Rooney Family Tree

Margaret was born in 1861 in Ottawa, Canada. She's in the 1881 census in Quinnville, Canada with her parents and sister Honora (Hannah, Anna) and brother John.

She first shows up in the U.S. with her sister Bridget and husband Bernhard (that spelling) Lynott in the June 1885 census in Minneapolis, Wards 1-5, age 23. (The Lynott's first show up in the June 1880 U.S. census, living in Washington County, Minnesota, having just arrived a few months before.) However, Margaret is back in Canada in their 1891 census (age 29, it says), living with her parents and brother John in Templeton.

In the 1892 Duluth city directory, "Maggie Murphy" is boarding with her sister Bridget and husband Bernard Lynott as well as sister Hannah and brother William at at 2118 West 4th Street in Duluth. She's only there that one year in the 1890's.

It's possible that she worked for one of the priests in either the French church near East Hennepin in Minneapolis or the predominately Irish congregation of St. Anthony of Padua parish just a mile or two north of there, between 1885 and 1891 when she's first here from Canada, or between 1892 and 1895 when she's back from Canada and before going to Manannah.

(St. Anthony of Padua in northeast Minneapolis is where William Martin and Catherine Rooney were married in July 1867 and where Sarah Rooney and John Darcy were married in May 1869).

Margaret is next in 1895 in Manannah Township, Meeker County, with the Rev. John McDevitt, a Catholic priest (he's 53, born in Ireland). One would assume she's his housekeeper. "John" is incorrect - the reverend's correct name is Hugh.

In the 1900 census she had 2 children of which 2 are alive. It says that she arrived in the U.S. in 1892. That date would be incorrect, given the 1885 census, but it may be correct following her having gone back to Canada so would make sense. In the 1910 census it says she had 5 children of which 4 are alive (the one who died must have been born between 1900 and 1910), and again that she arrived in the U.S. in 1892.

Upon her marriage to Michael Ward Rooney, they made their home on the farm he had homesteaded in 1871. Michael died in 1918 and Margaret continued to make her home there until 1939, when she went to live with her daughter and son-in-law, Mr and Mrs Mathias Majerus. She died at her daughter's home in 1948, following a three-week attack of flu.