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, son of James Newell (1802-1887) and Bridget Byrne. He married Margaret Greaney (1856-1943), in 1880, in Cummer Parish. Margaret was born in Ballintleva, Ardrumkilla, daughter of Patrick Greaney (1821-1911), a shoemaker, and Mary Monahan (1835-1915). They emigrated to Portland in May 1882, with their nine-month-old daughter Bridget “Delia” Raphael Newell (1881-1960). 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).

Lawrence and Margaret 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.