Mrs Mary Peterson back after 60 years
Oct 1985
ONE of Drogheda’s longest-lost daughters came home recently —just 60 years after the day she packed her bags and went to catch a boat across the Atlantic.
Mrs. Mary Peterson (nee Brodigan) left her home in Cherrymount in 1925 and went off to seek the proverbial fortune in America. Now, sixty years later, she has returned bringing with her a daughter, a granddaughter and a great grandson.
Mary, a daughter of the late Charles and Annie Brodigan lived in Cherrymount in the days when that was the very heart of the Irish countryside. Back in 1925, she and her 3 brothers and 5 sisters would have been considered country children and not from the town at ail.
Mary’s father was in the haulage business and he used to deliver loads of sand and gravel to local builders by horse and cart. She went to school at St. Mary’s Mercy Convent on the Dublin Road.
On finishing school she went to work for the McCann and Hill’s Milling Co. and stayed working there until she left for America.
Her main interest in those years however was politics — which is not surprising when you consider that Ireland had just undergone a War of Independence and was in the throes of a bloody civil war.
Mary was a highly active member of the local Cumann na mBan organisation and was a well known figure about the town.
Another member of the Drogheda Cumann na mBan at that time was the late Kathleen Dempsey and she has fond memories of the woman who was later to become Drogheda Corporation’s first woman member. ‘
In 1925 Mary decided that America was the place to be. Her family had connections there — indeed her great-grandfather, Eoin Brady, had fought in the American Civil War.
So — she went to live with an aunt in Chicago. Looking back now she realises that her journey to the USA was a relaively easy one, compared with what some Irish immigrants had had to endure.
”I had very little trouble getting into the States then, because the Government there had just abolished the old system of sorting the new arrivals on Ellis Island.
“The system of relatives having to claim the immigrants before they were allowed off the island had been scrapped and it was all a pretty straight forward process.”
Mary went to work for a wholesale pharmaceutical company in Chicago and later met and married her husband, Henry Peterson. The couple left Chicago and went to settle in Wabasha in Minnesota.
An energetic eighty-year old, Mary looks back on her years in Drogheda with a gentle fondnss that is the trademark of a long-lost daughter. .
She is staying with her sister, Mrs. Nelly McLeer, at Sandyford Terrace, during this trip home while the rest of her American family are staying in the Rossnaree Hotel.
Her brother Charlie Brodigan lives with his family in Killineer and another sister, Clare, is married and living in Dun Laoghaire.
She is amazed at the changes that have taken place in the town since she lived here and is saddened by the loss of John Street and James Street to progress.
However she approves greatly of the Bridge of Peace and the new St. Mary’s Bridge and feels that they make a great contribution to the town.
Most of the friends she knew in Drogheda are now dead however and there are very few people for her to visit when she returns.
Two people who were high on her list of calls however were Sheila and Lee Harding from Cherrymount.
She remembers the late Larry Walsh and the late Aly Farrell as well as Kate Reynolds and her nephew William, whose painted banners are now among the exhibits in the Millmount museum. ‘ Another visit will be to Mrs. Clarke formerly Kathleen Downey from Trinity St.