Sister Anna Bridget

My great-grandfather Thomas Steven Quaid was the first of his siblings to emigrate to the United States, but he wasn’t the last. Ultimately four of the ten Quaid kids would settle in the States. The second sibling to make the move was Anna Bridget Quaid, Thomas’ younger sister. This is what I know about her story.

Anna Bridget Quaid Rigdon, 1947

Limerick

Anna was born in Limerick on September 20, 1876 to Charles Quaid and Mary Nealon. According to the birth registration, the family was living on Athlunkard Street and Charles was a “provision man”. I’m not sure what that means. Elsewhere he was described as a “store man” and a “clerk” around that time, so perhaps he worked in a shop.

The Quaid's neighborhood around 1880

A few years later, Charles took a job as a pig buyer with Matterson’s, and the family moved to what was then 33 Nelson Street, across the street from the train station. Anna attended the nearby Presentation School, which was founded and operated by The Sisters of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Next door was the Christian Brothers School on Sexton Avenue, which Anna’s brothers attended.

Possibly not representative

Nuns in education don’t always have the best reputation, but it’s worth remembering that at this point in the late 19th century many of my ancestors in the United States and my wife’s ancestors in England were illiterate. In contrast, these schools had been educating the working-class children of Limerick and elsewhere for generations. All of the younger Quaid kids’ lives were shaped by their education in science and the arts.

Off to America

Possibly Anna, headed for Bridgeport in 1895

Anna may have initially come to the United States in 1895 to take a job as a house servant in Bridgeport, Connecticut, just down the coast from where I now live. She’s one of a whole shipload of young women destined for domestic service somewhere along the Atlantic Coast. Now this may not actually have been our Anna, since she’s listed here as Bridget, her middle name. In fact she’s one of eight Bridgets. But as we’ll see Anna definitely spent time in Bridgeport, so it may have been her.

"Those destined for St. Louis are going to enter St. Joseph's Convent
in that place". Immigration forms, 1898.

The next thing we know, Anna was once again entering the US from Ireland. She arrived in Philadelphia on March 9, 1898 on the S.S. Pennland, another ship whose passengers were mostly young Irish women. Some of the women were headed to Troy, and others for St. Louis. There is a note written across all entries on the manifest that reads “Those destined to Troy are going to enter St. Joseph’s Convent of that place”, and then uses ditto marks to repeat the same for St. Louis. Anna was destined for St. Louis.

So was Anna entering the convent, or just attending the school? She was definitely studying nursing, so at least the latter is accurate. Two of Anna’s daughters pursued nursing while joining a convent, but ultimately I don’t know whether Anna was headed in that direction.

The 1900 Census found Anna an “inmate” of St. Joseph’s Academy in St. Louis. The entries for St. Joseph’s span three pages. The first entry, the “head of household”, was 71-year-old Philomena Guthrie, better known as the Reverend Mother General Agatha, the long-time head of The Sisters of St. Joseph in the United States. The relationship of the next 50 women to the head of household was “Sister”, and the occupation of each was “Teacher”. On the second page the relationship was left blank, but the occupation was once again “Teacher”. Does that mean these women weren’t sisters? Probably not -- the “color” and “sex” columns were also left blank. Presumably the enumerator meant to fill them all in later. After listing about 130 women, there were three men: a day laborer, a gardener, and a baker.

The next record I have of Anna Quaid comes in 1908 when she was working at Bridgeport Hospital as a nurse, and also living there. Anna’s younger sister Esther had recently married and moved to Bridgeport, so it’s easy to imagine Aunt Anna stopping by to visit Esther and her young son.

Meanwhile, Back in Missouri

In Sainte Genevieve, a little town 60 miles south of St. Louis, something terrible happened. Josephine Rigdon, a 34-year-old mother of a young child, was painting her floor when the paint or oil she was using somehow ignited. She was killed instantly.

The victim’s husband was Joseph Aiken Rigdon, the 36-year-old proprietor of a laundry business. Their 8-year-old daughter Irma Rigdon was apparently not involved in the tragedy.

Joseph and Anna Quaid Rigdon

Two years later, Joseph and Anna were married. From the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, June 29, 1909:

Miss Anna Quaide of Limerick, Ireland, daughter of Mrs. Charles Quaide, and Joseph Rigden of Ste. Genevieve, Mo., were married Monday morning at St. Ann’s Church by the Rev. Father McDonald. The bride recently returned to St. Louis from Bridgeport, Conn.

Thursday the bridge-to-be was surprised by a cut-glass and silver shower given by Mrs. Louise Ellison of 4106 Page boulevard. Those present were Mrs. Charles E. Ellison, Mrs. J. Reis, Miss Emma Ribori and little Charlie and Marie Eillison.

The bride wore a traveling suit of gray, with a black picture hat, and was attended by Miss Emma Ribori.

Mr. Rigdon was attended by Walter Kochler of Jefferson avenue. Mr. And Mrs. Rigdon will make their home in Ste. Genevieve, Mo.

In the 1910 Census, the new couple was indeed living in Ste. Genevieve, and had been joined by their first child together. A 1912 newspaper item notes that the family “of Sikeston” was traveling 100 miles to Farmington in their automobile. From that we learn that the laundry business was doing well enough to afford a car, and that the family has moved.

In 1913, Anna’s younger sister Esther Quaid O’Neill died in Bridgeport. Esther had been a celebrated singer before her marriage, touring Europe and America. When the famous Irish tenor John McCormack performed in St. Louis in 1920, Anna relayed Esther’s role in McCormack’s discovery. Apparently Esther was on tour in Ireland in about 1900 when she heard about McCormack's great abilities, so she sought him out and listened to him sing. She was so impressed that she helped guide him toward further musical education. Anna hoped to visit with McCormack while he was in St. Louis, but it is not reported whether she succeeded.

Cape Girardeau

In 1915 the family moved again, this time to Cape Girardeau. Perhaps they needed a larger house, because by the time of the 1920 Census, young Irma had been joined by five half-siblings. This census asked about your “Mother tongue”, and I think it’s interesting that Anna answered Irish, just like her two siblings in the United States at the time.

In 1922, Irma Rigdon entered the order of The Sisters of Loretto. She adopted the name Sister Mary Placidus and took her final vows in 1926. She then continued her education at DePaul, and would go on to get her master’s in English at Notre Dame. She had a long career of teaching and tutoring across the United States, and spent her last years in the Sisters of Loretto house in Kentucky. She died in 2003 at the age of 103.

In the 1930 Census the family was still in Cape Girardeau. Irma had moved on but all seven of the other children were still at home. Most of them were still in school, but eldest son Charles was working in the laundry.

News you can use, 1912

In this period local papers reported on mundane personal news, filling the role that Facebook does today. For the Rigdons, that paper was the Cape Girardeau Southeast Missourian. Through these little snippets we learn that my great-grandfather Thomas S. Quaid visited the Rigdons in 1926 with his three youngest children in tow. We also learn that in 1933, Anna and her son Joseph traveled to Chicago to be with Thomas after his gallstone surgery went badly, and were there when he died. It's gratifying to know that they kept in touch.

The 1940 Census found Joseph and Anna living with four children. Eldest son Charles had married and moved off on his own, 22-year-old daughter Anna was studying nursing in St. Louis, and Edward was in Muskogee, Oklahoma, either working or studying at the Spartan Aeronautics School.

In 1942, Anna’s younger brother John P. Quaid moved his family from Honolulu to Cape Girardeau, having experienced the Pearl Harbor attack too close for comfort. John and family moved to San Jose shortly afterward, however.

In 1949, Joseph and Anna’s daughter Margaret Mary Rigdon was a novice at the Sisters of Loretto convent in Kentucky. She was with them for nine years, and after leaving studied nursing in Ohio. Ultimately took orders with the Sisters of the Precious Blood, initially as Sister Mary Bertrand but later returning to her birth name. She had a long career as a nurse, including at the Maria Joseph Center in Dayton, Ohio. Ultimately she returned there as a patient, and died in 2015 at the age of 94.

Anna Bridget Quaid Rigdon died September 23, 1949, just five days short of her 73rd birthday. She was the last of the American Quaid siblings, since John had died a few years earlier. In fact among all her siblings there was just one survivor, her sister Catherine Quaid St. George, the Limerick pub owner.

Joseph Rigdon died four years later. He was unable to sign his will, presumably due to infirmity rather than illiteracy. He was represented in that matter by local lawyer Rush H. Limbaugh, whose son of the same name was then two years old and at the peak of his intellectual development.

There's a lot more to the the story of Anna Rigdon that I wish I knew. What brought her to Bridgeport? Was she considering a life in a religious order? Was her marriage a Sound of Music situation, as some have suggested? For now, this will have to do.