Wedding Wednesday -- John Gleeson & Margaret Tierney

I do not have a marriage record for John Gleeson & Margaret Tierney, however, I have this newspaper article from the Portland newspaper, Oregonian.[1] It tells of the 50^th Anniversary party held for John and Margaret Gleeson on 15 Feb 1908.  The caption reads:

          Mr. and Mrs. John Gleeson, Who Celebrated Their Golden Wedding on Saturday.

On Saturday, a week ago, Mr. and Mrs. John Gleeson celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of their wedding, which occurred at Nepean, Canada, February 15, 1858, with a reception to their friends at their residence, 486 Burnside street.  Among the many who came to extend their congratulations were old friends and neighbors to the number of about 50 from Mitchell, S.D., the former residence of Mr. and Mrs. Gleeson.  These remained after the hours of the reception and spent a pleasant evening recalling old pioneer days on the prairies.  When the hour of departure drew near, Dr. E.B. Bracy, now a resident of Portland, delivered an address appropriate to the occasion, touching on the grandeur of their adopted city and the pride which they all felt in its growth and beauty, and compared the mild climate with the rigors of the East, which they had all experienced in former years.  In closing, he present Mr. and Mrs. Gleeson, on behalf of their former South Dakota friends who are now residents of Portland, with a beautiful white and gold Haviland dinner set, at the conclusion of which all stood and joined in singing Auld Lang Syne.  Mr. and Mrs. Gleeson were blessed with a family of ten children, five boys and five girls, all grown to manhood and womanhood, only two of whom, however could be present—Frank T. of Spokane, and Miss Margaret, a teacher in the city schools.  Their 12 grandchildren were represented by Miss Lauretta Sullivan, of Butte, Mont.”

These are my great-great grandparents who were born in Canada of Irish immigrants. All of their children were born in the Nepean area of Ontario, Canada, which is in present day Ottawa.  They moved to Mitchell, Davison Co, South Dakota in before the 1880 census. 

I learned a lot from this newspaper clipping that was in my grandmother, Anna Sullivan Hork’s papers (Anna is the daughter of Anna Maria Gleeson & John H. Sullivan).  This was the first I knew of John and Margaret Gleeson.  From this article I created a To-Do list:

        ·        1910 Portland, Multnomah Co, Oregon census

        ·        1900 Portland, Multnomah Co, Oregon census

        ·        Portland City Directories

        ·        Mitchell, Davison Co, South Dakota (and Dakota Territory) census

        ·        1881, 1871, 1861, 1851 Carleton Co, Ontario, Canada census [Nepean is in Carleton Co]

        ·        Vital records in Carleton Co, Ontario for marriage and births of 10 children.

Many of these I have checked and will write about this family in future installments.

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[1] Oregonian, clipping, “Portland Society News and Notes,” p 3, 23 Feb 1908.

Copyright © 2011 by Lisa Suzanne Gorrell, My Trails into the Past