McLaughlin Family

The McAndrew (or McAndrews) family came from Belmullet, Kilcommon, County Mayo, Ireland. Martin and Mary are rumored to have married before they left Ireland but there’s no record in the parish registry. It is possible and perhaps likely that they married in the United States. Unfortunately, there are no marriage records available for their locale and time. All we have are names in 1880 Federal Census for Shenandoah, Pennsylvania, and an apocryphal family legend. We’re also not sure if the name is spelled McAndrew or McAndrews because the records use both spellings.

Martin was a coal miner in Lost Creek, Schuylkill, Pennsylvania. However, I found the family living in Shenandoah, Schuylkill, Pennsylvania in the US Census. The family lore says that he died sometime between 1880 and 1881 with three of his children in a mine subsidence accident. The story says that they were walking home when they sank into a sink hole created by a mine collapsing. Based on the names that my grandmother, Margaret Mary Atckison could recall, it appears that Martin Junior (age 13 or 14), Elizabeth (age 7 or 8), and Margaret (age 1 or 2) died with their father.

The 1880 US Federal Census (excerpt below) lists them as McAndrew (the more common version in County Mayo and a patronymic for the Anglo-Norman Barrett family) in Shenandoah, Schuylkill, Pennsylvania. The Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary Catholic Church records two baptismal certificates for the 1870s there.

The widow was a cousin of Anthony McLoughlin, and Mary McAndrews moved to Galion, Ohio shortly after her husband’s and children’s death. She lived longer than her oldest daughter Mary Margaret McAndrews. My father, Michael McLaughlin had fond memories of his great grandmother but never knew his grandmother. She died peacefully on 2 Feb 1926 in Galion, Ohio when my dad was 4 years old.

While no pictures of Martin or Margaret McAndrew remain, we have a photo of two of their daughters, Bridget Laura (1871) and Catherine Elizabeth McAndrews (1876). They were baptized in the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary’s Catholic Church in Shenandoah, Pennsylvania. Records of the other children where not provided when these records extracts where made in November of 1977. Bridget married William Black 9 Jun 1898 in Galion, Ohio; and Laura married Joseph Unterwagner 29 Sep 1897 in Galion, Ohio.

The only other sibling that left anything other than their name in state or church records was John Michael McAndrews. He went by his middle name Michael, which wasn’t uncommon at the time. The picture to the left captures him in his fifties sometime during the 1920s. He worked his whole life for Standard Oil in Ohio. He died in 1944 at the age of 76.

If anything more surfaces, I’ll be sure to add it.