{"id":18048,"date":"2012-10-08T12:27:10","date_gmt":"2012-10-08T16:27:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.libraries.uc.edu\/liblog\/?p=18048"},"modified":"2012-10-08T12:28:47","modified_gmt":"2012-10-08T16:28:47","slug":"archives-month-in-ohio-and-the-cincinnati-irish","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/libapps.libraries.uc.edu\/liblog\/2012\/10\/archives-month-in-ohio-and-the-cincinnati-irish\/","title":{"rendered":"Archives Month in Ohio and the Cincinnati Irish"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Kevin Grace<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Mollie<\/a>This week\u2019s posting to acknowledge the \u201cPeoples of Ohio\u201d theme of Archives Month, and the Irish in southwest Ohio is the tragic tale of young Mollie Gilmartin.\u00a0 Born in County Sligo, Mary \u201cMollie\u201d Gilmartin was the object of affection from her family\u2019s parish priest, Dominick O\u2019Grady.\u00a0 Seeking to end the unwanted attention, her family decided a new life in America would be best for Molllie, so in September 1893, they sent her to Chicago where her brother Michael was a priest. The intent was for Michael to look after her while she built a new life for herself, but O\u2019Grady followed her across the ocean.<\/p>\n

As it turned out, there was, in fact, some exchange of sentiment between the two as O\u2019Grady and Mollie wrote romantic letters to each other.\u00a0 Afraid that O\u2019Grady would disrupt his sister\u2019s life in Chicago, Michael Gilmartin sent Mollie to Cincinnati in January of 1894 to take up temporary residence with some cousins who lived on Chestnut Street. \u00a0Once more, O\u2019Grady followed her.\u00a0 On a late April morning as Mollie left the house to go to her job with the Pulvermachers Galvanic Belt Company, the spurned priest caught up to her.\u00a0 He pulled a revolver from his pocket and fired several shots.\u00a0 Mollie died on the street.\u00a0 O\u2019Grady was quickly arrested by the police, and gave the officers a false name, \u201cGeorge Reed.\u201d\u00a0 His ruse was short-lived and he soon confessed. \u00a0Locked up in jail, he managed to get his hands on some poison and tried to commit suicide by drinking poison, but he failed.<\/p>\n

\"Mollie<\/a><\/p>\n

At his trial, O\u2019Grady was found insane and committed to the Longview Asylum.\u00a0 However, four years later, it was determined that he had regained his faculties and was reinstated as a priest.\u00a0 But Mollie\u2019s sad tale was not ended.\u00a0 The Sullivan Funeral Home prepared her remains, and dozens of the Cincinnati Irish community attended the funeral, carrying her body to the New St. Joseph Cemetery in Price Hill, the resting place for many of the city\u2019s Irish Americans. \u00a0For decades, though, she lay in an unmarked grave.\u00a0 In 2011, relatives of Mollie\u2019s back in Ireland who knew something of her fate yearned to learn more so they could resolve the family\u2019s questions on what had happened to their young ancestor.\u00a0 With the help of the Cincinnati Police Department and historians at the Cincinnati Heritage Center, the facts of the case were finally revealed.\u00a0 Shortly thereafter, a Gilmartin relative came from Ireland to place a headstone over the grave, and a memorial service was held in Sligo.\u00a0 Mollie Gilmartin, and her descendants, have closure.<\/p>\n

Regarding the images presented here, the sketch of Mollie Gilmartin is one that was carried in several newspapers that carried accounts of the murder and trial, and the death card is from the holdings of Cincinnati birth and death records in the Archives & Rare Books Library.\u00a0 These records, more than 500,000 of them, were digitized with a Library Services and Technology Grant, awarded by the State Library of Ohio.\u00a0 To learn more about the research materials in the Archives & Rare Books Library, please telephone 513.556.1959, email at archives@ucmail.uc.edu<\/a>, or visit the website at http:\/\/www.libraries.uc.edu\/libraries\/arb\/index.html<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Kevin Grace This week\u2019s posting to acknowledge the \u201cPeoples of Ohio\u201d theme of Archives Month, and the Irish in southwest Ohio is the tragic tale of young Mollie Gilmartin.\u00a0 Born in County Sligo, Mary \u201cMollie\u201d Gilmartin was the object … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,13],"tags":[326,53,327],"class_list":["post-18048","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arb","category-uclibraries","tag-archives-month","tag-cincinnati-history","tag-irish-in-southwest-ohio"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/libapps.libraries.uc.edu\/liblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18048","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/libapps.libraries.uc.edu\/liblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/libapps.libraries.uc.edu\/liblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libapps.libraries.uc.edu\/liblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libapps.libraries.uc.edu\/liblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18048"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/libapps.libraries.uc.edu\/liblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18048\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/libapps.libraries.uc.edu\/liblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18048"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libapps.libraries.uc.edu\/liblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18048"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libapps.libraries.uc.edu\/liblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18048"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}