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Around September 1850, a girl named Bridget Waters was born in Galway, Ireland.  Some ten months later she arrived in New York City, carried in the arms of 24 year-old Barbara Waters, probably her mother.  Barbara and Bridget were but two of the over one million Irish immigrants who came to the United States in the 1840s and 1850s fleeing the horrors of the Potato Famine.  Boarding the Barque Celeste in Galway sometime in April 1851, the two touched the nation's shores on May 15, the only Waters' aboard the ship.  The name, age, and time of arrival match closely with what we know of John Delehanty's mother, making the odds very good that this 10-month old baby girl is our great-grandmother Bridget Waters.  (Illustration:  County Galway, Ireland.  Below:  close-up of Barque Celeste passenger list of 15 May 1851; source:  NYC passenger lists, ancestry.com)

 

Understanding the desperate conditions under which Barbara and Bridget Waters arrived means understanding the extreme social and economic inequalities wracking Ireland in the 18th and 19th centuries, and the devastation wrought by the Famine, which hit with full force in the late 1840s . . . .

Famine-ravaged Irish immigrants arrived in U.S. and Canadian ports in the 1840s and 1850s in conditions of squalor and desperation.  The following account of the arrival of a ship from County Cork to Grosse Isle, Canada, in May 1847 could likely be applied to the Barque Celeste upon which Barbara and Bridget Waters chugged to New York four years later:

"Who can imagine the horrors of even the shortest passage in an emigrant ship crowded beyond its utmost capacity of stowage with unhappy beings of all ages, with fever raging in their midst . . . the crew sullen or brutal from very desperation, or paralyzed with terror of the plague – the miserable passengers . . . one-fourth, or one-third, or one-half of the entire number in different stages of the disease; many dying, some dead; the fatal poison intensified by the indescribable foulness of the air breathed and rebreathed by the gasping sufferers – the wails of children, the ravings of the delirious, the cries and groans of those in mortal agony . . ."   (Howard Zinn, A People's History of the United States, NY: Harper & Row, 1980, p. 221)

          Under such circumstances, with small children and the elderly the most vulnerable groups, it is no small thing that 10-month old Bridget Waters survived the voyage.  Thousands of other Irish-born infants did not.  

The late 1840s were devastating years for Ireland as a whole, and for the Waters clans of County Galway and other counties.  Immigration data show 232 Irish surnamed Waters came to the United States in 1851-1852 –  the highest influx of any two years, and about one-third of the 731 documented Irish surnamed Waters arriving on the Eastern seaboard in the eight decades from 1850 to 1930 (1,088 Waters came from Britain, including 819 from England, 106 from Scotland, and 15 from Wales).  Probably all of the 232 Irish Waters who came in 1851-52 were fleeing the Famine.  (Source:  ancestry.com supplementary databases)

What happened to Barbara and Bridget Waters after their arrival in America is not known.  Neither appear in the 1860 census.  Barbara would have been around 33, Bridget around 10.  Three explanations seem possible.  (1)  Barbara married and gave away Bridget; (2) both were missed by the census-taker; or (3) Barbara died before 1860 and the census-taker either missed Bridget or recorded her  under a different surname.  Only the last two seem plausible.  Given the larger social context of poverty and illness, the last seems likeliest:  Barbara died, and the census-taker missed or misnamed Bridget.

We know that Bridget ended up in the Rutland slate and marble districts, so the likelihood is high that Barbara brought her there before she died.  Far and away the commonest pattern among European immigrants across the Americas, from New Brunswick to Buenos Aires, was to link up with "pioneer" family members already settled in given destination.  It is very likely that that's what Barbara Waters did.

If Barbara did come to Rutland County and then died, where did she leave Bridget?  Two things seem possible:  (1) that Bridget went to live with one of her aunts or uncles or other kin -- such as Julia or Anna Waters in Rutland Town, or one of their married sisters, or with James and Margaret Waters in Whitehall, NY – and was missed by the census-taker; or (2) that she was orphaned (left without kin), became a domestic servant, and recorded under a different surname.

Let us consider the latter possibility first.  Census data from 1860 show four Irish-born Bridget's ages 8-12 in Rutland and Washington counties with surnames different from others in their household.  The domestic arrangements make clear that these girls were working as domestic servants; one is specifically identified as such.  All were probably orphans, not integrated into a kin network.  Their names were Bridget Clark (age 12, White Creek, Washington Co.), Bridget Carter (age 12, Fair Haven, Rutland Co.), Bridget Bolen (age 11, White Creek), and Bridget Bale (age 11, Cambridge, Washington Co.).  Any might be our Bridget.

It is worth recalling here that the head of the household, not the servants, provided information to the census-taker.  A 12 year-old servant girl named Bridget could have any surname the head of the household chose to give her – or any given name, for that matter.

So let us take a different tack and look for Waters' families that might have taken in Bridget.  Were there any Irish-born "Water's" in Rutland or Washington counties in 1860?  In fact there were four in Rutland Town, in three different households.  One was headed by Patrick Waters, a 28 year-old railroad hand, born in Ireland in 1832, and included his 35 year-old Vermont-born wife Bridget (b. 1825, not our Bridget); their baby girl; and Irish-born Margaret, age 56 – probably Patrick's mother.  The two other Irish-born Water's in Rutland Town were both named Hugh -- one an 18 year-old blacksmith living in a boarding house, and another a 17 year-old quarry worker boarding with a family of teamsters.

These two Hugh's might have been Patrick-the-railroad-hand's brothers or cousins.  Perhaps Patrick had a married sister who took in his orphaned niece Bridget, and the census-taker failed to record her correct surname.  Or, perhaps she was taken in by one of the two Irish-born Waters families in Washington County, NY.  In both counties together lived at least 14 Irish-born Waters, in the households just described.  Our Bridget is not among them.

Even though we can't find Bridget in the 1860 census, it is clear that by this time Waters from Ireland were fairly thick on the ground in the slate quarrying districts, as were the Irish-born.  In 1860 the two counties of Rutland and Washington contained some 8,200 Irish-born inhabitants – up ten percent from the 7,400 in 1850, and several thousand percent from their tiny numbers in 1840.  It is very likely that our Bridget was in there, somewhere – living with one of the Water's families and missed in the census, or with extended kin and listed under a different name, or working as a domestic servant under a different name.

Ten years pass.  It has been 19 years since her arrival in America, and we still have no evidence of Bridget Waters' whereabouts.  By the time of the 1870 census, nine Waters of Irish ancestry or ethnic affiliation lived in the Town of Rutland:

1.  House No. 262, Family No. 338
	WATERS, BRIDGET, age 30, washerwoman, born in Ireland
	WATERS, MARY, age 11, born in Vermont
	(Living in the same house with another family, the Clarks, also from Ireland.)
2.  House No. 406, Family No. 507
	WATERS, GEORGE, age 34, employee at the saw mill, born in Ireland, and boarding with a carpenter named R. P. Snow, his wife, and his son Daniel, 17, a clerk, and a Vermont-born female domestic servant, age 20.
3.  House No. 1154, Family No. 1244
	WATERS, PATRICK, age 26, quarryman, born in Ireland
	WATERS, MARGARET, age 24, keeping house, born in Ireland
	WATERS, MARY, age 3, born in Vermont
4.   House No. 1483, Family No. 1808
	WATERS, MICHL, age 20, laborer, born in Ireland
	WATERS, BRIDGET, age 22, keeping house, born in Vermont
	WATERS, MARY, age 3, born in Vermont

          In other words, the 1870 census lists four Irish-born Waters living in the Town of Rutland – Bridget (age 30), Michael (age 20), Patrick (age 26), and George (age 34).  It is possible that at least some of these Waters were siblings, cousins, or otherwise related in the same first generation of immigrants, though there is no evidence that Bridget Waters had any blood relations in the United States.  Not even her probate record lists any siblings or blood relatives.  She probably had none.

Careful readers will have noted that two Bridget Waters' lived in the Rutland Town in 1870 – one a 30 year-old unmarried washerwoman born in Ireland, the other a 22 year-old housewife born in Vermont.

The first is very probably our Bridget.  The census-taker just got her age wrong. 

Thick Description of the 1870 Census

There are several peculiarities about her listing, which enumerated five individuals in the same dwelling place, no. 262, in the following sequence:

Family no	Name	Age	Sex	Race	Occupation	Born
338	Waters, Bridget*	30	F	W	washerwoman	Ireland
339	Clark, Jessie	25	M	W	laborer	VT
	-------, Nora	20	F	W	keeping house	Ireland
	-------, Hattie	1	F	W		VT
	Waters, Mary*	11	F	W		VT

(* Note:  Both Bridget and Mary Waters' mother and father of foreign birth.  Mary Waters can neither read nor write).

One statistical peculiarity is that 30 year-old Bridget was listed as the head of a household.  Female-headed households were rare in this male-dominated social world, around seven percent of the total.  This made her distinctive, by definition.  A second oddity is that 11 year-old Mary Waters was listed as part of the Clark family, instead of with Bridget, even though all lived in the same dwelling house.  (The exact relation between Mary and Bridget is not known.) 

Why the jumbled listing?  Let's try to reconstruct the likeliest sequence of events.  The census-taker knocks on the door.  Bridget answers.   He identifies himself, and asks her name, age, and other personal information.  She makes clear that she is the head of her own household.  He asks if she has any children or dependents.  She answers, "no."  So he moves on to Jessie and Nora Clark and child.  Then he learns of another person in the house, a girl of 11 named Waters, but not Bridget's child.  Had Bridget been cooperative, and were Mary, say, her niece or cousin, but not a dependent, Bridget probably would have mentioned Mary before the census-taker went on to list the Clark's.  The listing itself thus suggests that Bridget Waters was not being an entirely cooperative listee. 

It is not hard to understand why.  Nosing through every part of town with a clipboard in hand and the authority to record for the federal government every individual's name, age, household status, occupation, net worth, country of origin, parents' countries of origin – census-taking was neither a simple nor a non-political act.  Hired on short-term contracts and receiving only nominal pay, census-takers had the authority to pry into fairly intimate aspects of people's lives.  They also had only so long to cover their allotted territory, and little time to sort out the specifics of each dwelling place.  In the end what mattered was the total tally, not who belonged to which family, especially among the poor.  The data make clear that Bridget and Mary Waters lived in the same house, were probably related, and that we are looking at a common situation:  two families sharing one dwelling place – the Waters and the Clarks.  (Illustration:  census-taker, 1870, from www.rootsweb.com)

Looking more closely at this process of census-taking, we see that Assistant Marshall C. H. Forbes began his enumerations of Rutland Town on June 1, 1870 at the town center, on page no. 1, with dwelling house no. 1, family no. 1.  He finished on 13 September – 105 days, 247 pages, 1,613 dwelling houses, 1,987 families, and 10,395 people later.  Among the first ten families were three machinery manufacturers, two merchants, an insurance agent and railroad agent, and two teachers, with a total net worth of $86,500.  Among the last ten, after circling throughout the town  (including its expansive rural districts) and ending up back at its center, were a bank president, two bank employees, three marble dealers, and a governess, with a total net worth of nearly $300,000.

Bridget Waters lived among working people, and in close proximity to some of Rutland Town's wealthier residents – probably right around the corner from them.  Enumerated on June 23, 1870, on pages 38-40, her neighborhood was populated by both working-class and upper-class households.  In the house next door lived a 67 year-old black laborer and his family of six, with $0 net worth.  In her own dwelling place, five people in two families claimed $0 net worth.  On the other side lived two carpenters, a dressmaker, and two other adults, who claimed a combined net worth of $2,300.  Next to them lived the superintendent of the Rutland Railroad, worth $18,500.  A few doors down from him lived a grocer worth $16,000 and hotel owner worth $20,000.  Other near neighbors included three carpenters, a mason, a laborer, a teamster, and a cabinet maker.  Evidently it was a very mixed neighborhood, perhaps with working-class blocks running perpendicular to upper-class blocks.

Bridget Waters lived next door to one of the town's few black families:  Joseph Taylor (age 67), his wife Charity (age 68), and four other Taylor's, ages 39, 29, 15, and 4.  Altogether only 96 persons identified as "black" lived in all of Rutland County in 1870, 44 in Rutland Town – less than one-half of one percent of the town's total population of 10,395.

Of those more than 10,000 people, exactly two were white female heads of household living next door to a family of black people.  One lived in a rural district.  The other was Bridget Waters.

If we make that immigrant white female heads of household living next door to a family of black people, there was just one – one among Rutland Town's 10,395 people.  Bridget Waters.

That is not all.  Her next-door neighbor, Charity Taylor, age 68 in 1870, was the daughter of one of the county's most prominent African-American men, Pearson Freeman, who had lived in the county since the 1770s.  A landowner who served with distinction in the Revolutionary War, Pearson Freeman was also a talented musician, soap manufacturer, and author of many memorable advertisements in the Rutland Herald.  His obituary was very lengthy and laudatory.  His daughter Charity Freeman was baptized on July 4, 1802, at the East Parish Congregational Church in Rutland, married Joseph Taylor on January 1837 in Rutland, and lived in Rutland until her death in 1884 at the ripe old age of 82.

In other words, Bridget Waters lived next door to one of Rutland Town's most prominent black individuals, one with deep roots in the local community.  If anyone knew the county intimately, and its people of color, it was Charity Freeman Taylor. 

Consider for a moment the extent and depth of the social connections to which Bridget might have been introduced by her black neighbors.  The possibilities are breathtaking.  In light of her personal and family history, and her advanced years, Charity Freeman Taylor probably knew most everyone in town worth knowing.

How did these two neighbors –  young Irishwoman Bridget and elderly black woman Charity – get along?  There are many possibilities, ranging from outright hostility to mutual indifference to abiding friendship.  The slender reeds of evidence available on this question suggest they got along swimmingly.  I imagine them chatting over the fence, sharing the occasional coffee or tea, and that Bridget absorbed a universe of knowledge from Charity and her family about the history and people of Rutland County.  I imagine that being neighbors with Charity Freeman Taylor changed Bridget's life in some important ways – that it provided her with social connections and local knowledge that she simply could not have gotten any other way.  That it made her a force to be reckoned with.

One faint whiff of a hint in this direction is the 1870 census itself.  Why the jumbled household sequence?  And why the 10 year discrepancy in Bridget's age?  Both things were rare in census records, each occurring in less than five percent of all listings.  The odds against both things happening in the same listing would thus be on the magnitude of at least 400 to 1.  The odds of these two things happening for the only white immigrant female head of household living next door to a family of black people, out of more than 10,000 people altogether, are . . . well, I don't know what they are, but they must be astronomically high.  Why in Bridget Waters' listing?

Given the larger patriarchal culture and the rarity of female-headed households, unmarried women heads of household had to be especially independent and assertive.  The jumbled listing, Bridget's head-of-the-household status, and the discrepant age together suggest that Bridget was positively uncooperative, that she rankled Assistant Marshall Forbes, and that he therefore recorded her age as 30 years instead of 20.  Or, that she refused to tell him how old she was and made him guess.  Or, that she had worked so hard in her 20-plus years that she looked like she could be 30.  Maybe she made it clear that she just didn't like his demeanor.  One can imagine many plausible scenarios explaining why Mr. Forbes listed Bridget as 10 years older than her actual age.