Basic genealogical info on this family:
Overview of the descendants:
Jeremiah and Elizabeth Corbett had 5 children
- Mary (Mamie) Ellen m. Andrew Smith
- John Patrick m. Catherine Dwyer
- Ann died at age 3
- Jeremiah J. m. Elizabeth Dwyer
- Cornelius Michael m. Florence Sargent
Overview of the descendants:
Jeremiah and Mary Corbett had 1 child
- Charles m. Laurine Laverne Reiff
I have only ONE photo of Jeremiah, but I have written a bit about his life history. See below photo
JEREMIAH SHEEHAN CORBETT
by Bob Corbett, May, 1989
(Robert E. Corbett)
Jeremiah was born either in 1842 or 1847--I have conflicting data about that. He was born in Limerick County, Ireland in the Parish of Kamalik. (A Parish is not a church area, but a governmental district in Ireland.)
Sometime in 1863 or 1864 the landlord's son came to their little farm to collect the rent. They had no money. Since they had no money, he wanted their only cow. Jeremiah's brother, John, got in a fight with the man and killed him with his black thorn stick. The neighbors hid the two boys and their mother in a hay wagon and got them to the coast.
The authorities were after John. They booked steerage passage to Boston, where they had relatives, and arrived in the U.S. by 1864.
It was the last years of The Civil War. The Union ship, Keersarge, was in Boston Harbor being outfitted with chain. (Since The South's cannon balls were not the exploding type, but just crushed the boards of the wooden ships, The Union draped the ships with anchor chains sort of like coats of armor.) Jeremiah and John, both teens, got jobs in the Boston ship yards and worked "slinging chain" on the Keersarge, thus aiding the Union cause.
The Corbett boys lived and worked in the Boston area until 1872 when they earned enough money to take a train to go west. Jeremiah was a great readers and he has read the novels of Horatio Alger, the person who coined the phrase "Go west young man, go west." Jeremiah believed that "west" was where the action was, so he convinced his mother and brother John to go west with him. The got on the train in Boston and showed the conductor the money they had put aside for passage, and it was enough to take them to St. Louis.
Jeremiah met Elizabeth Brady, they married and had six children, including my grandfather, John Corbett. When Elizabeth died in child birth in 1888 (when my grandfather was born) the family was somewhat separated among relatives. This pattern was later repeated in the next generation when John Corbett's wife's brother died. My grandmother was Catherine Dwyer. When her brother died the Corbett family took in his sons and thus the family on Wade Ave. grew. This was a common practice among immigrants at this time.
At any rate, Jeremiah eventually remarried, marrying the widow, Mary Hinchey. She had a grocery store in what was then Kerry Patch and is now Union Station. They had only one child, Charlie, and he was the person who gave me most of this information in the 1960s when he was in his late 70s. I actually have those interviews on audio tape somewhere in my archives.
John, Jeremiah's brother, married but had no children.
Both Jeremiah and John, and their mother, Mary Sheehan Corbett, are buried at Calvary Cemetery. Jeremiah died in 1922.
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Bob Corbett bcorbett@netcom.com