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Alexander McKee Family |
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Randolph County, Illinois, United States of America |
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Agnes (McKee) Anderson |
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1.1 Agnes McKee b. 1802 Northern Ireland d. After 1870 Galum, Perry County, Illinois m. James Anderson b. d. 1854 Dukinfield, Cheshire, England
1.1.1 Alexander Anderson b. 1833 Northern Ireland d. 26 May 1881, 50 Brooks Street, Ashton-Under-Lyne, Cheshire, England 1.1.2 Agnes Anderson b. 1834 Northern Ireland d. 1886 Woodchurch Hospital, Cheshire, England 1.1.3 Mary Jane Anderson b. 1837 Northern Ireland d. 23 Jan 1881 Cutler, Perry County, Illinois |
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In the fall of 1867, a elderly Irish widow named Agnes (McKee) Anderson boards the ship Helvetia at Liverpool, England. Traveling with her are her young widowed daughter (Mary Jane (Anderson) Ashworth) and two orphaned granddaughters (Mary Louise Alice and Agnes Eleanor). As Agnes sails from Liverpool bound for New York, she leaves behind her English home of many years, two older children, in-laws, and many grandchildren. Her familiar world and her family simply slip away until they are no more.
Agnes is fleeing rapidly deteriorating conditions in County Cheshire, England. As the Civil War rages in the United States, cotton shipments stop, unemployment in Cheshire’s cotton mills soars, and the specter of hunger looms. Early in 1867, the food riots start in Cheshire.
In an effort to move people out of County Cheshire, the English government begins paying for overseas passages in an effort to move people out of the County Cheshire area. I don’t know how Agnes pays for her passage but go she does. An elderly Agnes follows the path blazed by her father and siblings all those years ago. She boards the Helvetia and sails for an unknown land and an uncertain future.
The women land in New York City 30 December 1867. Agnes, Mary Jane, and the two young girls must find their way through Castle Garden. Immigrants can stay at Castle Gardens if they have no other accommodations. Many immigrants do and describe parts of Castle Garden being covered with maps. They explain that agents list your options for going west and tell you the costs. Immigrants also describe the high walls that prevent the predators of New York from gaining access to unsuspecting immigrants with an eye toward stripping them of anything of value. The scene must have been dizzying for a woman of 61 with her daughter and granddaughters in tow.
The next time we find these women, they are in Randolph County, Illinois. About three month’s after the women arrive, Agnes’ daughter marries her first cousin—George D. McKee. And for a time, George offers them love and safety, but it is short lived. George’s health begins to fail as a result of his service in the Civil War. He dies suddenly on 16 January 1870.
Agnes, her daughter, and grandchildren are again adrift. The 1870 census shows them living in Galum, Perry County, Illinois—one county over from the McKee family in Randolph County. They are living on George’s farm, most likely in relative poverty. By this time, Agnes is in her late sixties.
Agnes does not appear on the 1880 census. She appears to die between 1870 and 1880…a stranger in a strange land. I’ve found no record of Agnes’ death or burial. She is perhaps buried on the Galum farm where she lived or perhaps with her father Alexander on land owned by her brother Joseph McKee. |