The Heaphy's
Edward MacLysaght's, "The Surnames of Ireland, notes that the name Heaphy is interchangeable with Heavy and Heafy and is a surname found in all of the Irish provinces. In Gaelic it is spelled,O hEamhaigh. Our Heaphy's hail from the same County Cork town that the Lawton's are from - Killeagh.
Margaret Heaphy of Killeagh
On January 24, 1842, James Heaphy married Mary Keeffe, In Killeagh, County Cork. James Walsh and John Coakley stood up for the couple on their wedding day. The couple would have eight children. Our ancestor, Margaret Heaphy, who was born on October 18, 1857, was the next to the youngest of the eight children.
The Heaphy children were: James Heaphy, DOB: September 21, 1844; Michael, DOB: June of 1846; Daniel Heaphy, DOB: August 12, 1848; John, DOB: September 8, 1850; Honora, DOB: May 20, 1853; Michael, DOB: June 20, 1855; our ancestor, Margaret, DOB: October 18, 1857 (Michael Foley and Catherine Hegarty were Margaret's baptismal sponsors); and, the youngest child, Mary Heaphy, who was born in 1865.
The Heaphy Family resided in the Killeagh townlands of Burgess Lower and Mullarie. In 1849, 40 year old widower James Lawton, moved to Burgess Lower from the townland of Ballyquirk, with his four small children. James' 28 year old wife, Johanna, had just died. The Lawton children were, Edward (age 7), our ancestor, James (age 5), John (age 3) and Maurice (age 1). They resided with James' mother, Mary Lawton, of Burgess Lower.
It was in Burgess Lower that James and his family became acquainted with the Daniel Heaphy family who also resided there. Daniel's brother, James Heaphy, lived in the nearby Mullarie townland. James' daughter, Margaret, our ancestor, would be born in 1857. The association between the Lawton's and the Heaphy's became a significant one for James Lawton's oldest son, Edward and James Heaphy's daughter, Margaret.
Edward Lawton and Margaret Heaphy, both emigrated to America from County Cork. Edward arrived in America first. Eventually they both settled in Lynn, Massachusetts. Shoemaker Edward Lawton, age 35 and 24 year old Margaret Heaphy, married at St. Mary's Church in Lynn, Massachusetts, on January 18, 1881. The Rev. Patrick Strain, married the couple. Fr. Strain, rode horseback from Saugus to Lynn, to minister to the papist Irish who worked in Lynn's shoe factories. The Lawton's were among the thousands of Irish immigrant families who lived and worked in Lynn at the time.
Edward and Margaret (Heaphy) Lawton, had twelve (12) children. Their oldest, James, was born in Lynn in 1881. The remaining eleven (11) children, including our ancestor, Frederick Lawton (DOB: 10/17/1893), were all born in Quincy, Massachusetts. Two of the Lawton children died during childbirth.
After the turn of the century the large Lawton/Heaphy Family moved from their last Quincy address at 238 Main Street in Quincy, to Brockton, Massachusetts, then known as the 'Shoe Capital of the World'. They ultimately purchased a small home at 230 Winter Street, Brockton, on June 6, 1912. The home was sold in 1934 after the death of Edward Lawton. Their long presence at that address and the many well-known tragedies that the Lawton's had suffered while living at that address, caused the City of Brockton to name a side street off of Winter Street after the Lawton Family -- Lawton Avenue.
February 15, 1931
One of the tragedies suffered by the Lawton/Haephy Family occurred on February 15, 1931. It was a day that would change the fortunes of the entire Lawton/Heaphy Family forever. After a visit to the Lawton apartment on the first floor, at 50 Cherry Street, Mrs. William Cayan, of 74 Ellis Street, was escorted home by Fred Lawton, who intended to assist Mrs. Cayan's son with his arithmetic lesson. At 8:55pm, Fred Lawton was 100 feet north of Prospect Street, in Brockton, while crossing North Warren Avenue, from east to west. As Fred was assisting Mrs. Cayan from behind onto the west curbing, a speeding auto traveling southerly on North Warren Avenue without its headlights on, hit Fred hurling him into the air. The shouts of Mrs. Cayan brought neighbors hurrying from their houses. The police ambulance with Officers Delaney and Getchell hurried to the scene and placed Fred's mangled body onto a stretcher. He would die two hours later at the Brockton Hospital. Fred was 38 years of age. Fred Lawton, left behind a pregnant 33 year old widow and six children with no visible means of support.
The suffering of Margaret (Heaphy) Lawton
Margaret (Heaphy) Lawton, suffered many losses. Margaret lost two children in childbirth. By the time she had turned 43 at the turn of the century she had already lost 5 of her 12 children. Her seven year old son, John, was crushed to death in Quincy by a horse drawn stone cart. Her daughter, Mary Josephine, died at home in Quincy, when she was only two months of age. Her son, Richard, a shoemaker at the W.L. Douglas shoe factory, died at home of pneumonia on April 22, 1926, at only 28 years of age. Margaret, sat next to him praying as he took his last breath. Her son, Frederick, died violently in February of 1931 leaving seven children behind with no source of income. Her 32 year old son, Matthew, a shoeworker at Diamond Shoe in Brockton, was crushed to death on June 25, 1932, in a violent automobile accident not unlike his brother Fred's death just sixteen months earlier.
Just four months before her youngest child, Matthew's death, Margaret would die tragically from "multiple burns of 1st and 2nd degree and shock" when her clothing caught fire while lighting a gas lamp in her home. Margaret's gruesome death came just one year and one day after her son Fred's violent death.
The front page of the Brockton Enterprise on February 17, 1932, carried the headline: 'Mrs. Lawton Victim of Fire From Lamp'. The front page of the Enterprise story is set out below:
FLAMES BURN ALL CLOTHING OFF HER BODY. Survives Son, Hit-and Run Victim, by One Year. After having become a veritable human torch when her sleeve was ignited from the flame of a kerosene lamp, Mrs. Margaret Lawton, 79, died Tuesday evening at the Brockton Hospital from terrible burns, just one year and a day from the cruel death of her son, Frederick, at the hands of a hit and run auto driver. Death came mercifully to the aged woman at 10 Tuesday night.
Mary (Heaphy) Donovan
Margaret (Heaphy) Lawton's youngest sister, Mary Heaphy, who had followed her older sister to Lynn, was working as a domestic when she met laborer John Donovan, of Saugus, Massachusetts. They married at St. Mary's in Lynn, on July 2, 1882. The Rev. Eugene F.J. Egan, married them. John, was 21. Mary, was 18 years of age. Mary, would predecease her husband in 1933, at age 68. John Donovan, would die at age 74 in 1937. The couple had lived for many years at 114 Gardiner Street in Lynn. John,was working as a motorman on the Street Railway at the time of his death. They're both buried at St. Joseph's Cemetery in Lynn.
In 1982, Jim Lawton and his son, Mark, visited Ireland together. They traveled to their ancestral village of Killeagh, County Cork, where generations of Lawton's and Heaphy's came from. It's believed that it was the first visit by a Lawton/Heaphy descendent in well over 100 years.
While in Killeagh, the Lawton's were able to seek the assistance of local historian and life-long bachelor, Joe Barry, whose address was interestingly, 'Yellow Door', Main Street, Killeagh, County Cork. Joe Barry, was able to take the Lawton's to visit their ancestral Killeagh townlands of Ballyquirk, Garrenjames, Burgess Lower and Mullarie. They also visited the ancient Glenbower forest where the Lawton/Heaphy ancestors had gathered together for countless generations during Spring and Fall festivals, annual celebrations that are said to date back to pre-Christian times -- to the times of the Druids.
Before the Lawton's left their ancestral town of Killeagh in 1982, they were able to establish that Jim Lawton and Joe Barry were 3rd cousins through the Heaphy line. Joe Barry died in 1992, at the age of 78.
For a continuation of the merged histories of the Heaphy and Lawton Families, refer to The Lawton's.