Patrick Farley
Patrick Farley was born in Ireland about 1816. American censuses gave his birth year as 1814, 1815, 1817 or 1820. At home his surname was Farrelly, and it became Farley in Troy. His parents' names did not come down in the family, and the family was unsure whether he came from County Meath, Westmeath or Cavan.
On 22 February 1846 Pat Farrelly married Bridget Davis in the Catholic parish of Kells, County Meath. Bridget had been baptized in Kells in 1823. The priest entered the marriage in two lines: "Pat Farrelly & Bridy Daves, Wt. Js Farrelly & Mary Douty." Js was the usual clerk's short form of James, and the first witness was very probably a kinsman of the groom. Their first son, James, was baptized at Kells on 6 December 1846, with Frances Davis and Bess Monahan as sponsors. Nicholas followed on 12 April 1848, and a daughter Judith on 9 October 1850. The Kells priest wrote the mother as Bridget Davis each time, and once as Biddy, the everyday form of the name.
The marriage came in the first winter of the Great Famine, and the children were born through its worst years. About 1851 or 1852 the family left for America. They settled at Troy, New York, the iron and collar city at the head of navigation on the Hudson. The family remembered that James, then about three, was left in Ireland with a set of grandparents. He came to America as a young man and appears with the family, aged 22, in the 1870 census.
In the New York state census of 1855 Pattrick and Bridget Farley were in the Sixth Ward of Troy with a newborn daughter, Mariah, and two lodgers, Christopher Smith, 45, and Pattrick Smith, 18. Nicholas is not listed with them that year. In Troy more children were born: Maria in 1855, Thomas in 1856, Julia about 1859, Patrick about 1861 and Francis in 1862. St. Joseph's Church baptized them. It was the Jesuit church of South Troy, on Jackson Street, begun in 1847 with men from the nail works digging its foundation, and dedicated in 1853. Thomas and Francis do not appear in later censuses and probably died young. In the New York state census of 1865 Pat Farley, 48, was living in the Sixth Ward of Troy with Bridget, 42, and the children Nicholas, 13, Mariah, 10, Julia, 6, and Patrick, 4. Judith, baptized in Kells in 1850, is not with them.
In 1860 the federal census found Patrick, 40, Bridget, 33, Nicholas, 10, Maria, 5, and Julia, 1, in the Sixth Ward. In 1870 James, 22, was back with the family. In 1880 Patrick, 65, was living in North Greenbush, the town at Troy's southern edge where the Burden Iron Works stood, with Bridget, Maria and the younger Patrick. The census wrote his work as works in iron works, the same words it wrote against his son Nicholas in the same town. Patrick appears in the Troy city directory every year until 1892. He died in Troy in May 1892, aged about 76, and was buried that month in St. Joseph's Cemetery, Troy, in the family's lot, Row 85, Lot 13. The grave has no recorded number and no surviving stone.
Who his own parents were is not known. A James Farrelly and Judith Moore were baptizing children at Kells in these years: Bridget in 1812, Mary in 1814, Catherine in 1818 and a second Catherine in 1821. Patrick named his first son James and his first daughter Judith, and a Js Farrelly stood witness at his wedding. That makes them possible parents. No Kells baptism of a Patrick to them is known, and five other Pat Farleys or Farrellys were baptized in the same parish between 1815 and 1822, so the link stays unproven.
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Cite: Heirology, "Patrick Farley (1816-1892)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/patrick-farley-1816-1892-2f6576.