Matthew Jude Barker

A photo of my great-great grandfather Lawrence Newell (1846-1940), Portland, Maine, working as a freight handler on the railroad, circa 1905. He was born in Ardrumkilla, Killower (Belclare), Tuam, County Galway, Ireland, son of James Newell (1802-1887), a farmer, and Bridget Byrne. He was the grandson of Laurence Newell, who died in 1841 in Castlehacket. Lawrence “Larry” Newell married Margaret Greaney (1856-1943), in 1880, in the Belclare church in Cummer Parish. Margaret was born in Ballintleva, Ardrumkilla, Belclare, daughter of Patrick Greaney (1821-1911), a shoemaker, and Mary Monahan (1835-1915), one of13 children. Lawrence and Margaret emigrated to Portland in May 1882, with their nine-month-old daughter Bridget “Delia” Raphael Newell Kelly (1881-1960), a stenographer who married Thomas F. Kelly and moved to New York City, where she became the manager of a first-class hotel called The Surry after her husband’s death. They had five more children, including my great-grandfather James Lawrence Newell (1883-1948), a brakeman on the Maine Central Railroad who wrote fictional Old West stories (although never published). Jim married Margaret Josephine Connell (1886-1962), born Catherine Anne Connell in South Boston, daughter of Philip Connell, a native of Hingham, MA, and son of Cork immigrants, and Catherine Doherty, a native of County Donegal. They had ten children, including my grandmother Frances Rita Newell Gillan (1916-1996). Margaret Connell Newell’s parents died when she was young, and she was adopted by a couple from Munjoy Hill, where she grew up: James H. Hermans, a native of Germany, and Johanna O’Connor, a native of County Limerick.

Lawrence and Margaret were fluent Irish Gaelic speakers, but only with siblings and close friends. Unfortunately, their children did not pick up much Irish, as they would not speak it around them. In the West End of Portland, they also had Mary Anne Camille Newell (1887-1975), Margaret Winnifred (1891-1950), Lawrence Robert Newell (1894-1990), and John Patrick Francis Newell (1885-1969), a decades-long Portland police officer, and Portland Chief of Police, 1943-1948. Lawrence and Margaret resided at 10 and 12 Tate Street, and 263 York Street (the homestead of Margaret’s brother Patrick Joseph Greaney (1864-1954), before they had a house built on Bedford Street in 1925. Margaret paid $10, 000 in cash to have it built; she squirreled away her husband’s earnings over the years. Larry finally retired that year, at age 79. It became 106 Bedford, the last house purchased by the University of Southern Maine on that street. It was in the family until 1976.