Margaret (Davis) and James WADDEN/WADDING’s second daughter, Maria (b. 18 Nov 1883) seems likely to have been the family housekeeper after the death of her mother, Margaret (Davis) WADDEN/WADDING in 1900.
Maria emigrated to the US aged 21 in 1905. She went to Alleghany, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, giving her friends Patrick and John CLEARY as her arrival address. [1] [2]
Maria worked in service in the homes of the wealthy as a cook.
In the 1910 census she was working for the capitalist William Mellon (Snr) and his wife and three pre-teenage children at their home on Forbes Avenue. Also in the household were a housekeeper, butler, governess, laundress, seamstress, parlour maid and chambermaid. Her fellow servants were New Yorkers, Swedish, German and Japanese. William’s early interests were in petroleum and having sold his business to John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil (1895) William established the Gulf Oil Corporation (1907). He went on to become the Chairman of the Republican State Committee of Pennsylvania in the mid 1920s and later established the graduate school of industrial administration at the Carnegie Institute of Technology.
Maria reportedly sent gifts of hand-me-down clothing from the people she worked for back home to Wexford. Imagine the excitement when those parcels arrived!
Maria was joined in Alleghany by her younger sister Rachel (1906) and younger brother James (1914).
Five years after her arrival, Maria returned to Wexford with Rachel. A nephew believes that Maria returned to marry but by the time she returned her intended had already married. Maria and Rachel returned to the US four months later. Maria never married.
She lived though the death of her younger sister Rachel in 1918. It must have been a terrible blow for the two surviving siblings in Pennsylvania.
In 1920 Maria was one of six servants for the retired Lewis Dalzell and his wife, living at Ridge Avenue. All except one of the servants were Irish. Earlier census shows Lewis had been in iron manufacturing. He died in April 1920 shortly after the census was taken.
Maria lodged her Declaration of Intention on 19 Feb 1925, along with her Petition for Naturalization, and this was granted in 1927, over 22 years after first arriving in the US. We know from the physical description of Maria in her declaration that she was five foot five, with light brown hair and blue eyes.
In the 1930 Census Maria was the cook for Eleanor Park at the Schenley Apartments on Bigelow Boulevard in downtown Pittsburgh. Also in the household were a nurse and an Irish born maid. [4]
At the age of 81 Maria suffered a terrible accident: dying from a severe brain injury as the result of falling and striking her head in the bath tub. I can’t help but wonder what age she could have made if she had not died as a result of this accident.
The Estate Index shows us that Thomas Leonard was the executor of her will. Thomas LEONARD was the husband of her niece: brother James oldest daughter, Margaret Mary (Wadding) Leonard. [5]
Summary notes for Maria
[1] John Cleary provided various supports to the Wadding siblings in Pittsburgh. When Maria, the first of the Wadding siblings, arrived in the US she gave as her place of arrival the address of Patrick and John Cleary. John was the informant for sister Rachel’s death, executor of her will, provided a base for her funeral to leave from and what appears to have been a burial plot or space to commemorate her. John Cleary also provided a witness statement for James’s passport application where he claimed to have known James most of his life. John worked as a clerk for the city-county in 1920.
John was the son of Richard CLEARY and Anastasia KEYES, born in Blackstone, Wexford 1878. James father’s mother was possibly a PARLE and grandmother a HAYS. John arrived in the US in 1904 and naturalised in 1911. It appears he went back to Wexford to marry Sarah HAYES in 1907 before returning to Pittsburgh 18 Sep 1907. I have found no familial connection to the Cleary and related families to date.
[2] Allegheny City was annexed by the City of Pittsburgh in 1907. A western Pennsylvanian city, in the early 20th century it was an industrial capital. There seems to have been a lot of Irish migration to Pittsburgh.
[3] National Archives; Washington, D.C.; Record Group Title: M1537
[4] Eleanor Gray Park was a single woman and daughter of a family who listed both their Allegheny home and their summer residence in the 1905 directory:
Eleanor died in 1940. She had siblings with the surname Kelly.
[5] Estate and Proceedings Indexes, 1788-1971; Author: Allegheny County (Pennsylvania). Register of Wills; Probate Place: Allegheny, Pennsylvania Ancestry.com. Pennsylvania, Wills and Probate Records, 1683-1993
In Search of Thomas Davis 