Michael Corcoran, Mary Quinn, and their Descendants
per RHN 6/1/96
Michael Corcoran
Born 1833, Crossmolina, County Mayo; married Mary Quinn 11/18
1855 in Cincinnati; died 9/1/1905 in Lickrun Ohio; buried
in St Joseph's New Cemetery, Cincinnati. They had five children.
Michael emigrated from Ireland as a young man "to better his
chances". His sister Bridget also emigrated. Their parents
were Richard and Bridget Corcoran née Flanigan (or possibly
Patton). Michael worked in Cincinnati as a contractor
specializing in public works. He and Mary Quinn were married
11/18/1855 in St Francis Church, Cincinnati; witnesses were Dora
Culligan and Edward --.
Michael was listed on June 14 in the 1870 Census as Boarding House
Keeper, Hamilton County, 4th ward. The Cincinnati Directory of
1880 lists as living at the address 117 East 5th St: P J Corcoran
attorney; Richard Corcoran, student; and Michael Corcoran,
Policeman. Michael's death notice says he was at the time
resident at the home of his cousin Mrs B. Manley, 686 West 3rd St.,
Cincinnati (he had been a widower almost ten years).
Mary Quinn
Born 1832 in Killevy Parish, County Armagh, Ireland, daughter of
Patrick and Elizabeth Quinn; married Michael Corcoran 11/18 1855
in Cincinnati; died 5/29/1896 in Cincinnati Ohio. They had
five children.
Mary's Cincinnati residence at the time of her death is given as 1347
Broadway. She was reported four years before her death to have
"contracted the grippe", from which she never fully
recovered. Mary's had a sister, Bridgett, born 1840 in
County Armagh, who married a man named Tobin, and died 10/6/1880 in
Cincinnati. Mary also had a half sister, Ellen, born 1848, also
in County Armagh, daughter of her father's second wife Margaret.
Listed as a domestic, Ellen died of emphysema 9/9/1876. All three
sisters are buried in St Joseph's New Cemetery, Cincinnati.
Mary died at age 64 "surrounded by her family" presumably her husband
Michael and her sons Michael and Patrick. Her Jesuit son Richard
was reported as being telegraphed at Woodstock, but too late.
An article about her, and her death notice, appear in the Cincinnati Enquirer, 30 May 1896, page 5.
Patrick J Corcoran
Born 4/19/1857 (witnesses at baptism were - Braddock and Anna
Quinn); not known ever to have married; died 3/2/1912 in St
Vincent's Hospital, NYC; buried in the family plot in St Joseph's
New Cemetery, Cincinnati.
Patrick graduated from St Xavier College in 1887, and from Cincinnati
Law School in 1889. He was the Hamilton County Prosecuting
Attorney, elected for one term in 1889.
Burial papers listed his mother as "Ann" (presumably in error), and
showed him as married (?). When he emigrated to NYC (either with
his brother Michael or later after the death of their father in 1905),
he moved in with his brother and sister-in-law Josephine, remaining
there after Michael died in 1911, until his own death of "Rheumatism of
the Heart" in 1912.
The Cincinnati Enquirer article filed from New York at the time of his
death says of the brothers: "There was a very strong bond of affection
between the two, and in this city most all their leisure time was spent
together."
Ref.: Obituary in the Cincinnati Enquirer, 4 March 1912, page 2.
Father Richard F Corcoran, S. J.
Born 2/10/1859 (witnesses at baptism were Henry Garien (?) and (?)
Corcoran); died in Good Samaritan Hospital in Cincinnati,
1/6/1939, buried in the Novitiate Cemetery, Milford Ohio.
Richard was educated at St Xavier Parish School, St Xavier High School
and St Xavier University in Cincinnati. He was baptized,
confirmed, and said his first Mass at St Xavier Church, Cincinnati.
He won a number of gold medals for academic excellence (now in the
Neergaard curio cabinet), and was famed for "eloquent tongue and
commanding oratory".
Richard entered the Jesuit Order 21 July 1883 at Florisant, Mo., and
studied at St Louis University and Woodstock. He then taught at
Detroit University and St Mary's College, Kansas. For 21 years he
occupied the chairs of Rhetoric and Oratory at Creighton University,
Nebraska; Marquette University; and St Louis University.
For the next 6 years Richard did pastoral work in Chicago and Detroit,
finally becoming chaplain, for 8 years, of General (now University)
Hospital in Cincinnati.
Father Corcoran was prominent in the St Xavier community, Schools and
Church, in Cincinnati. Of the six Jesuits who established
St Xavier's traditions and created its culture, he was the last to
survive. He was widely admired; there was a two-day civic
celebration for his Golden Anniversary in 7/33.
Father Corcoran died of a stroke suffered 1/1/39, at age 80.
Ann Elizabeth Corcoran
Born 11/2/1860 (witnesses at baptism were Jacob McLaughlin and Bridgett
Kelly); died 2/27/1872 at 24 Broadway in Cincinnati, age
11; buried with her family in St Joseph's New Cemetery.
Michael T Corcoran
Born 6/2/1862 (witnesses at Baptism were Adreas Sheny (?) and Margareta
Smith. Church record says he was born in June 1863, not
'62); married Josephine Kilb 10/17/1899 in Hamilton County,
Ohio; died 6/15/1911 in New York City; buried with his
family in New St Joseph's Cemetery in Cincinnati. They had one
child, Virginia.
Michael graduated in 1882 from St Xavier College, where he won a number
of gold medals (now in the Neergaard curio cabinet) for academic
achievement; he graduated from Cincinnati Law School in
1886. He was professor of Greek and Latin at St Xavier
College while he studied Law.
Michael's sister and sister-in-law died at the address 24 Broadway, in
1872 & '76, when Michael was 9 and 13. His mother died at
1347 Broadway in 1896 when he was 33.
Michael was a member of the Cincinnati law firm Corcoran and Corcoran
(with brother Patrick); address in the 1890 Cincinnati Directory
was given as 5th and Main, Room 229.
He was the Ohio State Senator 1990 - 1992 (Democrat) for Hamilton
County. Elected at 26, he was the youngest person ever from
the district to hold that office. While in the Senate, Michael
introduced 26 bills; all became law. One provided a new
city charter for
Cincinnati; another laid out the code governing loan and building
associations; another was the law which established free
employment agencies. Michael and Patrick were both quite active
in Cincinnati Democratic politics, Michael being named the leading
Democratic orator of Hamilton County.
Michael emigrated with his family to New York City in 1900, to reside
there until his death in 1911. He became a familiar of
Manhattan's famed Algonquin Club.
When first in New York, Michael went with the law firm of House,
Grossman and Vorhaus for several years. Then, probably after the
death of their father Michael 9/1/1905, brother Patrick came to New
York from Cincinnati to join Michael, living with him (they were very
close) and setting up the law firm of Corcoran and Corcoran.
Their law office addresses were given as the Pulitzer Building, then
the old World Building. Michael acted as attorney for the
Brunswick-Balke-Collender Company (of which his wife's uncle was
Secretary and Comptroller).
Michael won an important libel case against The Tribune Association on
behalf of Samuel F. B. Morse, for a defamatory article alleging Morse's
public drunkenness, published 7/26/1905. Legal action was
initiated 8/25/1905, adjudged 5/7/1909. Michael's wife Josephine
collected a $10,000 fee for this case after his death. (Copies of
the brief and judgment are on hand). Michael's obituary also
mentions a case he argued and won before the New York Supreme Court
during the last few months of his life, the period between the time
that he was stricken by typhoid fever six months before he died, and
his six-week terminal illness.
Michael was an active member of the Society of Elks; Esteemed
Lecturing Knight, Cincinnati Lodge #5. (Ref.: Elks speech
published in "The Eleven O'clock Toast", vol. III #6, Cincinnati,
12/1899; also see the program for the Annual Memorial Service,
Newark Lodge #21, 12/4/1910, featuring an address by M. T. Corcoran and
entertainment by a quartet including his wife Josephine Corcoran,
contralto.
Michael was an active member of the Phi Delta Psi fraternity, a
frequent contributor to literary journals, and a member of the American
Academy of Political and Social Sciences.
Michael died of typhus at his home at 151 W 96th St (96th St and
Amsterdam Avenue) in Manhattan at age 49, and was buried with his
family in New St Joseph's Cemetery in Cincinnati. (Certificate
#19532; undertaker was Hugh O'Hare 733 Amsterdam Ave, NYC).
Ref.: History of Cincinnati and Hamilton County, pg 621; in
Cincinnati Main Library, R977.199qH67. Also ref.: Obit in
Enquirer 6/16/1911 page 7 col. 5, and death notice 6/18/1911 page
5.
A Fifth Child born of Michael Corcoran and Mary Quinn did not survive.
Miriam Josephine Kilb
Born in Cincinnati 4/13/1868 (baptismal sponsor: Joanna
Troescher); married Senator Michael Corcoran 10/17/1899 in
Hamilton County, Ohio; died 2/22/1970 in St Patrick's Home, New
York City; buried in the Gate of Heaven Cemetery, Hawthorn,
New York, in a plot with her three brothers and sister-in-law.
They had one child, Virginia.
Josephine, as she was called by all, graduated with the gold medal from
the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music and became a professional opera
and concert singer. She was soloist in Cincinnati's May Festival
under the baton of Theodore Thomas, sang with John Philip Sousa's band,
had leads in various Gilbert and Sullivan operettas, and was soloist
for many Cincinnati churches, among them the Madison Avenue
Presbyterian Church and the Plum Street Synagogue. She gave a
joint recital in Carnegie Hall with her daughter Virginia.
Though Josephine sometimes spoke of living next door to the Longworths,
a daughter of which family married Teddy Roosevelt, and of a murky
wrong-side-of-the-blanket ancestral connection to the German armaments
family von Mauser, her Cincinnati beginnings were in fact quite
modest. Her parents were German immigrants in the cigar-making
business, and although Josephine was born in America, she did not learn
to speak English until she was 16.
When Josephine's husband died still a young man in New York, her
mother's brother, Anton Troescher, was fortunately there to help.
Anton had started as an accounting clerk in a small Cincinnati firm
manufacturing billiards equipment, the Balke Company. He rose to
become its secretary and chief financial officer as the company itself
developed into a major corporation, the Brunswick-Balke-Colander
Company. Anton moved to New York with the company's headquarters
and became a man of means. He supported his newly widowed niece
and her young daughter in high style, including a grand European tour
with a sojourn in a palazzo in Venice.
Josephine was celebrated for her determination, for her combination of
irrepressibility and stoicism,, for her cheerful willingness to
volunteer definitive judgment on any issue she cared about, and for her
utter disdain for any infirmity, particularly her own. At 92, en
route from City Island to a bridge game in Manhattan, she was seen to
give her seat to an "old man" in the subway. At 99, she recovered
consciousness from a stroke before the ambulance arrived, in time to
drive off the astounded stretcher-bearers with a cane, saying that if
she was going to die, it would be in her own house. Forced
nevertheless by the incident to go into a retirement home (she had for
years been living with her daughter and son-in-law), she was threatened
with ejection for insisting she play cards for money. That New
Year's Eve, she was put out of commission for the first time in her
life (not counting the few minutes lost to the stroke) when she fell
while dancing the Turkey Trot. The administration insisted
thereafter that she use a walker, which she defiantly dragged behind
her. She was alert, feisty and admirable almost until her death
shortly before her 102nd birthday.
Virginia Mary Corcoran
Born 2/12/1900 in New York City; married Clifford Gould Neergaard
9/9/1931; died 6/2/1988; buried in her husband's family
plot in Greenhills Cemetery, Waynesville, North Carolina. They
had one child, Richard.
Virginia attended Holy Child Academy, Riverside Drive at 140th St, NYC,
and was awarded a scholarship to Granberry Piano School at Carnegie
Hall (Director Nicholas Elsenheimer) 1912 - 1918. She gave a
recital in Carnegie Hall at 13, and other private recitals in New York
City every year from 1913 to 1918. Virginia was the organist for
the Church of Incarnation, NYC, at 18 years of age. She attended
Columbia University Teacher's College.
Virginia lived at 270 Convent Avenue, NYC, at the time of her marriage.
She was appointed music supervisor in the New York Public School System
in 1922 and held that position until her retirement in 1957, after
which she became choral conductor and organist in St Mary's
Star-of-the-Sea Church. Then in 1960, she was named choral
conductor of the New Rochelle Women's Club. Virginia was a member
of ASCAP (she had musical compositions published), and of the American
Guild of Organists.
In spite of being a most sensitive and fragile person, Virginia pursued
her career as Music Supervisor in some of New York's toughest
inner-city schools (eg PS 159), with great determination and
courage. During this period, she and her husband moved from
Convent Avenue to Riverside Drive in Manhattan, then to City Island in
the Bronx, then to Pelham Manor, and after both had retired, to Ft
Lauderdale in the early sixties. Around that time Virginia was
diagnosed as having Parkinson's disease. Its slow debilitation
inexorably forced curtailment of the couple's many social and travel
activities, though never of their music-making. When their son
returned from living in Europe in 1978, they took up residence in a
retirement home near him in Cincinnati. There, even when she
could no longer sit upright without being helped, Virginia would
somehow find the power in herself to enthrall audiences with
beautifully played concert piano pieces. By the time of her husband's
death ten years later she was no longer aware, but nevertheless
followed him in a few months.
Clifford Gould Neergaard
Born 11/21/1896 in New York City; married Virginia Mary Corcoran
9/9/1931; died 11/25/1987; buried in the Westcott family
plot in Greenhills Cemetery, Waynesville, North Carolina. They
had one child, Richard.
Gould, as he was called, was born in New York City but as a tot moved
with his mother after her divorce, to Waynesville North Carolina, under
the care of his grand-aunt Caroline. When he was 14, he went to
live with his mother's sister in Bordeaux, France, returning four years
later to be with his mother in Waynesville. He earned a BS in
architecture from Georgia Tech; a BA in architecture from the
University of Pennsylvania, and a Master's in architecture from
Columbia.
Gould worked as an architect in Chicago (in the same building in which
the St Valentine's day massacre occurred), then in Philadelphia.
After his marriage, he moved to New York City, where, when the
depression curtailed architectural activity, he took up a parallel
career as professor of Descriptive Geometry at the City College of New
York (now CUNY). Despite the arcane nature of the subject, his
class was extremely popular due to his irreverent sense of humor and
his unique Continental-cum-Huck-Finn charm. While in New York, he
moved from Manhattan to City Island, then to Pelham Manor. After
retirement, he and his wife moved to Fort Lauderdale, and finally to
Cincinnati.
Although he didn't read music, Gould's musical talent was
formidable. He played a joyfully raucous honky-tonk piano, and
could within minutes of picking up any instrument have it singing,
sometimes composing impromptu second and third part harmonies to the
melody as he went . When he and his wife did four-hand
improvisations on the piano, she with her classic style and he with his
ragtime, the house was inevitably brought down.
Gould had an interesting lineage on both sides of his family. His
mother's ancestors were all from English colonial families, his
father's were Danish, more recent immigrants to America. A branch
of the Neergaards in Denmark had been ennobled in the mid-nineteenth
century, resulting in a "de" being placed before their name.
Gould, persuaded as a young man that he was a descendant of this
branch, adopted the de, and for the rest of his life gave his name as
"de Neergaard". Research since his death has shown that
this belief was incorrect; the "de" does not after all attach to
his branch of the family.
Gould was a member of: The Larchmont Shore Club; City
Island Yacht Club; Sons of the Revolution; Sons of the
American Revolution; St. Nicholas Society; Society of
Colonial Wars; Elks (Ft Lauderdale). He was registered as
an architect in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York, and was a
member of the Society of American Registered Architects and of the
Architectural League, New York.
Richard Hampton Neergaard
Born 4/30/1932 in NYC; married Lois Jeanne Gardner
6/1/1957. They have four children: Susan, Arthur, Richard,
and Peter.
Dick went to Regis High School in Manhattan, then earned a BS at the
Sloan School of MIT. His entire career (6/1957 to 11/1989) was
with Procter and Gamble, in manufacturing. The first third of his
career with P&G was in the area of factory management, his first
assignment being in P&G's Staten Island plant during which he and
his wife lived in Elizabeth, New Jersey. He then worked in Europe
(Germany and Belgium) from 11/1961 to 1/1978 during which period
started the second phase of his career: coordination of
international manufacturing operations, which phase concluded with his
relocation to P&G’s headquarters in Cincinnati, as International
Manufacturing Coordinator for the company's international paper
products business. The final phase of Dick’s career was the
development and application of approaches by which managers could
unravel, then resolve, complex systemic business problems.
Dick and his wife have continued to live in Cincinnati since his
retirement.
Lois Jeanne Gardner
Born 1/22/1934 in NYC; married Richard Hampton Neergaard
6/1/1957. They have four children: Susan, Arthur, Richard,
and Peter.
Lois went to Lodge School (for professional children - she was a model)
in Manhattan; Fox Hollow School in Lenox, Massachusetts;
then to Miss Hall's in Pittsfield. She earned a BA in Interior
Design at the Rhode Island School of Design. She lived with her
husband, in Elizabeth New Jersey, then in Europe, then in Cincinnati.
Susan Westcott Neergaard
Born 4/10/1958 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, married Peter Tanke 8/22/1982,
divorced; married Jan Willem van der Werff 4/7/1995. There
have been no children but as of the writing, one is expected 11/96.
Susan, like her three younger brothers, was brought up in Belgium and
Germany, attended secondary school at St John's in Waterloo,
Belgium. She graduated from the University of Cincinnati with a
BA in German Literature and is fluent in several languages. She
currently works for General Electric as Human Resources Manager in
their Plastics Division at Bergen op Zoom, Netherlands, where her
husband is in charge of Lexan production.
Arthur Hampton Neergaard
Born 11/23/1958 in Elizabeth, New Jersey. Unmarried.
Arthur took a mechanical engineering degree at MIT, then in 1983 joined
Procter and Gamble, in Packaging R&D. He has spent half his
career to date at P&G's European headquarters in Brussels, Belgium,
the balance at P&G's headquarters in Cincinnati, is base for
developing packaging machinery for European and South American
locations.
Richard Corcoran Neergaard
Born 2/7/1963 in Brussels, Belgium; married Ishraq Gharib
5/27/1993 in Cairo, Egypt. They have no children but as of the
writing, one is expected 10/96.
Richard took a degree in International Relations at Tufts, then in
1984, joined Procter and Gamble in Marketing. He spent the first
half of his career with P&G in Cincinnati, the balance
internationally, first at the company's German headquarters near
Frankfurt, then at its Egyptian office in Cairo where he met Ishraq,
then director of marketing for an Egyptian consumer goods
company. At the end of 1994, Richard left P&G to join
Benckiser, a German household products firm, where he was initially
responsible for developing new markets and is currently General Manager
of Benckiser’s Israeli subsidiary. He and Ishraq live in Tel Aviv.
John Peter Neergaard
Born 5/8/1964 in Heidelberg, Germany. Unmarried.
Peter took a degree in Applied Mathematics at Carnegie Mellon, and has
since worked for that University at their Computer Center where he was
in charge of software development for computer operations. He has
recently moved into upstream development of object-based computer
languages.