Notes on Our Genealogy

My great-grandfather Thomas Steven Quaid was the first of his siblings to emigrate to the United States, but he wasn’t the last. Ultimately four of the ten Quaid kids would settle in the States. The second sibling to make the move was Anna Bridget Quaid, Thomas’ younger sister. This is what I know about her story. Anna Bridget Quaid Rigdon, 1947 Limerick Anna was born in Limerick on September 20, 1876 to Charles Quaid and Mary Nealon. According to the birth registration, the family was living on Athlunkard Street and Charles was a “provision man”. I’m not sure what that means. Elsewhere he was described as a “store man” and a “clerk” around that time, so perhaps he worked in a shop. The Quaid's neighborhood around 1880 A few years later, Charles took a job as a pig buyer with Matterson’s, and the family moved to what was then 33 Nelson Street, across the street from the train station. Anna attended the nearby Presentation School, which was founded and operated by The Sisters of the...

My great-grandfather Thomas Steven Quaid emigrated to the United States in the 1880s. I don't know a lot about the circumstances -- I don't know why he left, or even when, precisely. I also don't know why he went to Chicago, but I've always assumed that there must have been family or friends already there. David Joseph Quaid (1846-1925) I have not yet found any close relatives who preceded Thomas in Chicago, but along the way I found that Thomas' aunt and uncle had emigrated to California a few years earlier. This is what I know about them. To back up a step, Patrick Quaid and Ellen Dundon were farmers in Ballymacamore in County Limerick, Ireland in the mid-1800s. They had my great-great-grandfather Charles Quaid sometime around 1835, then a bunch of other kids, then Ellen Quaid in 1844 and David Joseph Quaid in 1846. In 1848 they had their last child that I know about, a daughter named Mary. [1] David Joseph Quaid's baptism in Ballymacamore, March 25, 1846 In...

Thomas Steven Quaid and Mary O'Dea were my great grandparents. They're also the last truly Irish couple in my family history. Even though they were married in Chicago. And even though she was, in fact, Canadian. Mary O'Dea and Thomas Quaid, with oldest children Rose Marie and Charles. Probably taken in 1902. A long time ago I met an Irish woman, and when I said that I was Irish she gently drew a distinction between the phrase "I'm Irish" meaning that "I have some Irish ancestry", and meaning that "I am actually, you know, from Ireland." She was Irish; I just had an Irish name. I suppose Thomas and Mary embodied the transition between those two senses of the phrase for our family. Thomas in Limerick Thomas Quaid was born in Limerick on December 15th, 1865 to Charles Quaid and Mary Nealon. Charles grew up on a farm in nearby Ballymacamore  and Charles and Mary's first child had been baptized there, but a few years before Thomas was born t...

My family moved to Arizona in 1968, when my father's division of Motorola relocated to Scottsdale. Arizona seemed exotic and distant and brand new, so I was surprised to hear that we weren't the first Quaids to live there. And it wasn't even close -- my great-granduncle John Pier Quaid had spent time in Arizona shortly after its statehood in the 1910s. John Pier Quaid in 1918 John Quaid appears to have led an eventful life, so let's start at the beginning. He was born in Limerick, Ireland to Charles and Mary Neylan Quaid on October 25, 1879. The family called him Jack. He attended the Christian Brothers School on Sexton Street  until he was about 18, which I think shows that he wasn't under economic pressure to go to work early, unlike most of my other ancestors in this period. John Quaid at the Christian Brothers School. He's the one in the top-left, facing sideways. John's father Charles was a pig buyer, and John initially followed in his footsteps. In the...