FRHS. My own opinion that she had no children carries as much weight as yours -- none! My earlier post has nothing to do with George or Dave Quigley. I've met Dave at the B&B and corresponded with George. Both seem to be nice people. Neither claimed to me that he was related to Bridget. The claimant was a person that I met at a party at the B&B. He provided some intriguing details of his relationship to Bridget, but he had no proof in his possession. I have his name but decline to use it without his permission. I hesitate to use the names of people who make claims about the Borden case if they're not here to defend themselves. Others, perhaps, aren't bound by such conventions.

Now to Bridget:

The best source I found is an article from the April 1996 issue (Vol. III, No. 2) of the Lizzie Borden Quarterly. It was written by Riobard O'Dwyer, an Irish genealogist, in collaboration with Maynard Bertolet, then-editor of the Quarterly. It relies heavily on Irish parish records, because there are no official state archives from the nineteenth century. According to the article, Bridget O'Sullivan (who later dropped the "O") was one of twelve children of Owen (or Eugene) and Margaret O'Sullivan. Bridget was born in March of 1864 in Billerough, Allihies Parish, on the Beara Peninsula in County Cork, Ireland. The area was known for its copper mining. Bridget came to the United States in 1883, when she was 19, and went to work for the Bordens in 1890, when she would have been 26. This would have made her 28 when the murders occurred in 1892.

After the murders, Bridget left Fall River, eventually settling in Anaconda, Montana, around 1896. She would have been about 32 at that time. She probably moved to that area because it was home to a colony of expats from Allihies Parish. Anaconda was also a mining area, where employment would have been available for those trained in the mines. Sometime after arriving in Anaconda, Bridget met and married one John E. Sullivan, a smelterman. O'Dwyer gives no date for the marriage, but Paul Dennis Hoffman, in "Yesterday in Old Fall River," says it took place in 1905, when Bridget would have been 41. (He gives no source for this information, and his bibliography doesn't include Montana records.)

None of the several sources I've checked mentions any offspring of Bridget's marriage to John Sullivan nor any children born to Bridget out of wedlock. She remained married to Sullivan until his death in 1939. Bridget herself died in Butte, Montana, on March 25, 1948, at the age of 84. At the time, she was living with a niece, but the O'Dwyer article doesn't mention whether the niece was a blood relative. (She had apparently been born on an island off the Beara Peninsula, near Bridget's birthplace, however.) Bridget's grave can be visited at Mt. Olivet Cemetery in Anaconda.

Kat · Post by **Kat** » Sat Jun 11, 2005 8:16 pm

Thanks Edisto! That was a good source- the LBQ article.

Here is Beara Penisula from website:
http://ieee.uwaterloo.ca/a2mishra/irela ... ge_38.html

I was just going to give the link but it's a slideshow and therefore jumps around Ireland a lot- which is OK with me but confusing. At the bottom of each pic it does say where it's taken.
I have a nice picture book of Ireland --County Cork is there- but it doesn't scan as well as these pics on this Travel web-site!

One may click on the picture here to make it bigger.
(I think they *happened upon a sunny day*- a bit unusual I understand?...)

Kat · Post by **Kat** » Sat Jun 11, 2005 8:35 pm

Ooops.
http://www.retirementservices.ie/munster.html

I can't Google a Billerough in County Cork, but I can find a Billerough in Listowel, Co. Kerry.

Allen · Post by **Allen** » Sat Jun 11, 2005 11:19 pm

I've tried several search engines including google to find anything about Billerough. I even tried just doing a searching for Billerough Ireland. While I get few useful results most of the search engines ask Did you mean: billbrough ireland. I can't get any pictures. On the yahoo search engine if you do an image search for Billerough in just about any form, all you will get are pictures of Bridget Sullivan? I tried not looking for images at all but just looking for information. The only items that kept coming up were a listing for a marriage that had taken place there for a Teddy and Katie O'Sullivan in Alihies Parish, Billerough, and a real estate listing. I realize you can't google your way to everything, but it does frustrate me

.

http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com ... riages.htm

(edit I do, however, get many hits if I do a search for Alihies)

Kat · Post by **Kat** » Sat Jun 11, 2005 11:25 pm

Here is a picture from my book: Images of Ireland. It shows the only view in my 2 books of Allihies- locating it in "west Cork,", pg. 34. On page 52 there is a picture with legend:
"...the Glengarriff-Kenmare road links the counties of Cork and Kerry."
On the facing page is a picture of a roadside "Calvary group" in the "Healy Pass, 1,084 ft....which crosses the mountainous Beara Peninsula in west Cork."

Allen · Post by **Allen** » Sat Jun 11, 2005 11:26 pm

It seems we passed each other in posting Kat.

Kat · Post by **Kat** » Sat Jun 11, 2005 11:29 pm

Oh! Cool!

Edisto · Post by **Edisto** » Sun Jun 12, 2005 12:47 pm

Great info on the beautiful Irish countryside. The spelling I used for "Billerough" is the same that was used in the O'Dwyer/Bertolet article. I can't vouch for its correctness, however. It's amazing what one can find on the Internet. How did we live without it? Yesterday I learned that one can go through an offshore company that charges about $10.00 per month to obscure the identity and location of its subscribers, who can then send anonymous email and perhaps cause all kinds of mischief. That shows how careful one should be when dealing with anyone on the Internet! Of course, if one has a confederate, it's pretty easy to cloak one's identity anyway. I'm sure there are other commercial enterprises that will do the same thing. I wonder how many people posting on this Forum aren't who we think they are???

Kat · Post by **Kat** » Mon Jun 13, 2005 2:08 am

I had trouble reading the text of the spelling of the place in your post, Edisto, so I did get out my LBQ and worked from there. Your spelling was faultless. I was surprised to finally find one of the place names mentioned in my books!
I guess the place is near the border of Kerry and Cork?

Edisto · Post by **Edisto** » Wed Jun 15, 2005 11:03 am

Quite by accident, I found a second LBQ article about Bridget Sullivan's life after the trial. It was published before the O'Dwyer/Bertolet one and can be found in Volume II, Number 4/5 (Fall/Winter 1995). This one was written by George Quigley himself! He says the Clerk of Court of the State of Montana documented that Bridget Sullivan and John M. Sullivan were issued a marriage license on June 20, 1905. (Note that his name was given as John E. Sullivan in the O'Dwyer/Bertolet piece.) Bridget's date of birth on this license was February 3, 1871. If that was a correct date of birth, she would have been only 21 in 1892 and would have come to the United States as a teenager. Moreover, she would have been lying about her age to make herself older! (What woman does that?) The Bridget who married this John Sullivan was 34 at the time of the wedding (assuming the wedding took place soon after the license was issued). The Quigley article raises some interesting points, noting that various authorities have given Bridget's year of birth as anywhere from 1864 to 1875 and that her age at death has varied by 20 years. Unfortunately, the article clouds the issue further with faulty math. Bridget's date of birth, according to 1900 U. S. Census records, is given as 1868, which the article says would have made her 70 at her death in 1948. (Actually, it would have made her 80!) The 1910 census records made her two years younger, and the 1920 records made her two more years younger (b. 1872). Yay Bridget! Way to go! Quigley does her a big favor by knocking off an extra ten years in each case, incidentally

George Quigley's premise seems at first to be the same one I tried to introduce: How do we know the woman buried in Mt. Olivet Cemetery in Anaconda, MT, is the same Bridget Sullivan who worked for the Bordens?However, he throws in a teaser, saying that Bridget did move to Montana, where she had siblings, and that she did marry a man named Sullivan -- but not John Sullivan. He says the rest of the story "will soon be told." I don't think it has been -- at least not by George Quigley.

Incidentally, Quigley spells the name of the mine(s) as "Alliheres." In a box at the end of his article is the information that he is soon to publish a book titled, "Lizzie and Bridget." And yes, he claims that he discovered during his research that he is a distant cousin of "the" Bridget Sullivan. Is everyone thoroughly confused? I know I am!

Allen · Post by **Allen** » Wed Jun 15, 2005 1:49 pm

I wonder myself if the Bridget Sullivan we believe married John Sullivan in Montana is the actual Bridget Sullivan. It could be possibly be the other Bridget Sullivan in attendance, and she was there because she was a sister to the John Sullivan getting married in my opinion. Not only did they have the same last name, which doesn't really raise any questions for me, but what does is the fact that the man getting married seems to have had the same mother as Bridget herself. I find that too big of a coincidence to just shrug off easily.

In Rebello on page 65:

Bridget Sullivan was born in Billerough, County Cork, Ireland. She was the daughter of Eugene and Margaret (Leary) Sullivan.

Then On page 66:

Attendants for the newlyweds were Peter J. Sullivan and another woman named Bridget Sullivan who was a domestic for Judge George B. Winston. Mr. John Sullivan was born in Ireland ( 1868 as engraved on his headstone and the 1920 Federal Census listed his age as 52) and he was the son of James and Margaret (Leary) Sullivan.

So not only were both their mother's named Margaret, but she had the same maiden name of Leary. I find that way to coincidental. Wedding attendants I always took to mean those who stood up for them, as a best man or bridesmaid during the wedding. Is this who Peter J. Sullivan and Bridget Sullivan were? Maybe Bridget was never the one mixed up on her age. Maybe we are. I find it hard to believe a person can go there whole life being unsure as to their own age. No matter where they were born or what kind of birth records were kept. I'm sure even without a proper birth record I would remember my children's birthdays and ages.

Allen · Post by **Allen** » Wed Jun 15, 2005 1:51 pm

oops...I don't know what's wrong with me, other than I'm sick for the last two days, I keep clicking buttons without realizing it. I clicked the quote button.

diana · Post by **diana** » Wed Jun 15, 2005 3:42 pm

I'm getting a little dizzy reading all these dates -- so I'm just going to transcribe an excerpt I found in Muriel Arnold's The Hands of Time so anyone interested in looking at yet another source can make comparisons to their heart's content.

"Bridget applied for a marriage license on June 20, 1905, giving her date of birth as February 3, 1871. This made Bridget 34 years old. The next day, she married 37 year old John Sullivan in Anaconda, Montana.
Bridget died on March 26, 1948, and was buried in Mount Olivet Cemetery in Anaconda. Her tombstone reads: 'Bridget --1869-1948'. If in 1893, Bridget was 26 years old, then she was born in 1867." (Arnold, 227)

Nancie · Post by **Nancie** » Wed Jun 15, 2005 9:01 pm

Interesting research on Bridget, thanks Edisto and
others. Reminded me about the movie "Scarlett"
sequel to Gone with the Wind, which showed the most amazing footage of beautiful Ireland, breathtaking.

Kat · Post by **Kat** » Thu Jun 16, 2005 4:09 am

I remembered the Quigley piece and have always discounted it because of the math- so I never mentioned it- as too confusing.

Wouldn't the Minnie Green story etc. back up the idea that this is our Bridget or/and could that be made up in order to prove this is our Bridget?

Who has the best reference to the Minnie Green story?

Edisto · Post by **Edisto** » Thu Jun 16, 2005 12:38 pm

I did some research on Anaconda, MT. Today it's a very small place, located just over 2,000 miles from Fall River. I don't think it's an incorporated town. However, it might have been bigger when Bridget moved there, and since it had a large Irish population, there certainly may have been several Bridget Sullivans and John Sullivans living there. One of the Bridgets may even have been the person who worked for the Bordens at the time they were slain. I'm still a bit dubious, however. As to the Minnie Green story, I consider it an interesting anecdote that might be made up out of whole cloth or may contain a fragment of truth. I think of such anecdotes in the context of the old game of "Gossip." Remember playing that? The person at the front of the line whispers a story to his neighbor, and she whispers it to her neighbor, and so on down the line. Inevitably, at the end of the line, the story is completely different from what it was at the beginning. Somebody named Minnie Green may have had a friend named Bridie, whose last name may have been Sullivan, who may have once lived in Massachusetts (or was it Maryland?) and who might have worked for somebody that was murdered. Minnie thought it was Abraham Lincoln, but that's wrong, so it might have been the Bordens. Just kidding, but such things do happen.

With regard to Muriel Arnold: Several years ago, I saw that a copy of her book was available from her on eBay. The listing disappeared before I could bid, so I emailed Ms. Arnold and asked her if she had any other copies. It took her quite a long time to get back to me, and after that we became penpals for a short while. Let me put it this way -- Muriel Arnold is a genuine American eccentric. Inasmuch as I find the premise of her book somewhat dubious, I wouldn't use her as a source. She probably got her info from other authors. She's in one of the videos on the case and looked just as I expected her to. I'm not badmouthing her, because she had the gumption to actually write a book about the case -- more gumption than I have. Incidentally, if anybody wants a copy of her book, it's been on eBay again recently. Apparently Ms. Arnold can't figure out how the "Buy It Now" feature works, so she has a regular auction, but tells potential bidders not to bid -- just send money! She's a very "original" thinker. If eBay knew she wasn't running an auction, they'd probably pull her listing.

diana · Post by **diana** » Thu Jun 16, 2005 1:53 pm

You're right, of course, Edisto -- it's not a good idea to use Muriel Arnold as a definitive source -- or any author, really. I just stuck in her info on Bridget (who she claims committed both murders singlehandedly, BTW) as an illustration of how many dates about Miss/Mrs. Sullivan's birth/death etc. are floating around.

I like Arnold's book because, as you put it, she's an original thinker -- and she provides jumping-off places to explore ideas about the case, if nothing else.

Just as an aside, but sort of on topic, I found this Massachusetts site 'trading' on Bridget's fame.

http://sippicancottagefurniture.com/pag ... atable.htm

Kat · Post by **Kat** » Fri Jun 17, 2005 1:28 am

Well, that was very creative!
Thanks for the link, Diana!

Does Muriel Arnold have a big Minnie Green reference?
Or is it Snow?

diana · Post by **diana** » Fri Jun 17, 2005 2:26 am

Kat writes:

Does Muriel Arnold have a big Minnie Green reference?
Or is it Snow?

I didn't find anything in Arnold or Snow.
But here's a link from the archives that includes your prior research on the Minnie Green story:

http://www.lizzieandrewborden.com/Archi ... babies.htm

BTW, Arnold Brown doesn't mention the Montana Minnie Green but he says says that the name of the maid at the Bowen's -- who Bridget stayed with the night of the murders -- was Minnie Green. (p. 143) Can that be true?

theebmonique · Post by **theebmonique** » Fri Jun 17, 2005 2:46 am

That was a great link Diana. Thank you !

Tracy...

Kat · Post by **Kat** » Fri Jun 17, 2005 3:47 am

diana @ Fri Jun 17, 2005 1:26 am wrote:Kat writes:
Does Muriel Arnold have a big Minnie Green reference?
Or is it Snow?
I didn't find anything in Arnold or Snow.
But here's a link from the archives that includes your prior research on the Minnie Green story:

http://www.lizzieandrewborden.com/Archi ... babies.htm

BTW, Arnold Brown doesn't mention the Montana Minnie Green but he says says that the name of the maid at the Bowen's -- who Bridget stayed with the night of the murders -- was Minnie Green. (p. 143) Can that be true?

Thanks for coming through!!
How do you find these topics?
Are you going to be our Archive Master, er Mistress?
I absolutely love it. You are so helpful!

Edisto · Post by **Edisto** » Fri Jun 17, 2005 1:37 pm

I think the furniture seller tore a leaf from J. Peterman's catalog, but still it's a clever way to sell a table, especially since it's a reference to Lizzie.

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