Doochary Emigration: The Connection to Northeastern Pennsylvania

Jack McGeehin

On the Doochary Heritage Trail, you will find a sculpture of a swallow taking flight from the shrubs along the Gweebarra River. The artist, John Gillespie from Annagry, dedicated his work “in memory of all those families from Doochary who sought a new life in the Americas in hope that they, like the swallow, shall return to their homeland once more.”

Many Doochary residents, along with their neighbors in surrounding townlands, emigrated to America to escape poverty, oppression, and famine during the nineteenth century. And many of those emigrants ended up in Pennsylvania — a large percentage in the northeastern portion of the state, where they found work related to the anthracite coal mining industry. They settled in rapidly growing cities like Wilkes-Barre, Scranton, Mauch Chunk (Jim Thorpe) and Hazleton, as well as in coal patch towns like Ebervale, Beaver Meadows, Freeland, Eckley, Summit Hill, and Coaldale.

Follow this link to see a reference map of the coal fields of northeastern Pennsylvania.

The better life these Donegal emigrants sought in Pennsylvania was elusive. Coal mining was tough and dangerous work. All too often, it made workers sick and shortened their lives. Their new bosses were little different than the oppressors they’d left behind in Ireland. These miners remained poor and victims to discrimination because of their culture and religion. No doubt that many new immigrants wondered whether they had made the right decision in choosing this life. Thankfully, though, it rarely took more than a generation or two for the descendants of these brave and determined Irish pioneers to be out of the mines and facing a bright future.

Despite the hardships they faced by uprooting and moving to a foreign land, emigrants from the Doochary region continued to flow into northeastern Pennsylvania, especially between 1850 and 1900. The process they followed has been described as chain migration: continual relocation from one place to another by a group of people based on word-of-mouth encouragement from the friends and family members who had emigrated before them. Sometimes, mine owners themselves, desperate for cheap labor, worked with shipping agents to solicit workers in Ireland by promising mining jobs and prepaid ship passage to New York City or Philadelphia.

A good example of chain migration from the Doochary area can be found in the city of Hazleton, Pennsylvania. The population of Donegal men and women in Hazleton was so large that one of its neighborhoods was nicknamed “Donegal Hill.” The city’s Irish Catholic church, St. Gabriel’s (now St. Pius of Pietrelcina), was built on Donegal Hill, as was its cemetery. 

Meandering through the oldest sections of St. Gabriel’s cemetery and gazing at the tombstones, you might think you have been transported back to western Donegal and are strolling through a cemetery in Lettermacaward, Dungloe, or Fintown. According to Irish genealogist John Gresham, the ten most common surnames in Donegal are: Gallagher, Doherty, O’Donnell, Boyle, McLoughlin, Kelly, McDevitt, Sweeny, McFadden, and Ward. All these surnames can be found in St. Gabriel’s cemetery along with almost every other common surname – then and today – in County Donegal. 

One family name that can be found on many tombstones in St. Gabriel’s cemetery, McGeehin (also spelled McGeehan), serves as a well-documented case study of chain migration between the Doochary region and Hazleton. Members of approximately twenty distinct McGeehin/McGeehan families relocated to Hazleton and nearby patch towns in the mid- to late 1800s. Based on the evidence available through land occupation records, censuses, newspaper articles, birth/marriage/death records, and DNA matching, many of these northeastern Pennsylvania clans can be tied directly back to their original Donegal townlands. 

The pins on the map show the general location in the Doochary area of McGeehin/McGeehan family homes from the days when their loved ones departed for America. In some cases, the exact townland and even the house is known. In other cases where definitive records are not available, other lines of evidence (e.g., family lore/trees, statements from community elders, etc.) can provide the basis for a theoretical connection between the families. Click on the pins featured on the map for more information.  

Note the close proximity of the McGeehin/McGeehan families on this map. Most lived fewer than five miles from Doochary. An easy day’s walk back and forth. These families were neighbors and marriage partners in western Donegal, and again in northeastern Pennsylvania.

John Gillespie’s statement accompanying the swallow statue expresses the hope by families left behind that their loved ones “shall return to their homeland once more.”  Two individuals who did just that are referenced on the Google map: Neil McGeehin who came home to be with his aging mother; and Joseph Given, the nephew of Bridget and Hannah McGeehan, who returned to help his aunts manage the family farm after their father died.

Another noteworthy McGeehin made the trek back to Ireland and did so more than once. Her name was Fannie McGeehin, the daughter of Daniel McGeehin and Bridget Boyle from Derryleconnell Far. According to family lore, Fannie (who was a servant in a home near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) was said to have crossed the ocean twenty-four times or more. That number seems exaggerated, but numerous ship manifests can be found for a Fannie McGeehin going to and from Ireland. It is mindboggling to consider a young woman at the turn of the century repeatedly making that dangerous journey. On her last trip back to Ireland, Fannie would stay for good. Her 1931 death record indicates that she died in Derryleconnell. Her brother Peter was with her in the end.

Undoubtedly, many more family emigration stories from the Doochary region would mirror the McGeehin/McGeehan chain migration example above. It is fair to say that few families escaped the heartache of a family member (or many!) leaving home for a fresh start in a new land — fathers and mothers, sisters and brothers, cousins and friends here one day, gone the next. Sadly, because of inadequate and/or lost record collections over the years, their stories are slowly disappearing from our memories. Perhaps this brief accounting will motivate others to share their knowledge so that the stories of their loved ones will live on for future generations to discover. 

Acknowledgement: This write-up would not have been possible without the collaboration of many individuals — close family and distant cousins, town elders, archivists, librarians, even strangers at the pub — whose passion for genealogy and knowledge of family lore imbue every word on this page.