I never expected to be able to locate much in the way of birth records for my maternal grandmother, Margaret Molloy nee Egan. Known to me as Nanna and to her family as Maggie, she was born in Argentina in 1893. Four other siblings were also born there. Luckily, I have found some records which help to shed some light on where her family lived at the time.
Her parents, Patrick Egan and Mary Coyne, both from Ireland – Patrick from Roscommon and Mary from Westmeath – had married in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1884.
Their first child, John Patrick Egan, was born in Philadelphia in April 1885. Sometime between then and September the following year when their next child Thomas was born, they had migrated to Argentina.
The documentary evidence is the 1886 baptismal record for Thomas and those for the following siblings – Mary Lucy, born 1889, James Vincent, born 1892 and Margaret in 1893.[1] Another child, Ellen Josephine, was born in 1894 but I have not been able to locate her record.
Margaret’s date of birth in the family bible is recorded as 15th May 1893. The date of baptism was 12th September 1893, at the church of San Francisco de Asís (St Francis of Assisi) in Rojas, in Buenos Aires Province.
This was a bit of a tough find, as the record was listed in the indexes under the name Margarita Egan Cogna, presumably in the Spanish format of including maternal names as part of the surname, except that “Coyne” had been mis-transcribed as “Cogna”.
The extract from the parish record reads:
En doce de septiembre del año del Señor de mil ochocientos [noventa y tres], el __ infrascripto Cura Vicario de esta Parroquia de San Francisco de Asis bautizó ___ puso oleo y crisma a Margarita que nació quince de mayo _ hija legítima de Patricio Egan natural de Irlanda et cuarenta años de edad, y Maria Coyne natural de Irlanda de treinta años de edad, domiciliados en Colón _ siendo sus padrinos Guillermo Cavanaugh natural Norteamérica once años de edad, domiciliado en Colon y Marianna O’Connor natural de Pais?? de veintiséis años de edad, domiciliado en Colón a quienes advirtió el parentesco espiritual con el ahijado y con sus padres, y la obligación de ensenarle las doctrina cristiana, y por señal de verdad lo firmaron.
[1] Baptismal records sourced from Family Search. “Argentina, Buenos Aires, registros parroquiales, 1635-1981,” database with images, FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org /ark:/61903/1:1:QGT2-X9CV : 9 September 2021), Margarita Egan Cogna, ; citing Birth, San Francisco de Asís, Rojas, Rojas, Buenos Aires, Argentina, parroquias Católicas (Catholic Church parishes), Buenos Aires Province, FHL microfilm
Roughly in English (per Google Translate), this states:
On the twelfth of September of the year of the Lord of one thousand eight hundred [ninety-three], the __ undersigned Vicar Priest of this Parish of St. Francis of Assisi baptised ___ put oil and chrism to Margaret who was born fifteen of May _ legitimate daughter of Patrick Egan native of Ireland and forty years of age, and Maria Coyne native of Ireland of thirty years of age, domiciled in Colon _
being his (sic) godparents William Cavanaugh native of North America eleven years of age, domiciled in Colon and Marianna O’Connor native of the country twenty-six years of age, domiciled in Colon to whom he warned the spiritual kinship with the godson (sic) and with his (sic) parents, and the obligation to teach him (sic) the Christian doctrines, and by sign of truth they signed it.
The signatures of the parish priest Silvestre Marugo (an Italian) and godmother Marianna O’Connor follow.
Rojas is a small town about 200 kilometres north west of Buenos Aires. The current satellite map shows a compact town surrounded by agricultural fields.
Colon is one of the main streets running through the town, and I assume that this is where the Egan’s residence, as referred to in the baptismal record, was located.
Margaret’s godfather was her cousin William Cavanaugh, then 10 years old, one of the orphaned children of Mary’s sister Annie and her husband Thomas Cavanaugh (sometimes spelt Kavanaugh). He and his sister Honoria were informally adopted by Patrick and Mary Egan.
The first of the Egan baptisms in Argentina was that of Thomas. This took place on 31st October 1886 in Suipacha in Buenos Aires province, a town about 145 kilometres west of Buenos Aires.
According to the baptismal document, the family were then resident in Suipacha, along with the two godparents. These were Michael (Miguel) Coyne, 19 years old and a native of Ireland, and Marcella Connor, 12 years old and born in Argentina.
Suipacha: Church of Nuestra Senora del Rosario. Photo by Jose Luis Viedma on Flikr Creative Commons
By the time of the next baptism, that of Mary Lucy (Maria Luisa) three years later in 1889, the family were living in Rojas.
Where these baptisms took place in Rojas during this period is uncertain. The second church building to be constructed on the San Francisco de Asís church site was completed in 1879 but in 1888 the church tower collapsed, leaving the building partially destroyed. By the time the third version of the church was completed in 1896, the Egan family had departed Argentina. The records for the other Egan children baptised in Rojas carry the same information about the Egan parents.
Mary Lucy’s godparents were
- Juan Dunigan a native of Ireland, 30 years old living in Junin (south of Rojas), and
- Maria Thompson (although she signed her name Adela Mary), ten years old, a native of Argentina, living in Rojas.
James Vincent’s godparents were Andres Gray, aged 35 and Juana McGarry, aged 27, both Irish and living in Rojas.
I have wondered how the Egans came to choose Argentina as a home. They may have known of relatives already there – Michael Coyne as a godparent for Thomas suggests a possible family connection.
According to Edmundo Murray[2]:
In the 1860s almost all the young people of the townlands around Ballymore, Ballynacarrigy and Drumraney, in County Westmeath, emigrated to the River Plate (at that time comprising the Argentine and Uruguay republics).
These are townlands in the general area where Mary Coyne’s family was living in Westmeath. There was a wave of emigration from Westmeath to Argentina for 60 years from the 1830s, coordinated by Catholic priests. The Irish in Argentina became the biggest expatriate Irish community in a non-English speaking country.
Our Egans arrived at the tail end of the major immigration period and most likely were travelling from North America, rather than from Ireland via Liverpool.
By 1896 they had moved on to Paraguay, but fortune did not favour them.
In June 1897 they boarded the ship Orellana in Montevideo, Uruguay on a journey to Liverpool and then onwards to Longford, for a brief return to Ireland before making their way eventually to Australia in 1900.
Nanna was just over 4 years old when they arrived in Ireland, and 6 years 8 months old when the family disembarked in Townsville, Queensland.
In my memory, she had a strong Irish identity but little trace of an Argentinian one.
[2] https://www.historyireland.com/the-irish-road-to-argentina/
Published in 18th-19th Century Social Perspectives, 18th–19th – Century History, Features, Issue 3 (Autumn 2004), Volume 12
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