Looking for Kate

Last week I was in New York City and spent time at the Municipal Archives searching for any information about my great-grandmother Kate Higgins or her brother Michael, both of whom came to Indiana on an Orphan train in 1860 or '61.

Their parents were Irish, and we believe from a letter written later in life by Michael that her father was Thomas Higgins and they lived on Elizabeth Street, which runs about a mile between what is now Chinatown and Nolita (northern Little Italy). Based in what I have been able to learn about Elizabeth Street in the 1850s, the southern end of it was part of Five Points, the worst slum in NYC at the time. So, despite family legends about a dastardly uncle who sent Kate and Michael away to take their money--I suspect they were destitute.

Early birth records in NYC, which begin in 1847/48, then stop, then restart at 1853, were simple kept in ledger books. The books are divided up alphabetically, with everyoneborn to a parent with last name H appearing in the same section, and the books run chronologically (for the most part) from there. More often than not, only the names of the parents, sex of the child, address of the [parents and name of physician or midwife are included.

I came up empty, but I suppose many people simply did not register births in those early years.

So today, I visited Kate's grave at South Park Cemetery in Martinsville, Indiana. I took a picture of her headstone, and uploaded it to Find-A-Grave. I feel like I have somehow finally registered her as someone who lived in this world.