Happy Birthday Lady Liberty
And I have a story to tell
America’s Goddess of Democracy, Lady liberty, is celebrating an anniversary today, and I have a story to tell. The first Fitzsimmons to arrive in America was my father’s great grandfather, Simon Fitzsimmons, an impoverished farmer born in the town of Roscommon, which is in the heart of Ireland.
Coincidentally, Hugh O'Conor, the mercenary serving with the Spaniards in the 17th century who founded Tucson is from Roscommon.
Both men left for similar reasons, nearly a century apart, to escape poverty and hopelessness. Hugh O'Conor fled to Spain to join the Spanish Army which brought him to Mexico and into this valley.
Simon Fitzsimmons fled to America.
I have visited Roscommon, a modest working class farming community, that is surrounded by tiny villages, where one can find ancient graveyards filled with white stone Celtic crosses, taverns packed with men singing laments and endless fields of emerald green farmland hemmed in by ancient stone walls.
Simon arrived in 1861 and somehow managed to evade the draft into the Union army. I am assuming he found work here and there, but not enough to stay off hunger or escape the gangs of New York. In 1870 he was arrested for armed robbery and sentenced to 10-years in Sing Sing prison, a notoriously brutal correctional facility, which had been built in 1824. He served his time and was released in 1880 and immediately set to work as a construction worker using the skills he had learned in prison. Within a few years he had been so successful as a craftsman he had hired other gentleman to work with him, and the family legend has it that he purchased a home in the west end of Brooklyn that afforded him a view of New York harbor. It is said he could walk from his home to the promenade and watch as the Statue of Liberty Was assembled across the waters and completed on this day, October 28th, in 1886.
We all have such stories in our histories. Please post yours below in the comments:
Today Simon’s former home is worth $3.8 million. The next generation fell into abject poverty. And so it went, poverty, success, poverty and here I am today enjoying the blessings of Liberty every day of my fortunate life. I nurse these stories in my heart as dearly as I cherish our glorious Mother of Exiles.
Happy Birthday, Lady Liberty.
Wow, I just never realized that our backgrounds are somewhat similar, in the incarceration area. My great, great grandfather in Sweden was found guilty of murder in 1850. He took exception to someone's insult during a drinking bout and pummeled the poor fellow. Just before he faced the gallows he was granted a reprieve and sentenced to life at the Varberg Fortress Prison...perhaps worse than Sing Sing. However, after ten years, he was granted a parole for good behavior. Christoffer Abrahamson lived an exemplary life thereafter and his grandson, my grandfather, emigrated to America in the early 1900's. The next of our family to be incarcerated was me, as a juvenile, who spent one night at Mrs. Higgins in Tucson in 1958. I have also lived an exemplary life since then. Well, except every once in a while I am found in the company of left wing anarchists. After all, nobody is perfect.
One of my great grandfather's a Paulding lent money to the government at the time of the Revolutionary War for use by the leaders in said war. He was never repaid and sent to debtors prison. No small sacrifice to his family. His Son, James Kirke Paulding never forgave the issue. James Kirke became somewhat influential in New York politics and was appointed Sec. of the Navy under Van Buren. He was part of the Salmugundi gang making fun of the politics in New York City.