John Francis Harrigan : Short Biography

John Francis Harrigan was born 14 July 1868 in the townland of Ballinaboy in Co. Galway, just north of what is now Derrygimlagh Discovery Point. The terrain is a mosaic of rocks, grasslands, and peat bog. The Connemara Mountains sprawl across the horizon to the northeast. To the west, the Errislannan peninsula juts into the Atlantic ocean.

John was the son of Cornelius Harrigan and Barbara Conneely.

Cornelius Harrigan was a scripture reader and a teacher, employed by the Irish Church Missions (ICM). This Protestant society emerged from the Great Famine, seeing an opportunity to campaign in the most distressed regions of Ireland. They offered soup, clothing, and education—in some cases, even housing and jobs—to Catholics who agreed to convert to the Church of Ireland (COI). While many criticized the strings ICM attached to their relief efforts, there is no doubt thousands would have starved without their help. The ICM recruited educated Irish-speakers to read the Bible in Irish to the mostly illiterate locals. Connemara was a primary target, vulnerable because of the extreme crop failure there and the near absence of any other education available to the children.  It’s possible Cornelius Harrigan was not born in County Galway; both his given name and surname are fairly uncommon there. Y-DNA testing suggests the patrilineal line may come from County Cork.

Before Cornelius married Barbara, he was married to a woman named Catherine; they had at least four children baptized in the COI in west Galway in the 1850s. Barbara herself was married previously too. She and her husband Thomas Melville, of Scotland, had at least three children: girls who later emigrated to the U.S. There is no surviving record of when Cornelius married Barbara.

When John was born in the summer of 1868, the blended family lived in a one- or two-room mud cabin under a turf or thatched roof, typical of the area. They rented the house (but no land or garden) from the Irish Church Missions until about 1874.

The Irish Church Missions had begun to lose influence in this period. Western Galway opened national schools then, so families gained new alternatives in education. The founder of the ICM died in 1869; the same year the Church of Ireland was disestablished, i.e. no longer government-run. The COI expected parishioners to pick up the financial slack with monetary contributions, no doubt driving some to return to the Catholic Church. By 1875, the COI parish of Errislannan where Cornelius taught had dwindled to a population of only 68. Perhaps he lost his job, for by the spring of 1875, Cornelius had left the family, allegedly to go to America. That April, John’s little sister was born in the nearby town of Clifden. Perhaps Cornelius had hoped to find work and send for the family. Sadly, no further record has yet been found for him. It’s likely Barbara and the infant and seven-year-old John (and perhaps the older children) ended up the Clifden Workhouse. The baby, Barbara Harrigan, died there before her first birthday.

At the end of the 1870s, the potato crop failed again along the western seaboard and brought the Connemara region to the brink of famine. John’s half-sister Ellen Melville left Ireland and came to Detroit, Michigan in the U.S., where she married in 1879. Over the next three to four years, her younger sisters and her mother followed. It’s unclear why Barbara left her son behind, but he didn’t leave Ireland until 1885. That spring, John—a slightly built lad of 16 with light brown hair and blue-grey eyes—traveled on board the City of Richmond, apparently alone, from Cork to New York City. The passenger list indicates he had been residing in Antrim.

John promptly made his way to Detroit and moved in with his half-sister Jennie and her husband, Cecil Willoughby. Although John’s mother could not read or write, and his scholarly father had left when John was just six or seven years old, John had managed to get a good education. While many immigrants in the city became laborers, John found employment as a clerk at the Fulton Iron and Engine Works. He remained in that industry the rest of his life.

John became a naturalized citizen of the United States in 1892, at the age of 23. He was living in a boarding house at the time, in the Corktown neighborhood of Detroit, where many Irish immigrants had settled. Two years later, at the nearby Roman Catholic Holy Trinity Church, he married 23-year-old Mary Flynn. Mary was a telephone operator who had been born in Ontario Canada to Irish immigrant parents James Flynn and Kate Lawlor.  

A year after John and Mary were wed, their first son, John Lawlor Harrigan, was born (see photo). By 1897, John [Sr.] was promoted to a position as a [sales] agent and a representative of railroad supply companies. The family moved out of Corktown and bought a house in the more upscale Piety Hill neighborhood of Detroit. From there, John’s career took off. In 1902, he submitted a patent application (no. 727941) for a new invention: “particularly to that class of journal-bearings designed for use with car and locomotive axles; and the object of the invention is to provide a more simple, cheap, and effective construction of journal-bearing than any now upon the market.” That year, his company reorganized and tweaked its name, and John F. Harrigan, just 34 years of age, became second vice president. The patent was approved 12 May 1903, and before year’s end, John F. Harrigan was named president of the National Fulton Brass Manufacturing Company.

By 1908, John and Mary had four young children (John, Millard, Edward, and Mary). John vowed to take the family to Ireland that summer—and unlike his last trip across the Atlantic as a boy of 16, this time they traveled in first class.

They lived a prosperous life in Detroit, and later in the suburb of Grosse Pointe Farms, with a chauffeur and a live-in servant. When World War I came, the two older boys enlisted, but the war ended before they were called overseas. But the family’s good fortunes didn’t last.

The firstborn son, John Lawlor Harrigan, had a drinking problem and in 1921, he was convicted of involuntary manslaughter for a fatal accident caused by driving while intoxicated. The following months were spent trying to appeal the court’s decision and the stress may have taken a toll on his father’s blood pressure. In 1922, not long after the Michigan Supreme Court reversed his son’s conviction, John Francis Harrigan died of a stroke at the age of 54.

In his will, he left his estate in trust to care for his mother Barbara, his sister Jennie, his widow Mary, and his four children. By the 1930s and the Great Depression, the family fortunes were gone. None of the family owned a home; the children (now adults) were employed as a car salesman, insurance broker, and factory worker.

John Francis Harrigan had overcome a challenging childhood—his father left when he was about six or seven, the family went to the poorhouse, and his mother apparently left him behind when she emigrated to the U.S. when John was between 12 and 14 years old. Traveling alone, he reunited with his mother and sisters in Detroit when he was 16, worked steadily, patented an invention, and ended up a prosperous member of society, president of the company, with a wife and four healthy children he raised in the Catholic Church. He had much to be proud of.

John Francis Harrigan was laid to rest under a simple grave marker in Mt. Olivet Cemetery in Detroit Michigan. His wife, mother, two sons and their wives are buried alongside him.