Mary O'Dea : Short Biography

When Mary O'Dea was born on August 30, 1868, in Kinvara, Galway, Ireland, her father, John O’Dea, a “bootmaker”, was 49, and her mother, Bridget Donohue O’Dea, was 38. She was the sixth of at least seven children born to this couple (Nora, John, Michael, Owen, Patrick, Mary, Catherine). For some unknown reason, her baptismal record lists her mother’s maiden name as “Hoad”, but Mary herself reported her mother’s maiden name as Donohue on her Social Security application and on her 1917 marriage license application (for her second marriage). Her siblings’ records also show their mother’s maiden name as Donohue. It may be that a clerical error was made by the priest recording the information. Little is known about her early life in Ireland, but we do know that when she was 12 years old, her 14-year-old brother Patrick died.
According to Mary’s obituary, and also several census records, she came to the US in 1882 (she would have been about 14 years old). No ship’s passenger list has been found to confirm this, and it’s unclear with whom she may have traveled. Her parents did not come to the U.S., but her siblings did. Her older brother Michael and his wife immigrated in 1882, according to the 1910, 1920, and 1930  U.S. census records; perhaps she traveled with them. Her obituary also states that she first came to Clifton Springs, New York. Newspaper research has revealed some people identified in the society columns as cousins of Mary’s, with surnames O’Dea and Toomey, that lived in the area. Perhaps she stayed with relatives when she first arrived?
In 1892, Mary married Michael Mulkerin at Holy Cross Church in Flatbush, Brooklyn, NY, and they settled in the East Flatbush neighborhood near the church. Her older brother, Michael O’Dea, was already married to Michael Mulkerin’s sister Delia (two Mulkerin siblings married to two O’Dea siblings); the two couples lived in the same area of East Flatbush, as did Mary’s sister Nora and her husband, Patrick Duane. Mary’s husband Michael was naturalized as a U.S. citizen in 1894, which automatically made her a citizen too. Mary and Michael Mulkerin had three children together between 1893 and 1897, living at various addresses in East Flatbush, including Pacific Street, Rogers Avenue, and the corner of 39th Street and Avenue C (also known as Canarsie Lane): Jane (Jennie), born in 1893, Mary, born in 1895, and John Joseph, born in 1897. Their daughter Mary died of scarlet fever in December of 1897 at the age of two. At the time, their daughter Jane was 4 years old and their son John was 5 months old.
In July of 1898, passenger lists show Mary and her two surviving children, Jane, age 4 and John, age 1, traveling to Ireland. In January of 1900, her husband Michael died in Brooklyn. The next passenger list on which we find her is in July of 1900, returning to the U.S. from Ireland without her children. The passenger list shows that she was “last in U.S.” in 1899, but no documentation of this has yet been found. Some family members have heard the story that Mary and Michael were separated before his death. In any case, she is listed as a widow on the return trip to the U.S. in 1900. Her children were left in the care of her mother in Ireland. The 1901 census of Ireland shows them living there (Killiny East, Killiny, Galway; House #1) with their widowed grandmother and their Uncle Owen, apparently the only one of Mary’s siblings still in Ireland at that time.
After leaving her children in Ireland, Mary worked as a cook in Brooklyn, and may have been living with her sister and brother-in-law, Nora and Patrick Duane, in Flatbush. On the passenger list showing a return trip from Ireland in 1903, presumably having visited her children, she is mistakenly listed as an alien and her intended destination is “sister Mrs. Duane, Vernon Ave. Flat Bush Brooklyn”.
Mary brought her daughter Jane (“Jennie”) home to the U.S. in 1909. By this time, she was living in Stamford, Connecticut, where she worked as a housekeeper. Her sister Catherine O’Dea Daly also lived in Stamford. In 1912, after Mary’s mother died, she brought her son John and her brother Owen to the U.S.
Mary married her second husband, Samuel Flack, on August 25,1917, in Ontario County, New York. They lived in Clifton Springs, where she worked at the Clifton Springs Sanitorium for many years, first as a “bath girl” (1920 census), then as a “masseuse” (1930 census), then as a licensed practical nurse (1940 census and state of NY 1939 nursing license). Her second husband, Sam, died in 1931. Mary was a long-time member of the St. Felix Rosary and Altar Society in Clifton Springs, and served for a time as president of the Society. She continued to work as a practical nurse at the Sanitarium until after her 85th birthday, according to her obituary. She died on June 18, 1959, in Rochester, New York, at the age of 90. In October of 1959, her son John J. Mulkerin wrote to her friend, a Mrs. Hynes, in Ireland. An excerpt appears below:
“Dear Mrs. Hynes,
No doubt you have been expecting a letter from my mother, but sorry to say she passed away in June. If she lived until August she would be 91 years old. She was only sick 5 days. It was her heart. She was very healthy until then. Never remember her being sick. If any one goes to Heaven she will as she lived a good life…”
Mary O’Dea Mulkerin Flack was buried at St. Agnes Cemetery, Clifton Springs, New York.