In my last post, I told you that I recently found an obit for my great grandmother, Mary Jane Reilly, and that I found out that she was born in Susquehanna, PA. Last week, I drove up to Scranton, PA and drug my sister, Pat, with me to Susquehanna County, to look for some Reilly relics and fossils in the county courthouse in Montrose. It was only about a 40 minute drive from Pat’s house to Montrose. The courthouse was almost empty, I guess everyone was doing some Christmas shopping – so was I. We were able to park right out in front where there was metered parking. I brought a fist full of quarters with me because I figured that’s what would happen. When I went to the parking meter I found that I could park for two hours for a quarter. This place is like Mayberry, at the Jersey Shore you need an app that’s connected to a credit card to use the parking meters; and it’ll cost you a little more than a quarter for two hours, hence the credit card.
Everyone there was very nice and helpful, but we really didn’t find anything. I was hoping to find property records for the farm that they lived on in Great Bend, but there were no deeds to be found. The last office that we visited was historical records, and the woman had nothing there either. She did tell us that we might want to visit the Susquehanna historical society, which was right across the street from the courthouse. We walked across the street, and on the way, I put another quarter in the meter just in case.
When we went into the historical society, very nice lady showed us the file card system for births, deaths, marriages, and ODDS – which was a little articles about various people in the area. If you found something that you were interested in, you would tell the woman and she would get the article from the other room for you and make copies.
The first thing that I found was an obituary for Mary Jane’s father, Michael Reilly. He died on 30 June 1903 at the home of his son, T. J. Reilly in Susquehanna Boro. I know this is her father because she is listed as one of the survivors as Mrs. M. T. O’Day of Jersey City. Here is the obit:
Since I was in the area, and my O’Dea ancestors lived across the river in Broome County New York, I thought I would look for any deaths under the O’Dea name. I was looking for Catherine O’Dea, mother of Michael O’Dea (who would marry Mary Jane). Apparently spelling really doesn’t matter much with O’Dea / O’Day or Reilly / Riley, they are pretty much interchangeable, so you have to check both spellings. I came across this file card under O’Day:
My first thought was that there must be a mistake, Catherine had recently had a baby (Mike’s little brother, Daniel) I always thought that she must’ve died in childbirth, because Daniel was born in June 1853, wrong again. There was a long article about this railroad accident, downright gruesome in it’s detail. Suffice it to say, that five people were killed instantly, one of whom was our great great grandmother Catherine. The article says the train was leaving Susquehanna Depot on its way to Gulf Summit in New York when, apparently, the boiler exploded, killing five instantly and injuring many others.
Here is a snippet from article that I found in the paper:
Catherine had two small children at home, our great grandfather, Michael, who was two years old, and Daniel, who was two weeks old at most. Why was she out on the train by herself? Was she going to see a doctor maybe? I don’t know, but I’m glad she didn’t take the children with her - or I wouldn’t be here to tell you about it.
