Hello, I am a new poster here and I joined just so I could participate in this Cronin family topic. I know that I have Cronin relatives in Worcester but do not know any of them. Perhaps someone here will recognize some of this information.
My great-grandmother Elizabeth Cronin was from Doocarraig, County Kerry (east of Killarney, very near Rathmore). She came to Worcester sometime either side of 1890 when she was about 23 and worked as a domestic. She married Leonard Rice in 1893 and they had 4 sons before she died of TB in 1911. My grandfather was 8 at the time but he recalled that his mother's relatives would come over and they would speak Irish.
After her death it seems that her relatives totally lost touch with her sons, I don't know the reason. Through her marriage certificate and some good luck at the LDS library I found relatives in Ireland still living on the same farms, and further filled out my information. A very elderly cousin who would have been a child in 1911 said she vaguely remembers grief over the death of an aunt in America, and that nobody would say out loud in those days that there was TB in the family.
It seems that Elizabeth's brother Daniel came to Worcester as well, and perhaps also a sister Mary who married a Leahy. Their mother was a Donoghue, also of the Doocarraig area, so the assumption is that there are also Donahues in Worcester who are related to this family, but I have no information on that. My mother was married in 1957 by Father Leahy at Christ the King church and says he was related to her distantly, although I'm not sure how anyone would have known that by this time.
SO - I am looking for any Worcester Cronins who are descended from a man named Daniel (who immigrated in about 1890, would have spoken Irish with his family members, had siblings who died of TB both here and back in Ireland), and have Leahy and Donahue cousins. If anyone recognizes this information I'd love to know more. Thank you!
