HOGAN Biographical Sketches - Patrick and Catharine

Patrick Hogan and his family have been hard to research for several reasons:

Patrick Hogan was a common name, difficult if not impossible to distinguish in directories and census. Had it not been for a cemetery deed in our family's posession, I wouldn't have been able to confirm the Hogan family's presence prior to 1870.
It appears that he did not take out directory listings. At least, I've never found a listing that coincided with a known family address.
It appears that the family may have moved from Manhattan to Queens (c1855?), then back to Manhattan (c1862-1866), then back to Queens (c1869-187?) before finally settling in Brooklyn during the late 1870s. But if there was an early stay in Queens, it may never be documented.
Records from that period are scarce. Birth and marriage records were not mandatory in any county in the State of New York. Those that exist are often lost due to bad handwriting or indexing. Baptismal registers (still in the care of the original churches) are often the only record of a child's birth, but a search must be paid for at each individual church at which a family may have lived. The first census listing I have located for the family was taken some 23-24 years after Patrick Hogan came to the country.

EARLY YEARS
I have found no document stating Patrick's year of immigration, but I reckon it was around 1846-47. The first reported date of activities in New York is Mar 24, 1849, when his first child, George W. Hogan was born. (This birth date was not certified at the time of birth, but was as reported years later to the de la Salle Christian Brothers on George's application for entry to the order.) One assumes Patrick met/married Catharine Donohue roughly a year before, but this is nothing but a guess.

Baby George was reportedly born in New York City, which at that time consisted only of Manhattan. The location was most likely true, since another 1849 event sets the Hogans in Manhattan. On Nov 1, 1849, Patrick filed his Declaration of Intention to become a U.S. citizen in Manhattan's Superior Court. Unfortunately, there was no home address or further information on this form, which must precede by 2 years an application for citizenship. So we can place the Hogans in Manhattan, and probably downtown, since that was the only settled area, but we can't pinpoint their location near a particular church.

The next dated evidence I have found of the family's location was recorded June 21, 1857 when Patrick Hogan witnessed the naturalization of shoemaker George B. Hogan (brother? cousin?) at Court of Common Pleas in Manhattan. George lived and worked on E. 18th Street, while Patrick was a west-sider, living on 8th Avenue--no street number or cross street given. (Note: as an artisan/merchant, George was relatively visible in city directories, and easy to follow. Patrick was not.)

That leaves a blank between 1849 and 1857, during which time at least two more babies were born: Thomas (reportedly in 1851) and Anna (reported variously between 1853-1857). Someone attempting to connect the dots would assume the Hogans lived in Manhattan during that period. However, one item casts some doubt on this. Anna's death certificate (1925 in Hackensack) states that she was born in Whitestone, New York on March 19, 1857. This date is dubious, and the information itself may be wrong but it does raise a question of location that I hope to resolve some day. (It has been documented that the Hogan family did, indeed, live in Whitestone, Queens, but not until 1871, when Anna was in her teens. I have found no trace of an earlier Whitestone stay, a fact that doesn't rule it out.)

Part 2 Patrick Hogan on the upper east side |

AN ASIDE
The primary source of information about Patrick Hogan's family was a paragraph written by Patrick's grandson Gus Hogan, who wrote the following on a piece of scrap paper, probably during the 1960s.

This drawing by Richard [this line was crossed out]
Brother Richard Hogan was youngest of five children born of the union of Patrick and Katie HOGAN. The first George who entered the order.
He established schools in Ellicot City MD, Rockhill College and on the James River, VA.
He is buried in front of the Novitiate at Ammendale - Brother Edmund Alban in 1907.
With members of my family we stood by the grave in 1959 on the occasion of our visit to the Immaculate Conception Cathedral in Washington DC in that year.
The family spent its early years in St. Paul the Apostle parish in N.Y. City, Columbus Ave & 59th St.
Thomas F. Hogan, the second born - my father - was a member of the original Paulist Choir - under either Fr Young or Fr Smith.
Anna Hogan and Maggie Hogan complete the five.

There were a few inaccuracies in this paragraph, but most of what Gus wrote was accurate enough to make this a major cornerstone of the research.

He was wrong about the number of children: there were at least six. Perhaps he was unaware of the existence of Katie Hogan, the middle daughter, who was still alive 8 years before Gus was born in 1888, but who may have passed away before he was born. Refer back to the descendancy chart in the Hogan overview for my current nose count.

Brother Edmund Alban was actually Albran Edmund, and he died in 1910, not 1907. But he was involved in the formation or as director of several de la Salle Christian Brother schools.

The Hogan family did indeed spend the time during the 1860s at St. Paul the Apostle parish, however St. Paul's was established around 1859, so we don't actually know where the family lived during their earliest years.

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Patty Fagan: patty@pefagan.com