At the same time that Francis Reid the immigrant was arriving in Waterbury to work and live the rest of his life in the Irish ghetto and the brass mills, the Mulvaney family either came or had come recently to the same neighborhood. (It is even possible they emmigrated together, I just don't know). Patrick Mulvaney (pronounce it Mul-VAN-eee, not Mul-VANE-ee) was born in Ireland in 1829. Most of us are at least aware that this was not a good time for the Irish, and that times got far worse over the next twenty years. Rosanna, his wife (whose original surname I don't know) was born in Ireland in 1818. We don't know when, but at some point they came to America; quite likely sometime in the 1840s. They too ended up in Waterbury, most likely having fled unimaginable conditions by means even more unimaginable. Although Waterbury was rough and tough and mean, and they were at the bottom social and economic stratum, Waterbury must have been a paradise by comparison. Patrick worked for a while at Scovill Manufacturing Company. My descriptions of work in the Waterbury mills holds here was well. Scovill was the big factory in town, whose clock tower dominated (and still does, tho the company is not there) the skyline of Waterbury - the better to get those #$&*# Irish to work on time every morning, I guess. Eventually, though he became a baker at Brown & Bros, where Augustus Reid also worked. Apparently he went into business for himself, because by 1885 there was an advertisement in the City Directory for "Mulvaney's Bakery" at 44 Baldwin St, which was the family home as well. Patrick and Rosanna Mulvaney had 4 children. First came Catherine E. whose name later in life was spelled with a K, and was known as Katie. This is my great great grandmother. She was born in 1858. Her siblings were John, Thomas, and Patrick Jr. We don't know much about them. Patrick Jr. died unmarried in 1912 and is buried with his parents. Thomas died before 1912. We know that as of 1912 John was living at 64 N. Main St in Waterbury. He may or may not have been married to an Ellen Hughes, if he was, they had a son named Thomas H, who lived from 1886 to 1919. Thomas H and Ellen are buried at New St. Joseph's in Waterbury. To return to Katie, we don't know much about her growing up. The impression she passed on to her own daughter is that Katie's father, Patrick, was a "kind and gentle man", and that Katie's mother was a "brisk, domineering woman". And we know that Irish Waterbury in that time was a crummy brutal ghetto ridden with alcoholism, violence, and disease, and that the odds of living past childhood weren't very good (a walk through Old St. Joseph's Cemetary makes that clear) and that living to age 50 was about the best one could expect. But Patrick and Rosanna do seem to have been upwardly mobile for thier time and place, so I would presume her childhood was not particularly unhappy by the standards of that time and place. Or, it would seem, in relation to what life would hold for her. Presumably, at some point Kate met Augustus H. Reid and the fell in love, because on November 2, 1880 they were married by Father Lawrence Walsh at the Church of the Immaculate Conception in Waterbury. The impression left with Kate's daughter Rose is that this marriage was a very happy one, and that they were deeply devoted to each other. They lived next door to Kate's parents. On August 12, 1881, a son, Frank Augustus Reid was born. This is my great grandfather. The next year, a daughter, Ann, was born, but Ann only survived for a few months. By June of 1884, Kate was pregnant again. Two months later, her husband was dead. (See newspaper article, "Dead with his Child by his Side"). 7 months after Gus's death, a daughter was born to the 27 year old widow. This was Rose Reid, from whom we have the most direct accounts of Kate's life. (We would probably know none of this if Gene Reid had not asked an elderly Rose Reid Gleason for information in 1964 when she was living with Elsie Porter Reid Wolff, who had been her sister in law for no more than a year.) For 12 years Kate and the 2 children, Frank and Rose, managed somehow. My conjecture is that they continued to live next door to Kate's mother and father and that they probably helped out in the bakery and functioned as an extended family. It's even credible that it may have been the motivation for beginning the business, which did exist in 1885 - though we don't know when it started up. Two years after Gus's death, in 1886, Kate's mother Rosanna died at the age of 68. Four years later, in 1890, her father was dead as well. Patrick Mulvaney's will named Catherine (Katie) Reid his executrix, and left each of his three sons the sum of one dollar; the remainder of his estate going to Catherine. This may seem odd, but remember the sons were young men, and presumably out earning a living; but Katie was a young widow with two small children. She needed whatever there was. She continued along for six more years. We don't know how - with the help of her brothers? or did she manage to run a bakery and raise two children? For whatever reason, and I doubt love had much to do with it, Kate married Jesse Mallett, a Protestant. This was 1896, twelve years since the death of her children's father. One child had never known her father. One had played with his dead father's face for an hour while Catherine was at Mass. Rose Reid Gleason said this marriage was "a tragic existance for her all during the long years of its duration". Again, I can only conjecture at Kate's motivation getting into and staying in this marriage. But this was another time, the prospects for a woman on her own with a 13 year old son and an 11 year old daughter were not plentiful. Perhaps business conditions had gone bad and the bakery gone under. Or perhaps it was long gone and her brothers couldn't carry her any more. Maybe she loved Mallett at one time. It's odd that she married a Protestant. My best guess is that Jesse Mallett needed a woman to cook and clean and take care of him, and that Kate needed someone to provide for her and her children, and so the relationship was begun, because they each needed the other in that world of narrow roles for both genders and economic dependency of women. Mallett moved the family from Waterbury to Long Hill CT, which must have been a fair journey in those pre-automobile days (Waterbury had train service, but none of it goes near Long Hill). From the urban setting in which she had grown up and where her siblings still lived, she was suddenly a rural farm wife. We have a photo from about the time this move took place, showing them in front of what Rose described as " a big lovely while [house] set in pleasant surroundings consisting of some twenty or so acres of land", which were farmed by Mallett. And, he had not only gotten himself someone to cook and clean, he had gotten a farmhand in the 13 year old Frank. Apparently Jesse was also an alcoholic prone to violent rages (whereas we're led to believe that Gus had been a "nice" drunk - if nothing else Kate's rememberances to Rose remember him that way) Frank and his mother took turns protecting each other from him. After a while, the farm was sold and they moved to Stepney, and eventually they ended up back in an industrial city, in Danbury, CT. The miserable, wretched marriage endured for a long time - probably for about 50 years. We have a picture of an eldery Kate Mulvaney Reid Mallett taken at Auburn NY where she was presumably visiting her now adult daughter Rose. Unfortunatly, Katherine died before Jesse, probably in the mid 1940s. Jesse Mallett died a few years later. I do not know of any surviving offspring of Katherine's siblings. It's something I'd like to check into.