Mary McCourt

Recently, I've been talking with my grandmother's cousin, my "first cousin, twice removed", on the McPherson side, Mary McCourt (born Mary Spencer).  I had my uncle David show her a copy of the McPherson tree I've reconstructed so far to see what she knew of it.  Of course she knew her aunts and uncles, all 8 of them!  But he had no idea that her grandfather was one of 8 as well!

She recalled meeting her great-uncle John McPherson (the one born in 1865) once when she was very young, but she didn't remember ever meeting any of the others.  As she remembered it, any of the others (she didn't know who or how many) had "gone west".  That is, "West", with a capital 'w', as in the Wild West!

That really got me interested, as they could have gone out there in the time of the Deadwood, Wild Bill Hickok, Calamity Jane, the frontier and all the rest!  Tracing their move out there won't be easy, but hopefully I can dig up something.  It would be fascinating to be connected to that history in some way.
From the census records, it looks like James, Mary, William, and Joseph disappear after 1880.  I'd be surprised if Mary would have gone out there on her own (not many women did that in those days, unless of course she became a prostitute! - unlikely in such a pious Catholic family), so I suspect she probably married and took a different name.  The three men, however, may well have gone.  The other four, Agnes, John, Alfred, and my great-great-grandfather Henry appear on the 1892 NY state census, but Alfred may have joined them later because he doesn't appear on the 1900 census.  I've been limiting my search to the City of Buffalo, thus far, so I'll need to extend things to get more information - it's always possible they just moved out of the city but stayed relatively local.  For now, I'd just like to believe that they were in the thick of the Old West, which is not improbable given the story relayed by Mary.

Mary also told me that a distant ancestor of ours was quite well regarded in the Buffalo (and wider) community for starting a school for the deaf.  She was a nun, Mother Mary Anne Burke, who Mary McCourt said was always a respected member of the family for her charity work.  Since Jessee's sister is a sign language interpreter in New York, I asked her if she'd ever heard of the school.  Apparently it's pretty well known in the deaf community, St. Mary's School for the Deaf (presumably named for the Virgin Mary, not my ancestor).  She pointed me to their website, which sure enough indicates that Mary Anne Burke was involved in it's early days!  She was sent to Philadelphia for deaf education training in 1861 and had become the principal of the school by 1863.

Mary also said we're related to "Cluny MacPherson", or rather Ewen Macpherson of Cluny, a significant figure in Scottish history.  He aided Bonnie Prince Charlie's (failed) attempt to reclaim the British Throne in the Jacobite Rising of 1745.  He was a fugitive for almost a decade after Prince Charlie was defeated and famously was paid a penny by his would-be captors for watching their horses, since they didn't recognize him.  Whether or not there is a direct blood relation to him, as Mary suggested, isn't clear, but it's unlikely.  The MacPherson Clan is massive and it's doubtful most members can be connected to his particular family unit.

Ewen Macpherson of Cluny, painting in the
Clan Macpherson  museum in Newtonmore.

Me.  Can you see the resemblance?

The last thing she told me was that Geraldine Swift, a relative from the Stanton/Burke line, did quite a bit of genealogy research years back.  According to Mary, she had discovered that one of the Burkes in the family was a murderer!  I immediately thought of William Burke, one of the infamous serial killer duo, Burke & Hare.  They notoriously killed vagrants and sold their bodies to the anatomy lecturers at the medical school of my very own University of Edinburgh.  Hare turned "King's Evidence" (i.e. he squealed) and Burke was publicly hanged in the Grassmarket of Edinburgh.  Burke's body was then dissected in the same anatomy lectures to which he had so faithfully supplied bodies.  In, what seems to me, the sickest turn of all, they then made a leather pocketbook out of his skin, which is still on display at the Surgeon's Hall Museum, just up the street from where I live!

As dark as this story is, I almost hope I'm connected in some way.  It might be my one chance at a claim to fame (or infamy, rather).  Again, I think it's improbable, but I'll certainly look into it.  Specifically, I'm going to try to track down who might have Geraldine's papers today - she has since passed away.  That could be a real gold mine of information, since she's several generations closer to those she would have been researching.

A "portrait" of William Burke,
housed in the Surgeon's Hall Museum, Edinburgh

UPDATE:  I wrote earlier that Mary was one of the children of John and Mary McPherson that disappears after the 1880 census and that I suspected that she had married and taken a different name (rather than move west and become a prostitute!).  I had forgotten that I'd already found a notice of her death in 1881.  That's a good reminder that I'll need to be sure the others were still living before I go on a big search for them in the West.

Death Notice for Mary McPherson (1853-1881)