Notes on Our Genealogy

Thomas Steven Quaid and Mary O'Day were my great grandparents. They're also the last truly Irish couple in my family history. Even though they were married in Chicago. And even though she was, in fact, Canadian. Mary O'Day and Thomas Quaid, with oldest children Rose Marie and Charles. Probably taken in 1902. A long time ago I met an Irish woman, and when I said that I was Irish she gently drew a distinction between the phrase "I'm Irish" meaning that "I have some Irish ancestry", and meaning that "I am actually, you know, from Ireland." She was Irish; I just had an Irish name. I suppose Thomas and Mary embodied the transition between those two senses of the phrase for our family. Thomas in Limerick Thomas Quaid was born in Limerick on December 15th, 1865 to Charles Quaid and Mary Nealon. Charles grew up on a farm in nearby Ballymacamore  and Charles and Mary's first child had been baptized there, but a few years before Thomas was born t