Ancestors

Mary Agnes Ratigan

Mary Agnes Ratigan was born in Oswego, New York, about 1891, the youngest of the three children of Frederick J. Ratigan and his wife Julia Henrick, and grew up in the First Ward, where her Irish-born grandfather Luke Ratigan had grown up. In 1900 she was nine, living with her mother and her brothers William and Luke. Her father had been born in the ward about 1857, worked in his father Luke Ratigan's meat business and later for his uncle Thomas Kehoe, and served two years as harbormaster of Oswego until 1906. He died on 8 April 1911 at his mother's house on West Eighth Street.

Mary married William Joseph Mack, a lineman born in Cork, Ireland, on the morning of 20 December 1915 at St. Mary's Church, at a nuptial mass celebrated by the rector, the Rev. Joseph A. Hopkins. She was twenty-three and living with her mother at 97 West Seneca Street. The Oswego Palladium noted that she was the daughter of Mrs. Julia Ratigan and of the late Frederick J. Ratigan. She wore a traveling suit of cream-colored broadcloth and a corsage of roses. "The bride has a host of friends who join in best wishes," the paper said, and the couple received "many beautiful presents." Her mother died less than three months later, on 11 March 1916.

Her son William Frederick was born at the Oswego hospital on 5 January 1918, a baby of twelve pounds, and took her father's name, Frederick, as his middle name. On 20 January she underwent an operation at the hospital, and the next day the paper reported her much improved. She and her husband kept the family house at 97 West Seneca Street, and it was there that their son came home on leave from the Army Air Forces in the spring of 1943, bringing a baby leopard as his mascot.

Her husband, for many years in the plant department of the New York Telephone Company, died on the morning of Thursday 22 March 1945. His funeral was held from the house on West Seneca Street and St. Mary's Church. Mary lived on for sixteen years as a widow. Her brother Luke, a staff sergeant, settled in Washington, D.C., and died there in January 1970.

Mary died at Oswego on Saturday 15 July 1961, at about seventy. Her funeral was held on Wednesday 19 July from the P. J. Cullinan's Sons funeral home at nine, followed at half past by a solemn high requiem Mass at St. Mary's Church, the church where she had been married forty-five years before. The Rev. Robert E. Hall celebrated it, with the Rt. Rev. Msgr. Edward G. Quaid assisting and the Rev. Robert Quigley in the sanctuary. The bearers were Peter Raby, John McConkey, Fred Wall, Charles Gallagher, Maurice McGrath and Albert McCarthy. Her gravestone reads simply "Mary Agnes Mack, 1891, 1961."

If Mary Agnes Ratigan is in your family, start your own tree.

Cite: Heirology, "Mary Agnes Ratigan (1891-1961)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/mary-agnes-ratigan-1891-1961-7a60d5.