The Children of Michael - the third child [2]

Letters from Thomas England the Architect (1823-1869)

For more than ten years Thomas wrote, from Philadelphia and San Francisco, to both his elder sister Honora (Nora) and his younger brother John. He gave a fascinating insight into his personal life and to events that were happening in these cities and elsewhere in the world.

The following are no more than selected items.

Philadelphia

View of Philadelphia in 1850 [BF Smith Jr]

 118 South 4th St. Philadelphia. December 1st 1850

My dear Norah, If business continues good I may be better off next year.... There are more fires here and murders committed in one week than there are in Ireland in twelve months.

118 South 4th St. Philadelphia July 14th 1851

My dear Norah, Business is dull at the office where I am employed. I have not had half enough to do. I believe we are to get a few miles of railroad and there is some likelyhood of our having a fire building in a month or two....I know nothing of Aunt Grace and family or John. Has the Bandon railway been of advantage to the town?... I suppose Aunt Mary is as kind as ever. I know she is capable of nothing else. Is my friend Ann O’Brien married?... I will make her Mrs England.

Voyage to San Francisco

Thomas left Philadelphia for San Francisco on March 9th, 1852. He travelled on a barque named the Asa Packer. On board were over 180 people including passengers, crew, stewards and cooks. The journey took 140 days as they went via Valparaiso.

After three days, “a number of our friends are singing Irish lamentations about fellows who were hanged, drawn and quartered.”

By St. Patrick’s Day on the 17th March.

"Dullness has possession of everyone, two passengers arranged for a little fight this morning but were prevented with the assurance that they can see it out when they land, played Backgammon."

On March the 25th and 26th

Some of the passengers amuse themselves by getting into the rigging, the sailors catch them and lash them to it until they pay a fine. Murphy amuses himself by stealing potatoes from the Dutch. Had the Paupus for dinner yesterday it went well. I suppose we will be shortly able to eat whales.

On Monday the 29th. There was, “a great deal of betting on the distance we would travel in the next twenty four hours.”

Thomas got no peace on Tuesday April 6th.

Heavy rain last night all hands turned out for a fresh water bath and that infernal Dutch woman came up to see the naked fellows.

There was more excitement the next day.

A fearful fight between decks in which nearly everyone took place.

 San Francisco

November 2nd 1855.


Thomas wrote to John and talked about a cousin, Grace. “I hope to be in Ireland when one of her daughters gets married.” He also mentioned John’s recent appointment as a Professor in Cork and of his own homesickness.

John had sent him some poems written by M. J. Barry, the second child of Anne England and Michael Joseph Barry. Thomas had known Barry in Cork and though Thomas retained thoughts of a liberated Ireland, Barry it seemed had not.

The two I have read are very spirited and nation like but I would respect him more had he not written them.

Following this, Thomas declared."I hate Russia and England about the same. They are about equally despotic." [1]

Thomas got drunk and talked about Cork and sang songs with a Mr. Stanton.[2]

June 4th 1856

My dear John, I would not be astonished if I would go to Mexico.

July 4th 1856

Thomas moaned about John’s letters. "Your letter of the 7th of May was the only good one I ever got from you."

He rose early.

When I am good I get up at 5 o’clock, walk, read the newspapers before breakfast and spend the rest of the day either in reading, drawing and receiving visitors.

He mentioned an Uncle Edward living in Sunday's Well and wrote about a Mary Barry.

I certainly admire her taste in writing love letters to you. [3]

Thomas also mentioned that a new cousin had been writing to him for three years.

San Francisco in 1850 [Charles Conrad Kuchel]

30th January 1858.

Business was bad and Thomas was not getting on with his architectural partner. However, life in San Francisco was interesting.

Last week there were many suicides and a duel. Our good city is in a state of disgrace.

There are compensations, though, as he wrote to his brother John.

I have almost become a ladies man ... the dances that I was at were somewhat promiscuous.

But that doesn’t mean he will get tied down.

I don’t think it probable I will follow your example and lose my heart.

He had travelled to visit the Jesuit college in San Jose and he anticipated a trip to Grass Valley as he was, “preparing drawings for a church there – the place is situated in the North Mines about three days journey.” [4] Then, “Do Mary and Michael Seymour live together?”

He hoped his father, Michael, was proud of both him and John and that he would send some plans and drawings to Michael. He ends. “... give my love to all... do not omit doing so to the future Mrs E.” [5]

1861 San Francisco. To Norah.

Thomas knows that, “Cobalt and 4 or 5 others own the richest mine in California....They are all as rich as princes.” He told her that there were delays in building a college and “the only thing that can possibly interfere with my prospects will be this war.” [6]

He wrote about the beauty of San Francisco Bay and the Golden Gate and that he had built a small church in Stockton. He had also joined an Irish association.

October 12th 1863. To John.

He knew about John’s marriage on the 21st July 1863 because he had been receiving the newspapers from Cork. John had told him that he had been to France for a few days. A lady friend had invited Thomas to go to France and that if he did she would accompany him to Ireland. She made a calamitous mistake in a letter to Thomas because her first words were “deer Thomas.”

In the letter to John, Thomas castigated her for this mistake and forecast that the relationship would not progress!

We learned that John, in Cork, lived opposite the county gaol and that Thomas knew that the house extended from Sunday's Well to the river....“ a very nice place and convenient for the college.” He also enquired whether his new wife’s sister Susanna is “as accomplished and amicable as Norah represents Jane to be. I expect a picture of her.”

October 9th 1865 To John.

Thomas can’t send the money that he wanted to. He’s owed between three and four hundred pounds but that in order to collect it would involve costly law suits. He was feeling really isolated from all the family. He had received a letter from his Aunt Emily and bemoaned the fact that his father never wrote him a line...“so leave a few lines for him to write at the end of your next letter.”

There was a meeting at the Union Hall, the largest in the city. It was "a meeting of The Brotherhood [7] to raise money for the procuring of arms for the people in Ireland in order to prosecute a war against England."

According to Thomas 2,000 pounds was raised.

San Francisco has had

...what is called a shock of an earthquake yesterday. Few buildings in the city escaped injury but not many people injured. There are deep seams of about 6 inches wide and from 3 to 5 hundred feet long remain open.

People had run from hotels “with little more than a fig leaf on them.” Some had run from the barbers, “with their faces full of lather.”

Thomas had been at St Mary’s cathedral when the earthquake struck. Eight or nine hundred people were there. The first shock wasn’t bad but the second was more severe. The congregation left the church but after five minutes mass re-commenced!

[That must have been really strange to Thomas; attending mass in the cathedral you have designed and an earthquake threatening to destroy it!]

We had two little fellows since but having escaped from the big fellow no one takes notice of them. [8]

In the same letter he wrote that sixty people had been killed when a steamboat blew up in the bay. “This is a frequent occurrence.”

June 9th 1867 To John

Thomas complained about a cough he has had for a few months and that he’s had to call the doctor. There were problems with his business partner and that a lawyer was going to have to be involved. He was not being paid for what he had done. “The result is I am in debt.”

He tells John “not to expect any money from me at the present.”

Also: “I had a spitting of blood this morning.”

He went on to say that if he didn’t recover before the next rainy season he would not survive it, “for in this climate, people go off pretty quickly.” He is worried that if he gets really sick he has nowhere to go as he won’t be able to afford the “sisters hospital.” He ends “Remember me to Jane and all friends.”

Thomas died of consumption, two years later, in 1869.

Historical context

[1] Russia and Britain were fighting in the Crimea at this time.

[2] A John Stanton was a sponsor at his baptism in 1823.

[3] John married Jane O’Connell in 1863, not Mary Barry!

[4] The Californian Gold Rush began in 1848. The gold seekers known as ‘forty niners’- as a reference to 1849 – eventually numbered over 300,000. San Francisco grew from a small settlement of 200 residents in 1846 to a boomtown of 36,000 by 1852. Levi Strauss first began selling denim overalls in San Francisco in 1853. Apparently, the name ‘denim’ derives from the French – de Nimes.

[5] John must have either been unlucky in love or had a long engagement because he married Jane O’Connell in 1863. When she died in 1874 he married her sister three years later. Or, of course, Thomas might have been referring to someone else in the family.

[6] The American Civil War: 1861-1865.

[7] The Fenian Brotherhood was an Irish republican organisation founded in the United States in 1858 by John Mahony and Michael Doheny. It sought an end to British rule in Ireland and the establishment of an Irish Republic.

[8] The ‘big fellow’ hit San Francisco on April 18th 1906. Fire broke out and lasted several days. Three thousand people died and eighty per cent of the city was destroyed including St. Mary’s Cathedral.

Place names


Valparaiso: in Chile and is one of the South Pacific’s most important seaports. The city served as a major stopover for ships travelling between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.

San Jose: about 48 miles from San Francisco.

Sunday’s Well: a suburb in north west Cork.

Stockton: a town about seventy five miles from San Francisco.

Thomas was the second child of Michael England and Mary Bransfield. The next chapter deals with their third child - John