Hayes + Tuite

Mary Hayes married Edward Tuite in Limerick on February 20, 1871. At the time of the marriage, Edward listed his address as Roxboro Road (also spelled Roxborough). The couple had at least fourteen children together, of which it is known that five died as children. Based on the birth records of the children, the family moved a few times. In 1873 they lived on Carey’s Road. From around 1876 until 1890, they lived on Roxboro Road (possibly at a couple different houses). And by 1891, they had moved to John’s Square.

Mary was the daughter of a baker named John Hayes and his wife Mary Morgan who lived in the Garvey’s Range neighborhood of Limerick at the time of her birth. It is not known when John Hayes died, but he was not listed in the 1901 census with his wife and granddaughter. Mary Morgan died in 1909 from cardiac failure. It is her death certificate, coupled with the census of 1901, which provides the link to Mary Hayes and the Tuite family.

Edward was the son of a coach trimmer named John Tuite and his wife Julia Hogan. Both John and his wife were living with their son, Thomas, at 31 Roxboro Road at the time of their deaths. It is not known if this home belonged to them or to Thomas.  

Edward and his brother, Michael, were coach upholsterers/trimmers. Another brother, Thomas, worked for the Great Southern and Western Railway as a clerk. GS&WR was one of the main railway operations in Ireland in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The company was the largest of Ireland's "Big Four" railway operators, buying up smaller operations and expanding its route mileage for much of its existence. The first railway in Ireland opened in 1834. At its peak in 1920, Ireland had 3,480 miles of railway, now only about one third of this remains.

Both Mary and Edward died at the age of 42. Mary died first, on May 25, 1893 of a cerebral apoplexy (stroke) at Limerick Union Workhouse. A workhouse was a public facility where, often in return for board and lodging, employment was provided to the destitute. The workhouse in Limerick was not only an asylum for paupers and vagrants, but also a nursery school for abandoned children and a hospital. It is not clear why Mary was there when she suffered the stroke or whether she was brought there afterwards. Mary is buried at Mount St. Lawrence Cemetery (her age at death is listed as 40 on the register). Edward died on January 9, 1989 of a malignant tumor in his neck that he had suffered from for a year. Edward died at Barrington’s Hospital and is buried at Mount St. Lawrence Cemetery (lot 145-Na).

Upon Edward’s death, it is not known where all of the nine living children went. As of the 1901 census, Annie and Thomas were living with their Uncle Thomas at 31 Roxboro Road. Daniel, Edward and Mary were sharing a house at 48 Roxboro Road. And, finally, the youngest daughter, Elizabeth, was living with her maternal grandmother, Mary Hayes, in St. John’s Square.

Elizabeth became a nun when she was about 16 years old, and became known as Sister Zita. By 1911 she had moved to Brentford in Middlesex, England and was working at the Sisters of Charity convent. Later she lived in a convent in Civitavecchia, Italy, located about 50 miles west-north-west of Rome. Her golden 50-year jubilee as a nun was around 1961. She came to Ireland in the 1950's for a visit. She looked after soldiers that were injured.

Julia married James Barry, an electrician, in 1898. They moved to South Africa (Transvaal) in the early 1900s. A ship list from 1907 shows that she sailed from Durban to South Hampton in 1907 with 4 children: George (c. 1901 in Ireland), Patrick (c. 1903 in Ireland), Josephine (c. 1904 in Transvaal), and Monica (c. 1906 in Transvaal). George Barry married a woman named Kathleen, and had a son named Fr. Thomas Barry who was ordained in Kimberley, South Africa in 1952.

There is a listing in the 1911 census for a John Tuite with the same age as Edward and Mary’s son, but he lists his birthplace as Dublin City. [Is it possible that Edward and Mary lived in Dublin for a short time after they married?]  It is known, however, that John Tuite married Bridget Quinlivan in 1893 in Limerick.

By 1911, Daniel and Edward had moved to Dublin and were living together along with Daniel’s wife, Annie Lee (married 1901 in Limerick), and children. They were both working as coach trimmers. An article published on February 24, 1923 in the Irish Times gives a colorful glimpse into the life of Edward Tuite. Apparently he was knocked down by a taxi-cab while pushing a hand cart down the street. He went to the hospital, stayed there for 15 minutes, and then decided to go to the local bar. While at the bar, he ran into the taxi driver.  The driver treated him to a glass of whiskey as compensation for the incident. It seems all was fine until Edward brought a lawsuit against the taxi driver saying that he was out of work for a month due to his injuries. As early example of false personal injury cases apparently! Edward was awarded 10 pounds for his damages (about US$ 640).

Many of the Tuites and Minihans are buried at Mount St. Lawrence Cemetery. The graveyard has been the primary place of burial in Limerick City for all strata of society since its opening in 1849. Due to the cholera epidemics in the 1830’s and the Great Famine in the 1840’s, a new burial ground was badly needed in Limerick. Kileely graveyard had become overused and unsanitary. According to the Burial Register, over 70,000 individuals were interred in Mount St. Lawrence between 1855 and 2009, though the actual number is believed to be higher. The more prominent families tended to be buried along the central path close to the church and the highest and most ornate headstones are generally located to the left and right of this central nave. The poorest sections known as the Poor Squares are located at the extreme top of the burial grounds in the left hand corner and in the bottom of the graveyard in the right hand corner. There is a location system used to identify graves. Each entry in the cemetery record is handwritten and records the name of the person, the date of burial, the location of the grave (noted here when legible), the age of the deceased and the last residence.

Edward’s brothers were buried at Mount St. Lawrence as well. Michael died in 1913 at the age of 52. At that time, he was living at 12 Wolfe Tone Terrace. Thomas (125-U) died at home at 31 Roxboro Road in January 1931.

The house at 31 Roxboro Road was located in the parish of St Michael's, which was one of the five original parishes in Limerick City. It is not known when Thomas moved to this house (Edward listed Roxboro Road as his residence on his marriage certificate in 1871, but did not provide the street number). Many street numbers on Roxboro Road are listed for the broader Tuite family. It is not known if this is a mistake in the various records or if the members of the family lived in multiple houses along the same street. As of the 1885 Register of Electors, there are an Edward, Daniel, John, and Michael Tuite all listed as residing on Roxboro Road. According to property tax records, Thomas Tuite leased the house at least from 1911 until 1951 (even though he died in 1931). In the property tax book for the period 1953-1971, Thomas Tuite is listed, but then crossed out and replaced by “vacant,” and then by “Edward Tuite.”

Family lore is that there is a connection on the Hayes branch to the famous painter, Michael Angelo Hayes (1820-1877) who was born in Waterford. He specialized in horses and military scenes. In James Joyce’s Ulysses, he was listed as one of the “many Irish heroes and heroines of antiquity,” located in the list between William Tell and Muhammad! He married Ellen McSwiney (1822-1881), a sister of Peter Paul McSwiney of Sackville Street who appointed him his secretary when he was Lord Mayor of Dublin. Michael Angelo’s work “Sackville Street,” which hangs in the National Gallery of Ireland, depicts McSwiney Delaney & Company’s “Palatial Mart,” a large, ornamented Victorian department store built in the center of Sackville Street in 1853. While examining a tank on the top of his house at No. 4 Salem Place on December 31, 1877, he fell in and drowned.  It was thought that Mary Hayes was Michael Angelo’s daughter and that she met Edward Tuite in Dublin, wed, settled in County Tipperary, and then later moved to Limerick. However, the discovery of Mary and Edward’s marriage certificate for Limerick City, which listed Mary’s father as a baker named John, dispelled this story. Still, there is a possibility that a less direct family link exists.