John Patrick Brophy

[Susan Higginbotham]

(03-30-2015 04:29 PM)L Verge Wrote:  I would still like to see the verification that Anna Surratt "lived with the Brophys for years." Several of the Tonrys and the Surratts told me years ago that they had never heard that.

There is some mention somewhere of the Holohans returning to the boardinghouse to help her clean up and to stay with her. When she couldn't take the crowds surrounding the home in D.C., they said she came to live with her grandmother Jenkins and Uncle Zadoc on what is now Joint Base Andrews. One of Zadoc's daughters was friends with my grandmother and said that the reporters found her even out in the sticks (she also said that Zadoc's family called Mary "Aunt Lizzie."

Anna also stayed for awhile with school friends in Baltimore. By 1869, she was married.

If Anna stayed with the Brophys, it must have been for a very short period.

Anna testified at the Johnson impeachment hearing that she had remained in the boardinghouse for a few months (with the Holohans) after her mother's execution. She gave a Massachusetts Avenue address at the hearing.

Brophy didn't marry until September 1866, so Anna staying with him before that would have been grossly improper and out of the question.

There's a newspaper reference to Anna working as a governess for Mr. Gwynne (sp.?), apparently the same man whom Mary Surratt had consulted during one of her trips in April 1865.

Brophy was living in New York City in September 1868, when he wrote a letter (which I'm going to transcribe for the Courier) dated from there. He seems to have remained in that city for the remainder of his life, at addresses that most New Yorkers would kill for nowadays.

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(03-30-2015 03:56 PM)Pamela Wrote:  

(03-30-2015 01:31 AM)Susan Higginbotham Wrote:  Brophy was naturalized in 1880. Father Bernardin Wiget was his sponsor. He also officiated at Brophy's wedding to Elizabeth Warren (not Watts) Tyler in 1866. (Brophy and his sons published a little book about Mrs. Brophy's genealogy.)

John Surratt, who died in 1916, outlived Brophy.

Edit: I hadn't seen the naturalization document when I posted. I do wonder if that 1855 date is correct, though, because Brophy was only 12 at the time, and couldn't have been a teacher yet. Are there certificates for his parents and siblings from that year?

I do stand by the "Warren" for his wife, as that's the name she's called by in the family genealogy, published during her lifetime by her husband and her sons, and in her own obituary.

Maybe the newspaper obit confused her father's first name (wasn't it 'Wat') with her maiden name. The address on the record I found is for his school. I'll see what I can find about Brophy's family naturalizations tonight, hopefully. I want to get the book you mentioned.

I have a photocopy of it I got from the Virginia Historical Society. It's rather dull, I'm afraid--next to nothing about Brophy himself, although it does have photographs of him and the missus in old age. I'll see if I can scan them.