My paternal great-grandfather, Michael Francis Gilfeather, was born in Roxbury, Massachusetts on February 26, 1886. His father Michael emigrated from County Fermanagh, Ireland in 1859. Michael Sr. worked as a stonemason in Boston. There he met and married Irish immigrant Catherine McGeever. She is listed as his second wife. I do not know the identity of Michael Sr.’s first wife, nor do I know if he had children in his first marriage.
When Michael Jr. was just eleven years old, his father died of tuberculosis. By the 1900 Census, Catherine was a widow, and her three teenaged children — Mary (18), James (16), and Michael (14) — were working as shoemakers.
They were likely employed at the Thomas G. Plant Shoe Factory in nearby Jamaica Plain. Built in the 1890s, the factory was one of New England’s largest shoe manufacturers. The factory offered amenities and benefits intended to foster worker loyalty and discourage union organizing. Yet in 1919, workers at the Plant factory went on strike for nearly eighteen months. I am learning that there was a lot of labor unrest after World War I.
Here is a fascinating lecture on the Thomas G. Plant Shoe Factory from the Jamaica Plain Historical Society that gives us some context.
Michael Jr.’s World War I draft registration card, dated September 12, 1918, lists his employer as the George E. Keith shoe manufacturing plant in East Weymouth. That means it was unlikely that he was involved in the 1919 strike. Census records through 1930 show that Michael Jr., his wife Bertha, and their five children continued to live in Roxbury while he remained employed in shoe factories. This suggests that he may have boarded near his workplace when he worked for George E. Keith.
Michael died on August 20, 1933, at the age of 47, and is buried in Roslindale, Massachusetts.
To my father’s father’s father–because you endured, I am here. I did not know your voice, your dreams, or your fears, yet I know that you lived.
Tracing North 