From Buffalo to Evans, New York: Mary Jane Sheridan's Early Life

 

Though I have no image of Mary Jane Sheridan, as a girl, she may have dressed similarly to this girl whose portrait was painted in 1849.¹

When I look across Mary Jane Sheridan’s whole life, rather than a shadowy and nearly anonymous woman who occupied the space next to her husband on my family tree, I find Mary Jane was a woman who lived a challenging, mobile, sometimes tragic, and sometimes triumphant life. It was probably not unlike those lived by many women of her time— lives only considered quiet and uneventful because they were unknown.

My 3x great-grandmother Mary Jane uprooted more than once, driven by her father or family's needs or wishes to move from urban to increasingly rural settings. She became a wife, mother, farm helper, and eventually a taxpayer and a landowner. She held her family together after personal and financial losses. She clung to her Catholic faith and seemed to provide a strong grounding for her children.

Among her achievements, Mary Jane Sheridan (1841-1919) stood alongside an extended group of female kin to hold land in 19th century Grantham, Ontario. She lived as a widow from her husband Philip Cassidy’s death until her own and proved herself capable and resourceful.

What events shaped Mary Jane’s life? What forces forged her character? How did she become who she was? The keys may be in various episodes which stood out for me as I researched her, and I share them here.

Buffalo waterfront, 1842, just after Mary Jane was born.²

Early Life

You might have smelled it or heard it before you saw it: a busy, industrial neighborhood next to a canal in Buffalo, Erie County, New York. The Hydraulics as it was known, was about a mile east of downtown Buffalo, and Mary Jane Sheridan’s home from her birth in about 1841 until she was about 10 years old.³

The neighborhood centerpiece was the Hydraulic Canal, completed in 1828, several decades before the Sheridan family lived nearby. It was designed to power the drive machinery of this industrial area. The canal drew sawmills and pail factories, woolen mills and shoe last factories, grist mills and breweries, and more, to the area. Businesses sprang up around the canal to support the workers who lived in the neighborhood: groceries and dry goods stores, shoe shops and butchers, blacksmith shops, and others.⁴

As a girl walking to school or the neighborhood shops, Mary Jane probably wound her way through throngs of mill workers, teamsters, and shopkeepers. She might have heard the horses' hooves clip-clop on the pavement as they hauled wagons canal side, wagons much like the one her father, Henry Sheridan, owned as a teamster. Mary Jane may have turned up her nose as she smelled the refuse floating in the canal or averted her eyes from the blood and gore sometimes dumped there by the local butcher. 

 

The Hydraulics was at Buffalo's eastern edge at the time, indicated with the T on the right side of this 1828 map.⁵

Her father worked busily in the Hydraulics with his team and wagon, loading, hauling, and unloading all sorts of cargo: grain, lumber, and more. Her brother Charles, a laborer, may have helped their father on his daily route or worked his own, while Mary Jane and elder sister, Catherine, went to school. Her mother, Catherine, minded Mary Jane’s younger brother, William, and kept the house.⁶

On Sundays, Mary Jane, her mother, and her siblings, attended Mass at the old St. Patrick Catholic Church founded in 1837, while her Anglican father stayed home.⁷ As in many “mixed marriages” between Catholics and other Christians, Henry likely promised that his children would be raised as Catholics when he married Catherine. Was this the first place where Mary Jane saw in her mother’s example a deep devotion to the Church? If so, it likely impressed her to watch her mother shepherd her children through the sacraments of confession, first communion, and confirmation, as Henry watched from the sideline. 

While there were many jobs to draw workers to Mary Jane’s Hydraulics neighborhood the canal at its center was not without problems. With a reputation for being dirty and located in a neighborhood filled with immigrant workers, local misfortune was often blamed on the Hydraulic Canal and nearby residents.

When Mary Jane was about 8, Buffalo suffered such a misfortune in a terrible cholera epidemic. Beginning on 30 May 1849 and lasting into September that year, cholera killed nearly 900 residents after infecting over 2,500.⁸ People sickened and died by the scores, sometimes in the course of a single day. The Buffalo newspapers reported daily Board of Health totals of the sick and the dead. Eventually, the Board began listing the names and addresses of the dead—and sometimes included the victim’s ethnicity, often Irish or German. 

Mary Jane may have seen sights such as this during the 1849 cholera outbreak in Buffalo. This image was from an 1832 cholera epidemic.⁹

As a girl, Mary Jane may have seen wagons come by to take the cholera dead to the cemetery. She may have heard the stories about those “nearly buried alive,” before they had passed away. Sometimes it was merely a lull in the disease’s course and the victim recovered, but other times the opium physicians gave to the sick made them appear to be dead when they were not.¹⁰ There was even a mention of a man who knocked on his coffin just before he was put into the ground!¹¹

Like so many Buffalo residents, Mary Jane was likely fearful that she, her family, or her schoolmates would catch the dread disease. Did she and her family avoid green vegetables and green fruits as the newspapers said carried the cholera?¹² Did her mother Catherine insist the family attend a special votive Mass at St. Patrick’s to pray for an end to the calamity?¹³ It was such a worrying time that the mayor followed the President and the Governor’s lead in proclaiming a Fast Day in August 1849 for citizens to pray to the Almighty to spare Buffalo.¹⁴

In those terrible days and the months that followed, Mary Jane’s parents might have wondered when the next epidemic would strike and what life might be like outside the Hydraulics. Was there a better place to raise the Sheridan family, which by now included another son, Henry?¹⁵


Down the Lakeshore

Whether to escape the ill-aired city or move on to new opportunities, by 1851, Henry had moved his family to the more rural Evans, sixteen miles down the Lake Erie shoreline.¹⁶ Though Evans was primarily an agricultural area, with gravelly, loamy soil supporting grain, grass, and fruit crops, Henry did not take up farming.¹⁷ Instead, he joined about a dozen men who worked as shoemakers in Evans. The shops served the needs of the many nearby farmers, railroad, and mill workers, a need that grew with the coming of the Buffalo and State Line Railroad, which bisected North Evans in 1852.¹⁸ 

Mary Jane's father Henry's workplace may have looked like this.¹⁹

For Catherine Sheridan, whose vocation was to nurture her children’s Catholic faith, Evans would also provide the company of several dozen Catholic families, which may have been a comfort to her after leaving her old St. Patrick community in the Hydraulics. Catholic workers in Evans had constructed a small wooden church in North Evans, completed about the same time as the family’s move. Known at St. Vincent, the church provided a central meetinghouse to replace occasional services offered by visiting priests and held in local residents’ homes, a common occurrence at that time. There was also a schoolhouse nearby for Mary Jane and her siblings to attend.²⁰

Though North Evans was almost as busy as the Hydraulics had been, Mary Jane’s family life was perhaps a bit easier and less chaotic than in Buffalo. Henry’s work as a shoemaker took him out of the elements and allowed him to earn as much as $25 per month ($912 in today’s dollars) in 1855.²¹ In their plank-built home, Mary Jane and her family may have enjoyed the breezes off Lake Erie which freshened the air in contrast to the often-stagnant air in their old neighborhood—though the winds off the same lake ushered cold and blizzards in the winter. Mary Jane possibly completed her schooling, learned the household tasks that she would need in her adult life, or helped Catherine with her younger siblings, William and Henry.

The Sheridan family’s years in Evans were ending, however. As Mary Jane grew through her teens it appears something was still stirring in the family that would bring her to another move and another phase in her life.

Until next time...

© Nancy Gilbride Casey, 2025. All rights reserved.

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NOTES

¹ David Cox, Girl in a Pinafore, abt. 1949, image, Rawpixel (https://www.rawpixel.com/image/9201467/girl-pinafore-david-cox : accessed 10 Mar 2025); citing Yale Center for British Art.

² Frank H. Severance, The Picture Book of Earlier Buffalo (Buffalo, New York: Buffalo Historical Society, 1912), p. 26, Buffalo waterfront, abt. 1842, HathiTrust (https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=coo.31924072101854&seq=475&q1=457&view=1up : accessed 10 Mar 2025); citing Cornell University, Ithaca.

³ 1855 New York Census, Erie County, population schedule, Town of Evans, p. 48, dwelling 190, Mary L. Sheridan, age 14, in Henry Sheridan household; imaged, FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:33S7-8B53-9XN7 : accessed 7 Jan 2025).

⁴ Clinton Brown Company Architecture Rebuild, “Historic Resources of the Hydraulics/Larkin Neighborhood, City of Buffalo, Erie County, New York 14210, State and National Register of Historic Places Nomination,” September 2009, section E, p. 4; imaged PDF, Buffalo as an Architectural Museum (https://buffaloah.com/a/bamname.html : accessed 8 Mar 2025).

⁵ L.P. Crary, Map of Buffalo, 1828; imaged, New York Heritage Digital Collections (https://nyheritage.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/VHB001/id/8138/rec/26 : accessed 8 Mar 2025); citing Buffalo & Erie County Public Library. Image was originally printed in an 1828 city directory. 

⁶ 1855 New York Census, Erie County, population schedule, Town of Evans, p. 48, dwelling 190, Henry Sheridan household. Also, 1850...1851 The Commercial Advertiser Directory for the City of Buffalo (Buffalo [New York], Jewett, Thomas & Co., 1850), p. 249, Henry Sherden, teamster; imaged, New York Heritage Digital collections (https://nyheritage.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/VHB011/id/1850/rec/1 : accessed 13 Jan. 2025); citing Buffalo and Erie County Public Library.

⁷ Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_churches_in_the_Roman_Catholic_Diocese_of_Buffalo : accessed 8 Mar 2025), “List of Churches in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Buffalo,” last updated 8 February 2025, at 03:03 (UTC). Also, 1861 Canada West Census, Lincoln Co., ED No. 4, Grantham, line 9, Henry Sheridan household; imaged, Ancestry (https://www.ancestry.com/imageviewer/collections/1570/images/4391944_00303 : accessed 13 Jan. 2025); citing Public Archives, Toronto. Henry is noted as “Church of England.”

⁸ Clinton Brown Company Architecture Rebuild, “Historic Resources of the Hydraulics/Larkin Neighborhood, City of Buffalo, Erie County, New York 14210, State and National Register of Historic Places Nomination,” September 2009, section E, p. 5; imaged PDF, "The Hydraulics/Larkin Neighborhood - Nomination for Listing on the State and National Register of Historic Places," Buffalo as an Architectural Museum (https://buffaloah.com/a/bamname.html : accessed 8 Mar 2025).

⁹ A corpse is lifted from the back of a wagon during the 1832 cholera epidemic, coloured lithograph, c. 1832; image, Rawpixel (https://www.rawpixel.com/image/13966289/image-dog-horse-cartoon : accessed 10 Mar 2025). In the public domain.

¹⁰ “Report of the Board of Health,” The Buffalo Daily Republic, 20 July 1849, p. 3, col. 1; imaged, Newspapers.com (https://www.newspapers.com/image/1139345291/ : accessed 7 Mar 2015).

¹¹ “Report of the Board of Health,” The Buffalo Daily Republic, 12 July 1849, p. 3, col. 1; imaged, Newspapers.com (https://www.newspapers.com/image/1139345263/ : accessed 7 Mar 2015). 

¹² “The Cholera,” The Buffalo Daily Republic, 24 Aug 1849, p. 3, col. 2; imaged, Newspapers.com (https://www.newspapers.com/image/1139345426/ : accessed 7 Mar 2015).

¹³ “The various Catholic Churches…,” The Buffalo Daily Republic, 2 Aug 1849, p. 3, col. 1; imaged, Newspapers.com (https://www.newspapers.com/image/1139345331/ : accessed 7 Mar 2015).

¹⁴ “Fast Day,” The Buffalo Daily Republic, 2 Aug 1849, p. 3, col. 1; imaged, Newspapers.com (https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-buffalo-daily-republic-fast-day-for/167078960/ : accessed 7 Mar 2015).

¹⁵ 1861 Canada West Census, Lincoln Co., ED No. 4, Grantham, line 9, Henry Sheridan household; imaged, Ancestry (https://www.ancestry.com/imageviewer/collections/1570/images/4391944_00303 : accessed 13 Jan. 2025); citing Public Archives, Toronto.

¹⁶ 1855 New York Census, Erie County, population schedule, Town of Evans, p. 48, dwelling 190, Henry Sheridan household. Also, A Gazetteer of the State of New York (Albany: J. Disturnell, 1842), p. 160, “Evans”; imaged, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/gazetteerofstate00albauoft/page/158/mode/2up?q=evans : accessed 7 Mar 2025); citing University of Toronto.

¹⁷ A Gazetteer of the State of New York (Albany: J. Disturnell, 1842), p. 160, “Evans.”

¹⁸ 1855 New York Census, Erie County, Section III, Industry other than Agriculture, Second Election District, Town of Evans, np, C&O Jones, Shoe Shop; imaged, FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:33S7-8B53-9X4R : accessed 21 Feb. 2025). Also, 1855 New York Census, Erie County, Section III, Industry other than Agriculture, Second Election District, Town of Evans, np, Charles N. Wilcox, Shoemaking; imaged, FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:33SQ-GB53-9DBQ : accessed 21 Feb. 2025). Also, Donald T. Cook, “The History of the Town of Evans,” Town of Evans (https://townofevansny.gov/history/ : accessed 5 Mar 2025).

¹⁹ Der Schumacher, 1840; image, LOC's Public Domain Archive (https://loc.getarchive.net/media/der-schumacher : accessed 10 March 2025).

²⁰ Rev. Thomas Donahue, D.D., History of the Catholic Church in Western New York: Diocese of Buffalo (Buffalo, New York: Catholic Historical Pub. Co., 1904), p. 393, "John Kinney"; imaged, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/historyofcatholi00dono/page/392/mode/2up?q=Angola : accessed 24 Feb. 2025); citing Boston University School of Theology. "Mass was said for the first time in North Evans in 1849, at the house of Mr. Kinney, who served as a trustee of St. Vincent's Church until his decease." Also, Rev. Thomas Donahue, D.D. History of the Diocese of Buffalo (Buffalo, New York: The Buffalo Catholic Publication Co., 1929), p. 244, St. Vincent Church, North Evans; imaged, Ancestry (https://www.ancestry.com/imageviewer/collections/12412/images/dvm_LocHist002894-00127-0 : accessed 25 Feb. 2025). Also, Samuel Geil and Robert Pearsall Smith, Map of Erie County, New York: from actual surveys (Philadelphia: Robert Pearsall Smith, and Buffalo: John Angell, 1855); imaged, Library of Congress (https://lccn.loc.gov/2012593657 : accessed 4 Feb. 2025); citing Geography and Map Division, LOC, Washington, D.C.

²¹ 1855 New York Census, Erie County, Section III, Industry other than Agriculture, Second Election District, Town of Evans, np, Charles N. Wilcox, Shoemaking.