Mary Ellen Bunworth

Mary Ellen Bunworth

By Peter Holden, March 2004

My gg grandmother, Mary Ellen Bunworth, was born in Cork, Ireland in August of 1833. She lived with or was raised by her uncle, a Dr. Thomas Bunworth and his wife, Mary Ellen McAullife. Although born in Ireland, she was said to have spoken of herself as being of Welsh descent.

At the onset of the potato famine she would have been thirteen years old. I believe it was about this time she set out to accompany her Uncle about the area of the “Blackwater near the ShannonRiver”, as she described, “to administer to the poor”. She said of these times, “I never dreamed there could be such poverty.”

I should note here that the Blackwater River, famous for its salmon fishing, does not actually connect with the Shannon, but does begin about thirty miles to the south, on the south side of the western hills of Munster between the Stack and Mullaghareirk Mountains, flowing away to the south and then eastward to Cappoquin, Waterford on the north end of Youghal bay. I suspect her description reflects the western side of this area.

One of these stories of Mary Ellen Bunworth’s travels with her uncle Thomas was of them visiting a Castle, owned by a French woman, who gave them a tour of the place. Mary Ellen described a fireplace within that when one pressed a certain brick, a door would open, exposing a secret room where, as the woman said, priests were hidden during the time of Oliver Cromwell’s occupation of Ireland. I would think there would be many such secret rooms especially in old castles but to be able to identify one today that is near the area of the Blackwater and Shannon Rivers that operated in the way she described would certainly aid in narrowing the search.

Mary Ellen spoke of a “chest plaster” or “poultice” her uncle would make up for persons with heavy congestion. She described it as having a light brown color and smelling horrible, but doing wonders for those to whom it was applied. In later years Mary Ellen’s daughter, Martha Watson Flynn went into a drugstore in Rochester, Pennsylvania and told the druggist of her husband’s bad congestion, and described the plaster her mother had spoken of back in Ireland. The druggist immediately went in to the back room and mixed up the same. Only the story remains but the name of the plaster has now been forgotten twice.

Between the years 1846, while Mary was traveling with her uncle and up to 1853 when she arrived in Hartford, Connecticut she had also traveled to France, where she was employed as a tutor or nanny. This is where she is supposed to have met or been reunited with her husband to be, James Watson, originally from County, Westmeath, Ireland; having been born there in May of 1830. Like Mary Ellen, James Watson loved Ireland too, but also like Mary, did not claim Irish heritage but Scottish, always reminding others that his middle name was Stuart, emphasizing the spelling with a “u” and not “Stewart” and that his family had fled Scotland after the Death of Mary, Queen of Scots, and took refuge in Ireland where Catholics were welcome.

During this same period between 1846 and 1852, as the story goes, James had been in the U.S. State of Georgia, and France, escaping from Ireland, allegedly after having killed a British soldier, and “dumping his body down a well”. We don’t know the order of theses adventures but it was said he had also involved himself in America’s War with Mexico, which began the same year as the potato famine. The question always came up, jokingly in family circles, knowing James’ passion for justice, as to whose side he may have been on in the Mexican war.

I don’t know the area of France James and Mary Ellen were in but Betty spoke of Alsace Lorraine as having been mentioned numerous times. However she paid no attention to the context. She did say that James Watson had relatives, a cousin or cousins by the name of MacMahon, who’s family had been deported to France after the Siege of Limerick from the area of Clare that is to the North side of the Shannon where it reaches the Atlantic.

In any case, it was said Mary Ellen and James traveled from France to Germany, bought a wedding ring and went to sea. The captain of that ship married them. I do not know, however just where they were headed at that time. I have gone down the manifests of many ships of those days and have come to realize that the name “James Watson” is as prolific as the leaves of fall, and that if one ever needed an alias they should choose that name in place of their own to better avoid detection by whomever should be after them. Now the name Bunworth on the other hand is a genealogist’s dream, where one may almost assume all finds are related as if reassembling a single family.

According to the 1860 US Census, Mary Ellen Bunworth arrived in Hartford, Connecticut in 1853, at age twenty, following her husband, James and his father, Pietro Watson’s arrival by one year. She took up residence with them at the Ferry Street Hotel. Both Pietro and James Watson were already registered there as carriage makers in the Hartford City Directory of 1852-53. The Ferry Street Hotel was the usual place of lodging for all new comers to the City of Hartford, just arriving on the nightly steamer up the Connecticut River from New York City, a hundred miles to the South.

From the age of four in 1890 my grandfather, James Holden was raised by his grandfather, James Watson and Mary Ellen Bunworth, after his own father, James Holden, a printer from London had died.

About 1950 my grandfather, James Holden said of his grandmother, Mary Ellen Bunworth, “She was about the largest woman in Hartford, around six feet, 200 pounds. She was the rock around which the family depended.”

Mary Ellen was the homemaker, keeping a spotless house and providing superior cooking, as well as being the protector of all children coming into her sphere. She governed all conversation about the Watson dinner table, allowing no argument or any subject matter that she felt would lead to it, and those who did not abide were dismissed from the table, including her husband, James. In reflection my grandfather said to me with a sigh, how bad he felt for his grandfather for having to suffer such a “humiliating indignity” in his own home, but was a child and was neither a rule maker nor one to take issue with them in those Victorian days.

The men were not allowed to smoke in the house until after dinner, and only then were relegated to the front parlor to smoke behind closed sliding doors without the women present.

On the other hand, James Watson made all the decisions about world politics and religion. He also bought, sold, and collected books and owned and ran a part time bookstore, I believe on Church Street in Hartford. His house was also packed with his books. He and his daughters were veracious readers. He was also a good carpenter, making a good part of the family’s furniture, which interestingly was so heavy that it took four men to carry the bureaus on their frequent moves about the City every year or two.

I asked my aunt Betty about their continually changing addresses as shown by succeeding city directories. Betty laughed, saying, the Watsons did not believe in owning their own home, saying that to do so invited too many maintenance costs and legal responsibilities. They found it much easier, when they were tired of one place, simply to have the women look around for another, rent it, tidy it up, redo the wall paper, and then have the men move all the furniture in after them. Those were the days before a family’s legal handcuffing to a lease. A family needed no notice to move out and only the cash to move in.

In spite of Mary Ellen’s rules about the house, my grandfather said their children and he viewed both Mary Ellen and James as equals in their household. James and Mary Ellen believed fervently in the education of woman, insisting that their children, Mary Ellen (1st born, named after her mother), Richard (2nd born, named after a Bunworth), Anna, and Martha (3rd and 4th born), invest their work time about the home in study rather than chores. Their mother always insisted it was the duty of a mother to provide a home pleasant and conducive to that end, the wage earners the money, and the children’s duty to become educated so as to better prepare them for the next generation.

However, the girls were not allowed to go to high school, not because of family rules but because high school was limited to boys only. In spite of this the girls had access to Richard’s schoolbooks as well as his willingness share his studies with them after school. They took full advantage of this, and in the end became the more successful wage earners over their brother. It was not that Richard was not bright. It was implied of him that he proved himself to be very capable but that he preferred camaraderie with men of heavier labor and drink. Much to his younger sister Martha’s displeasure he took a job keeping the books of a local tavern, with the side benefit of access to hard liquor all day thrown in.

James Watson did not believe in drinking hard liquor and even went to the point of forming a branch of the Christian Temperance League in Hartford. I am sure there was great contention between James and his son Richard in this matter. In any case James Watson did not consider beer as liquor, and enjoyed his regular pint every evening after work. Mary Ellen, too would wait for James to go off to his temperance meetings and then throw up the window, and tossing my grandfather a nickel, say, “Hey, Jimmy how about running down and getting me a pint.” To which my grandfather would scamper off to the local tavern to retrieve it for her.

James Watson was actively involved with woman’s suffrage, while his wife, Mary Ellen, in spite of her asserted belief in woman’s education did not believe woman needed the right to vote. She believed woman should use their education to better raise their children. James continually marched with the women in every parade, while Mary Ellen remained at home.

Essentially, the women of the Watson family were the homemakers and the men responsible only for bringing in the money. Every payday all incomes were handed in to Mary Ellen, who would in turn use what she needed to run the home and then dispense to each what she felt they would need for personal items until the following week.

The Watson family of Hartford was musical. Martha played the piano and all sang. James Watson sank songs about rebellion, one to the tune of the “Rising O’ the Moon”, but as my aunt said the words were different. My grandfather, James Holden was raised in the Watson household from the age of four, and his daughters, my aunts would often tell me when I was young how “Poppy” would always sing to them when they were girls, “It’s a long Way to Tipperary” and the Wearing of the Green”. The temperament of the Watson Home in Hartford was decidedly Irish, and that transferred forever passionately into my grandfather’s personality.

One evening of the late 19th century Watson home, described to me was of much beer drinking and good feeling, when suddenly James Watson confided that he had the ability to walk up the wall and across the ceiling if he chose. He boldly rose from his seat and staggered towards the parlor wall, throwing one foot up against it to begin his assent. Other men present rushed to his side and grabbed him, while another ran to a bedroom, returning quickly with a large wall mirror. The mirror was placed on the floor as the others held him horizontally, while he yelled and kicked at them to let him go so he could continue with the proof of his assertion. They flipped him over and stood him on the floor next to the mirror, yelling, “By God he’s done it! Look at him!” They pushed his head down, and yelled again, “LOOK UP AT YOUR FEET! BY GOD HE IS WALKING ON THE CEILING.” They flipped him one more time and placed him again on the carpet, giving him great praise and admonishing themselves pensively for their initial disbelief, and begging in conciliatory tone for his forgiveness. James now feeling fully assuaged and in triumph, accepted their aid with his swagger back to his seat. Mary Ellen then intervened with a broom, chasing him off to bed, and his friends out the front door.

On another occasion, James came up with the thought of what a great idea it would be to put BBs in between the hub and axel of the wagon wheels he made so that the wheel could roll around the axel instead of just sliding on the grease alone, and thus reduce the friction further. At every beer drinking session with his friends he enthusiastically brought the matter up, until it was found some one else had invented the ball bearing and put it to actual use. Mary Ellen called him a fool for wasting his time trying to impress everyone with his dreams until others made use of them.

James had also traveled to New Jersey at least twice to meetings in support of Louis Napoleon III while he was in this country. He may have also gone to upstate New York for the same. What is interesting is that he always had the money to travel, seemingly wherever and whenever he wished, yet, as my grandfather said, he only made fourteen dollars a week.

One day, while living in Hartford he received a letter from the State of Georgia, containing the deed to a plantation he had inherited. He became very angry, yelling out that he wanted nothing to do with slavery, and immediately burned the letter and deed in the fireplace. Mary Ellen again called him a fool, yelling at him that he could have sold the plantation and freed the slaves. As I had said James and his father had been in the State of Georgia early on about the time of the Mexican War. I know that his father, Pietro Watson, Anglicized his name to Peter upon entry to the United States, and lived in Hartford only a short time. I suspect that Pietro may have been living in the State of Georgia with at least two others of his sons and that they may have had a farm or plantation there. In any case family communications between those living in Georgia and Hartford ended in the 1920s, with no names but Peter Watson and Munro to go by. I have no idea what James Watson’s brother’s names were.

After President Lincoln’s assassination and subsequent trial of all those accused, James Watson became so angered by the guilty verdict handed down for Mary Surrat that he took his nine year old daughter, Mary Ellen (named after her mother) with him by train to Washing D.C. to stand in protest against her hanging. On the day of the execution, James left Mary Ellen with friends and attended the actual hanging without her.

Pietro (or Peter) Watson was born in 1790 in Ireland and not only was a carriage maker as mentioned earlier but also was said to have been a writer of history and “controversial books” as my aunt Betty was told when she was a girl. So controversial that no mention of his works, not even his penname were ever discussed in the presents of children.

Pietro visited Hartford often, coming and leaving by train and was always warmly received by the family in Hartford. At age eighty-five, and traveling alone on the last of these trips in 1875, I don’t know which way he was going, he became confused, boarded the wrong train in New York City, and ended up in the City of Chicago. He apparently went to a tavern where he met some unsavory characters, who coaxed him into buying some water front property there at a bargain price. They took all of his money and then murdered him. James traveled to Chicago to take care of the funeral arrangements.

On January 16th of 1890, Richard Watson was walking near the Park River in Hartford, not far from the stone bridge where it passes under Main Street. Hearing a scream, he ran to the river’s edge to see a young woman apparently unable to manage her canoe. To onlooker’s delight he dove in and shortly brought her to safely. Before he could get home, word of his action had already arrived ahead of him.