My Other Museum Related Project- Part 2

Part 1 of this post discussed not only the basics of what I did for my thesis, but also who John Ronayne was (as he was the head of the household at the time when the ceramics were deposited). I realized that I could not let Ellen Sullivan get lost in the telling of my thesis because she is a big part of it as well. Sadly, because she is female and because of the era in which she lived, little can be traced of her through historical records. I found myself wondering who she was throughout writing my thesis and now that I am expanding upon it, I have been able to spend more time on her and her family.

Ellen Sullivan and her family were among the first wave of Irish immigrants to come to Newport. This was due to available work in the area, mostly in construction. One of the more prominent projects was building Fort Adams. Construction began around 1825.

Ellen Sullivan was born in Cork, Ireland, reportedly in the same parish as her husband John Ronayne in 1829. Based off of Census records, her family soon came to America as her siblings were listed as having been born here, one, her brother John (b. 1832), in New York and the rest in Rhode Island, suggesting an arrival to Newport date of around 1833. She was the oldest of six children, and one of three girls.

Little is known of Ellen’s father, part of this is due to the commonality of their surname. What is known is that he had died sometime between 1846 and 1850, the time between the birth of Ellen's youngest brother Michael and the 1850 Census. He does not appear on that Census and Ellen’s mother Julia is listed as the head of the household. In 1840 Census Records only indicated the name of the head of the household at which time Ellen’s father was alive. There is a possibility that his name was John, as it is the name of her eldest younger brother, but this is only a theory at this time.

In the Census records for 1870 and 1880 Ellen is listed as Keeping House. After John Ronayne died, Ellen was left with the use of two houses as well as many of the household goods and $500. She was granted a life lease by her brother-in-law David at his house, left to him by Ellen's husband John Ronayne, presumably so that nieces Kate and Mary Ronayne could have access to their new homes. Ellen died on June 12, 1895 and was buried in St. Mary's Cemetery on Warner Street in Newport.

A picture of part of John Ronayne and Ellen Sullivan's grave marker. They share a monument with John Ronayne's father Thomas.

----------------------------

Part 3 will include information about the ceramics found during the excavation of the trashpit linked to Ellen Sullivan and John Ronayne.

My Other Museum Related Project- Part 1

Today’s entry deals with the other museum related project that I have been working on. This project is a continuation of the work I have done on my senior thesis, a requirement of my major. My thesis entitled “Alive With Meaning”: Piecing Together the Material Culture of Newport’s Irish, 1848-1898, in a very simple sense deals with the ceramic material culture of an Irish immigrant family living in Newport between those years. Had I only written about that, however, it would have been a very short paper, which it wasn’t. Length wise it was 124 pages long; 45 pages of it was a written thesis the rest were a mix of photos, a glossary, analysis tables making up numerous appendices.

The ceramics that I based much of my thesis on was from a property now owned by the Newport Restoration Foundation. The ceramics were discovered when the head gardener for the NRF went to plant a tree for the tenant of the house. What he stumbled upon was actually a trash pit consisting of large ceramic sherds, clay pipes, glass, faunal remains (animal bones thrown out after a meal), and small finds (buttons, buckles, beads etc.). In the Spring of 2007, my professor was contacted to look at the site and that July he and three students, including myself, recovered the remains of the trash pit.

The Irish immigrant family that my thesis focuses on is the Ronayne family. This was concluded through dating the ceramics and by running back the chain of title (the deed history) for the house. John Ronayne came to America in 1848 where he settled in Newport by 1851. Tax records for 1854 (which were published in 1855) show that he was in the bottom 20% of taxpayers in terms of monetary wealth. He worked as a teamster delivering coal from the nearby wharf to homes and businesses. He married Ellen Sullivan sometime between 1860 and 1870, she had been in Newport since at least 1832. Over time, John Ronayne gathered up enough money to buy numerous properties in Newport which he rented to others for an additional source of income. In 1891, two years before his death, tax records show that he was among the top 26% of taxpaying entities in Newport, certainly a dramatic rise for an immigrant from the Great Famine era. He never had any children so after he and his wife died, his property was split up among his siblings, nieces and nephews.

The ceramics recovered from the backyard of the Ronayne household give insight into the way that John Ronayne and his wife lived in Newport. Stay tuned for more on my thesis tomorrow when I will (briefly) describe the ceramics and what they might mean.