Ancestors

William John Haddock

William John Haddock was born in Ireland about 1806, a son of Thomas and Ann Haddock, who were both Irish-born. A family tree on his memorial gives the date as 1 November 1805 and the place as County Dublin. A William J. Haddock of about his age landed at New York in 1827. His father and at least three brothers, Roger, Anthony and Arthur, ended their lives in New York. Thomas Haddock died there in July 1849 and was buried in the family lot at Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, where William would later lie.

He married three times. His first wife was Sarah Jane Moore. Their children were Mary Elizabeth, born about 1836, Washington Moore, born in February 1839, Sarah Jane, born about 1841, and John William, born on 15 January 1844. The family tree gives two of those births in New Jersey and two in New York. Sarah Jane died in January 1848, aged about 38, and was buried at Green-Wood on the 24th. Alfred T. Haddock, perhaps a child of the family, had been buried in the same lot in September 1847.

In 1850 the census found him in the Ninth Ward of New York, aged 45, with no wife in the house. With him were his brothers Arthur and Anthony, his four children, a Mary Moore, 47, born in Ireland, and a twelve-year-old Irish girl, Mary McMurray.

His second wife was Margaret Dunn, a New Yorker born about 1819. They married about 1851. Their children were Arthur Henry, born about 1852, and Margaret Isabella, born on 7 June 1855. A family tree adds a son Nathaniel, born about 1858, who died in 1876 and lies in the family lot. In the summer of 1860 the census taker found the household together in the Ninth Ward: William, 55, Margaret, 41, his brother Arthur, the four older children, Arthur, 8, "Maggie," 5, and a servant, Mary Cunningham. A Margaret Haddock was buried in the family lot that November, on the 10th. In 1862 William married his third wife, Jane Moody, an Englishwoman born about 1828. Jane died in 1884 and was buried beside him in the lot.

He made his living in tobacco. He and his younger brother Arthur H. M. Haddock ran a cigar business on West Street, along the Hudson River docks on the west side of Manhattan. In 1852 he built a house at No. 276 West 11th Street, three stories of brick with a high stoop and an Italianate cornice, and made his home there with Arthur. The house was still standing in 1969, when it was taken into the Greenwich Village Historic District. Margaret Isabella was born three years after it was built and very probably grew up in it.

He put his money into building. A survey of the district made in 1969 found house after house built for him in the blocks between Hudson, Perry and Bleecker Streets. A pair of four-story town houses went up for him in 1852. A corner house with a store on the ground floor, also numbered 108 Perry Street, followed in 1861, and a five-story house in 1862, each replacing an older two-story building. Another corner house built in 1861 for "William J. Haddock, tobacconist" was, the survey said, "one of many built for him in this area." In 1868 he was still building, a $3,000 job designed by the architect W. E. Bishop.

His daughter Margaret Isabella married Dr. Joseph F. Terriberry at Brooklyn on 16 November 1887. William was then eighty-two and still at 276 West 11th Street, where the city directory of 1887 lists him. He died there on the morning of Thursday 23 April 1891, a widower, retired, "in the 86th year of his age." The notice appeared in the Friends' Intelligencer, a Quaker weekly in Philadelphia, dated in the Quaker manner, "Fifth-day morning, Fourth month 23d." He was buried at Green-Wood on 27 April. His son Washington and his brother Arthur were the executors and trustees of his will, and for ten years afterward they managed his Hudson Street houses for his heirs.

His grave is marked by a small flat stone carved "Wm. J. Haddock," in a row with the stones of his third wife Jane, his son Washington and his daughter Margaret Haddock Terriberry.

If William John Haddock is in your family, start your own tree.

Cite: Heirology, "William John Haddock (1806-1891)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/william-john-haddock-1806-1891-8a1185.