John Lynch & wife Hannah

John Lynch and his future wife Hannah (maiden name unknown) were both born in Ireland in about 1825. Their year of marriage is unknown but their first child, a boy named Edward, was born in 1848. Two more children, John and Mary, followed in 1850 and 1854 respectively. I believe these children were all born in the same location in Great Britain, but various records reflect their place of birth as Ireland, Wales, or England.

I believe John and Hannah immigrated to the United States in about 1855 and entered this country at the port of Philadelphia. By 1860 they had made their way to Allegheny Township, Blair County, Pennsylvania, just south of Altoona. It seems they may have moved around a lot as John worked as a coal miner at various locations in southwestern Pennsylvania. Many more children followed in the coming years.

Records are conflicting but it is possible that the family was living in northern Virginia (possibly in what is now West Virginia) when seventh child, a daughter named Johanna (“Hannah”), was born during the American Civil War in 1863. Records are conflicting but they generally reflect her place of birth as “Virginia.” Daughter Hannah married Thomas Bales in Uniontown in about 1880 and together they produced six children (including my great grandfather James Jamar “Jim” Bales).

In 1870, the Lynch family was living in Carbon Township, Huntingdon County, Pennsylvania, and ten years later they were residing in East Huntington Township in southern Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania. I believe John and Hannah had as many as thirteen children and the last, a daughter named Bridget, was born in February 1880. The 1880 U.S. Census (enumerated in June 1800) reveals that father John and his teenaged son John are employed at the “Coke Works.” The elder John is also listed as having been “ruptured” and was out of work for the first six months of 1880.

Many of the grown Lynch children settled in the area around Westmoreland and Fayette Counties in southwestern Pennsylvania. I do not know when or where John and Hannah died. I can’t find them in the 1900 U.S. Census (when they both would have been about age seventy-five) so I am assuming they both passed away prior to the turn of the century. Their daughter Hannah passed away in April 1943 and son Daniel (then about age sixty-six and residing in Donora, Pennsylvania) was the lone surviving child at that time.

(NOTE: In the near future I plan to research records in the Westmoreland County courthouse and hopefully will turn up the date and place of death of John and Hannah Lynch.)