Blarney Stone Chips: The McCarthy Family Ancestors & Descendents

06/11/2023

Just back from three weeks in Ireland. While there we spent a handful of days in Kinsale. While I was there I found the doorstep to which Jeremiah McCarthy was born in 1844, #4 Higher Street. It was still being rented by his father Jeremiah in the 1853's rent rolls I found out, with the help of a local historian.

02/07/2023

160 years ago today my Immigrant ancestor Jeremiah McCarthy was severely wounded on the field at Gettysburg during the battles second day. As a boy he was lucky enough to escape the Potato Famine. As a young man in Boston he more than likely took the place of a wealthy young New York city scion for a bounty of a few hundred dollars. He served in the Tammany Regiment (42nd New York) from the beginning of the war to this date in 1863. On the third day of the battle his regiment plugged the gap in the Union line where Picketts Charge had penetrated, while he lay wounded out in front of where the 1st Minnesota fell. So this Fourth of July weekend remember those brave men who saved Our Union from the slave owning insurrectionists and their goober eaters.
"Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, on this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived, and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives, that that nation might live.
It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate—we cannot hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract.
The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.
It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they here gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth. " "Happy 4th of July"

26/02/2022

From Jeremiah McCarthy's Civil war pension records.

29/12/2019

"About this time the Third Corps, holding the line on the left of the Second Corps, and but a short distance from this brigade, was advanced, and the engagement became general. Met by a far superior force of the enemy, the Third Corps was forced to retire, closely pursued. An order was received to send two regiments to the left to report to General Humphreys, and a staff officer came to conduct them. Being dispatched accordingly, two regiments moved rapidly forward and were soon lost to sight in the smoke of the battle. Conducted by the flank through the flying lines of our troops, and left by the staff officer--whom they have not seen since--to their own resources, they formed line of battle, delivered several volleys into the enemy in their front, staggering him for an instant, and, under this cover, withdrew in good order with a few prisoners, but with a loss of nearly one-third of their number.
These regiments (the Forty-second New York and Nineteenth Massachusetts) were the last of our troops to fall back at that point, and in their regularity presented a striking contrast with the fugitives. The enemy having an enfilading fire upon the lines of the Third Corps and troops called to its support, his advance was irresistible, its regularity surprising, and its rapidity fearful." https://civilwarhome.com/hallgettysburg.html

       CAPTAIN: I have the honor to submit the following report of the operations of the brigade under my command in the recent engagements near Gettysburg, Pa.:        The brigade, composed of the Seventh Michigan Volunteers, Forty-Second New York Volunteers, Twentieth Massachusetts V...

11/11/2019

03/02/2019

Harry/ Henry McCarthy sketched by his big
brother John Justin.

28/12/2018

25/12/2018

This was painted by Jere McCarthy, i beleive in the 40's or early 50's.

07/12/2018

When i was 6, I remember my my Great Uncle Bill rolling up his pant leg and showing me the scars in his leg from where the machine gun had hit him. He served with his brothers Jack and David, my grandfather, on the front in France. Their youngest brother Jere served in the Navy and had a traumatic time. My Grandfather who had served in the motor pool and had a buisness degree from Penn went into business after the war with his two brothers in the auto parts business. the concern was called the McCarthy Brothers and operated in Philadelphia in the 20's and early thirties. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3X10W7WOZbU

The History Guy remembers the battle of the Meuse Argonne, the largest and deadliest battle in the history of the US army. The episode discusses events and s...

19/03/2018

https://youtu.be/3bRr8XGFXy8

The story of the Irish name McCarthy and its variations MacCarthy and McCarty. Discover how and where the name originated in Ireland and what it means. See h...

10/07/2017

John J. McCarthy engraving tools and the most IMPRESSIVE steel plate engraving I've ever seen. Look closely at the details engraved here.

28/06/2017

A sketch of David McCarthy done by his father John Justin McCarthy.

30/05/2017

19/05/2017

Interesting.

A recent study has revealed that the Irish are instinctively generous because of the suffering their ancestors went through during the ‘Great Famine’.

19/03/2017

Jeremiah McCarthy 1910, standing in front of his business.

12/03/2017

David McMenamin

13/02/2017

Jere & Justin meeting on Justin's Swift Boat in Vietnam.