Brooklyn Irish

BEAL Annie wid. George, h. 145 14th

(Brooklyn City Directory, 1880-81)

The southern edge of the city of Brooklyn in the year 1880... A working class neighborhood between Prospect Park and the Gowanus canal, otherwise known as the city's 22nd ward. Brownstones are being built north of 9th street in what will be known as "Park Slope". Close to the Beals' 14th street apartment house are clusters of frame houses, 3-story brick flats, and some factories. The area is largely un-developed with dirt roads and farm animals grazing in fields. Horsecar lines run down 9th street to the Brooklyn waterfront and up 5th Avenue to bustling downtown Brooklyn where the famous bridge is still under construction...

The Brooklyn Bridge in 1879

The Beal family lived on 14th Street for many years. The three children would finish public school and Henry got a city job as a weigh-master for the city and worked on the Gowanus canal's docks at the foot of Smith Street. Alice married his friend Herbert Hempstead in 1887 and had three children, Herbert, Lester (who would fight in WW1), and George (who died in infancy). On Dec. 7, 1891, Annie Beal, native of Clara town, succumbed to pneumonia at the family home at age 49. Within a few years, Camelia Beal (the youngest of the McLain children) died of Meningitis in Harlem Hospital on Feb. 5, 1895 at age 24. Annie, Camilla, George Hempstead, and George T. Beal (re-interred from Philadelphia) lie in a markerless plot at the top of a hill in Greenwood Cemetery facing the statue of liberty.

Once the family had come to Brooklyn, I presume my great-great grandpa Henry G. Beal grew up without contact of any of the remaining McLains. His only child grew up not knowing the family's real roots. Annie may have been eager to change her childrens' surname, as a man with an irish-sounding name would have a hard time working as anything other than a laborer, if he was lucky enough to be hired in the first place. Immigrants in 19th-century New York wanted nothing more than to assimilate and become good Americans.

Alice Beal's marriage in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle

Fourth Avenue, northeast at Tenth St.

Henry G. Beal in 1895, married Mary Jane Watson of Brooklyn. She was the daughter of Peter Watson (a Scottish & Greek carpenter) and Winnie O’Neil (who was born on a famine ship in the mid-Atlantic in 1854). Mary was the second of seven children, born at 27 Atlantic Avenue on the Brooklyn waterfront near Columbia Street. The family moved to a house on 17th Street after her mother died in 1885. Henry & Mary Beal’s first and only child, Henry Peter Beal was born June 6, 1896 in a three-story flat on 15^th Street near 6^th Avenue.

325 Fifteenth Street

BEAL H'y, weigher, h. 325 15th

(Brooklyn Directory, 1895-96)

Henry had converted to Roman Catholic to marry Mary Watson. Their son (my great-grandfather) was baptized on June 10th at St. Stanislaus Martyr RC Church at 328 14th Street. When he was still a little child his family called him Harry, and later on in life he replaced his middle name with his confirmation name of Anthony. "Harry A. Beal" is who I started looking for when I began searching for my ancestors, which made another brick wall until I learned what I was doing. The Beals were a devout catholic family and moved into a tenement house next door to their church further up Fourteenth Street. Harry was a student of the divinity and after finishing school he attended the Cathedral College of the Immaculate Conception to be a priest.

338 & 326 Fourteenth St.

1900 Census - 338 14th, Brooklyn

BEAL, Henry G., 33, City Weigher

BEAL, Mary, 25, (wife)

BEAL, Harry, 4

1910 Census - 338 14th

BEAL, Henry G., 43, City Weigher

BEAL, Mary F., 35 (wife)

BEAL, Peter H., 13

In 1919 while attending the Cathedral College, Harry met Kathleen McBride, the daughter of John McBride and Sarah Cassidy (both born in Scotland but of mostly Irish blood). John was raised in Johnstone, his father a native Scot of Renfrewshire. His mother was Ann McKenna of Portaferry, Co. Down. The McKenna family had earlier left Ireland for Scotland during the famine in search of work. Sarah Cassidy's father Cornelius ,was a carpenter from County Donegal who came to Glasgow in 1860 and later married Sarah Carlin whose was born in County Derry. The McBride & Cassidy families were in New York by 1890 and Kathleen was born at 101 Dean Street on June 28, 1900. She would spent most of her childhood in a Union street tenement.

Tenement house at 101 Dean Street

Harry left the Cathedral college in 1920 so he would be able to marry Kathleen, which he did in June 1921. Their first son Robert Beal was born in May 1923 in Brooklyn followed by Gloria in 1924, and Walter in 1926. Harry’s mother Mary Beal died on the second day of 1925 in the tenement house at 513 6^th Avenue, and was laid to rest in Holy Cross cemetery. Henry G. Beal died less than two years later of stomach cancer at age 60.
In 1926, there would be no more tenement houses for the Beal family. Harry with his wife & children had moved into a new 3-story house on 114^th Drive in Saint Albans, Queens all to themselves. Three more Beal children would be born here, twins Bernard & Stephen on August 6, 1929 just a few months before the stock market crashed, and the youngest son Norbert in 1934.