The Donohues Married the Valentines

Here's a graphic trying to explain the overlap in the family trees of the Donohues and Valentines. If you click on it you can read it better.

Grandma's brother Lewis J. Valentine with his second wife

Theresa Donohue Valentine

Lew's first wife was Elizabeth Josephine Donohue, Theresa's younger sister.
Elizabeth died when she was about 28 in 1910.

Four years later Lew married Theresa who became stepmother as well as aunt to Elizabeth and Lew's four young children.

Lew and Anna (our Grandma) had a younger brother William, who also married one of the Donohue sisters.

Anna on left, William Valentine standing behind baby John and sister Bess.

This may be another portrait of William taken the same day, about 1895.

It might be Lewis at the same age but, if so, he and William look quite a bit alike.

It's from the photo collection of Lewis's grandson John Sheehan.

The Donohues lived across Clermont Avenue from Lewis and Elizabeth Valentine according to the 1910 census. In the Donohue household lived the girls' mother Mary A. McDermott Donohue who was 54, Theresa, 31 years of age and Jennie, 26. Younger sister Cecelia had been married to William Valentine for about 4 years and was living around the corner on Myrtle Street.

Mother Mary was probably a widow by 1910. Edward Donohue had been born in West Meath, Ireland about 1840 according to the 1880 Brooklyn census. His first wife had also been born in West Meath but she had died sometime between 1871 and 1877, as Edward had two sets of children with different mothers.

We can deduce a few things about the Donohue family from the two census records, 1880 and 1910. His second wife Mary A. McDermott Donohue was 24 years old in the 1880 census, also born in Ireland. When the census taker called she was the mother of two-year-old Theresa and two-month-old Edward. She was stepmother to at least three of the first Mrs. Donohue's daughters: Mary A., who was 13, Bridget 11 and Kate 9. Her brother William McDermott, who was 23, was also living with them, probably helping with the rent if not the children.

Mary McDermott Donohue went on to have Elizabeth, born in 1882, Jane (Jennie), born in 1884 and Cecelia, born in 1885.

Bambi's records indicate the first Mrs. Donohue was a Sweeney. Of her daughters: Mary didn't marry; Bridget married Jack Ward and had two children (Grace and Arnold.) Kate married Ebenezer Allen and had two daughters (Bernadine and Beatrice.)

We recently received an email from Liz looking for information about the Uncle Lew Valentine connection.
Bambi thinks Liz' grandmother would be Grace Ward and her great grandmother was Bridget (Donohue) Ward, who was the half sister of Elizabeth and Theresa (Donohue) Valentines, wives of Lewis J. Valentine, her grandmother's Uncle Lew.

June 1945

Theresa's daughter Miriam married John Sheehan

The church was probably full of Donohues and Valentines as well as Sheehans

Other Donohues did not marry Valentines. Bambi's records indicate Jane (Jennie) never married and Edward married a woman named Gertrude.
And other Valentines married into families other than the Donohues---McNallys and Curleys.
William and Cecelia Valentine had 12 children.
Lewis Valentine had 5 children in all.

Theresa on the left with three of Lewis's daughters

and her mother-in-law Elizabeth Daly Valentine in the center

at Lewis J. Valentine's swearing-in ceremony in 1934.

These girls all had double cousins in the William/Cecelia Valentine family.