Luke Ratigan
Luke Ratigan was born near Dublin, Ireland, on 24 March 1821. As a small child he crossed to America with his parents, and the family settled in Oswego, New York, in the First Ward, where he spent the next sixty-five years. His parents' names are not known. A family lot in Saint Paul's Cemetery, which holds two of his sons, also carries the names of James Ratigan, 1789 to 1849, Mary Ratigan, 1800 to 1866, and James Ratigan Jr., 1834 to 1859. They were probably his father, his mother and a younger brother born in Oswego, but the stone does not say so. In 1860 the widowed Mary Ratigan, then sixty, was living in the First Ward in the household of Thomas Daly, an Irish-born man of twenty-five, and his wife Mary, who was twenty-seven and born in New York. At Luke's funeral in 1892 two of his bearers were his nephews James and Thomas Daly. Mary Daly was very probably Luke's sister, born in New York about 1833, and the widow in her household was their mother. That would also put the family in America by about 1833. In Ireland, a Luke Rattagan was baptized at Summerhill, County Meath, about twenty-five miles from Dublin, on 26 March 1822, two days after the birthday Luke kept. His parents were James Rattagan and Mary Ennis. The names match the James and Mary of the Oswego lot, but the year is one off and no record ties the two together. Margaret Ratigan, born about 1837 and almost certainly his sister, married Thomas Kehoe, a butcher born at Utica who had come to Oswego at six.
As a young man he learned the ship carpenter's trade and worked at it until 1859. He helped to build a number of the vessels that carried the traffic of the Great Lakes in their day; by the time he died, every one of them had gone. In 1859 he went into the meat business with his brother-in-law Thomas Kehoe. The firm of Kehoe & Ratigan kept its shop in the old Fitzhugh House block on East Bridge Street, between First and Second Streets, for fifteen years. In the county directory of 1866 it is listed under Butchers at 32 East Bridge Street. Kehoe left the business for two years in the Civil War: in the summer of 1862 he raised a company for the 110th New York Infantry, served as its first lieutenant and then its captain in Louisiana, and resigned in September 1864.
In 1853 he married Catharine Maguire of Oswego, who was about twenty-three. She had been born in Canada, probably in Quebec, to Irish parents. They had at least five sons. Willie, born in 1856, died in 1862 at about six. Frederick was born about 1857 and went into the meat business with him. Edward settled in Cleveland and later in Washington, D.C., and William in Syracuse. Luke, born in 1861, went to Syracuse and came back to Oswego.
On the evening of 9 March 1859 the floor of St. Mary's Church, the family's parish, gave way under a packed congregation. About a third of the people fell into the basement. Four died, and one of them was Luke's brother-in-law, Lawrence Murray, who was carried out dead.
He was a staunch Democrat and a public man. He represented the First Ward in the Common Council from 1863 to 1866 and held the office of harbor master in 1864. An alderman sat on the city's governing council, two to a ward. In June 1864, as Alderman Ratigan, he marched four fat Durham cattle through the streets, part of a herd of seventeen from Kentucky that he had bought at Buffalo, to be slaughtered at his market on East Bridge Street. In March 1866 the Palladium backed him for supervisor of the First Ward, the ward's seat on the county board, under the headline "Luke Ratigan Forever!" Mannister Worts held the seat that year. In the census of 1880 he gave his trade as butcher, at fifty-nine, with his sons Frederick, Luke and William at home. He served as city tax collector from 1882 to 1884, and for many years he was prominent among the volunteer firemen, rising to assistant chief of the department.
For the last six months of his life he suffered from gangrene in his right foot, and he died of exhaustion at his home in West Eighth Street about eleven o'clock on the night of 8 April 1892, aged seventy-one. The Daily Palladium called him "one of the oldest and most respected residents of the First ward." His funeral was held from the house and St. Mary's Church on 11 April. There was a large attendance, the Old Volunteer Firemen came in a body, and his coffin was carried by three of his sons and three of his nephews. He was buried in Saint Paul's Cemetery under a rock-faced granite monument that reads "Died Apr 8 1892, aged 71 yrs." His widow Catharine lived on at West Eighth Street for twenty-three more years. She was an invalid in 1911, when their son Frederick died in her house on 8 April, nineteen years to the day after his father. Her name and the dates 1830 and 1915 were cut below his on the stone, with their son Willie's.
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Cite: Heirology, "Luke Ratigan (1821-1892)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/luke-ratigan-1821-1892-418426.