52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks: #25 Catherine Harvey, #26 Mary Harvey, #27 Bridget Harvey

Central Vermont Railroad, 1879, showing Northfield and St. Albans, Vermont

For years, I was stuck on Julia.

I had her parents’ names from her 1861 marriage record — Patrick and Joannah Harvey. Her death record gave me different names entirely — John and Mary Harvey. I searched for Harveys in County Clare and County Limerick and found nothing that fit. Had Julia come to America by herself? Had she come with family?

That’s where things sat until 2019, when I attended the Southern California Genealogy Jamboree in Burbank with my cousin. We had an extra day before visiting family in San Francisco, and I spent it going through my conference notes — something in them led me back to Julia Harvey.

I found a DNA match whose family tree placed her as a sister to Mary Harvey Buck of St. Albans, Vermont.

I was skeptical at first. But this cousin had documentation showing the parents as John Harvey and Johana Hartigan — too close to what I had to be a coincidence. And he had a record naming Julia as sponsor to one of Mary’s children, also named Julia, and an obituary showing that Julia had another sister, Catherine.

I was amazed.

A few weeks later, while digging through DNA matches to learn more, I found a cluster of matches connected to both Julia and her newfound sister Mary. It didn’t take long after that to find Bridget Harvey, another sister.

So in a short period, Julia went from being an isolate to having three sisters — Mary, with both documentation and DNA; Catherine, with documentation alone; and Bridget, with DNA alone. All four sisters were connected in some way to Northfield, Vermont. All four had husbands who worked for the railroad.

St. Albans Daily Messenger, January 16, 1912,
Page 7, Newspapers.com (https://www.newspapers.
com/article/st-albans-daily-messenger/
157079822/ : accessed September 26, 2026).

The DNA evidence was hard to ignore. Descendants of both Mary and Bridget match each other and match my mother’s DNA. Those same matches turn up again and again among other tested relatives on my mother’s side.

The documentary side kept building too. All four women — Julia, Bridget, Mary, and
Catherine — turn up as residents of Northfield, Vermont in the early 1860s. Mary, Bridget, and Catherine later resurface together in St. Albans, all connected to St. Mary’s Catholic Church there. Mary’s and Catherine’s families appear together in St. Albans records as pallbearers, witnesses, and more. Thomas Buck, Mary’s husband, was sponsor for Bridget’s daughter, Elizabeth Copps. Together, the documentation and DNA made a strong enough case to treat all four as sisters.

Children of Catherine Harvey Daley and Bridget Harvey Copps were baptized at St.Mary's Church
in St. Albans. Note that Thomas Buck sponsored Elisabeth Mary Copps. 

The Sisters in Ireland

I cannot find ship records or pinpoint when and from where the sisters came to the United States, but homes in northern Vermont make me wonder if they immigrated to Canada first. 

Unable to find the Harveys in Ireland, I searched for Hartigan instead and found a Judith Hartigan married to a Patrick Halvey, along with baptismal records for daughters Mary, Bridget, and Judith. These records indicate that three of the sisters were born in Parteen – a parish in County Clare right on the border of Limerick and in the Catholic Diocese of Limerick. The birth register began just before Catherine’s expected birth year of 1831. Further research showed that Judith, Johanna, and Julia were used interchangeably in Irish records of the period—variations arising from Gaelic, Latin, and English translations of the same name—and that Halvey was itself a variation of Harvey.

Catherine Harvey

Catherine Harvey was born, according to the date on her cemetery stone, in 1831
— early enough that she predates the surviving Parteen baptismal register. She arrived in America in 1853 and married fellow Irish immigrant John C. Daley in 1854, in Northfield, Vermont. The couple later settled in St. Albans, where John worked more than fifty years for the Central Vermont Railway.

I’ve found only six of the Daley children, but the 1900 census reports seven born, and 1910 reports eight—both agreeing that only two survived: Joseph T. and George P. George never married, and Joseph’s one child died at birth, leaving no descendants from this branch of the family. That explains why there are no DNA matches on Catherine’s line.

John died in 1907; Catherine outlived him by seven years and died in St. Albans in 1914. They are buried in the Holy Cross Cemetery in St. Albans.

Mary Harvey

Mary Harvey was baptized in Parteen on 29 March 1833, daughter of Patrick Halvey and
Judith Hartigan. She married Thomas Buck, a well-known train conductor, on 21 July 1854, and lived in Northfield, Vermont (and possibly Alburg, Vermont; and Coopersville, New York) before settling in St. Albans, where the family became part of St. Mary’s Catholic Church. Mary had eight children, with only three surviving in 1912. Her only daughter, Julia Mary Josephina Buck, was born in 1858. Mary’s sister, Julia Harvey, was a sponsor. 

Mary died on15 January 1912. Her husband died three years later. They are buried in the Holy Cross Cemetery in St. Albans.

Bridget Harvey

Bridget Harvey was baptized in Parteen on 21 February 1836, daughter of Patrick Halvey and Johanna Hartigan. She married Garrett Copps on 17 September 1860 in Northfield, Vermont, and the couple eventually settled in Utah. They had seven daughters. 

Records suggest Bridget and Garrett were living apart by the 1880s, and Garrett filed for divorce in 1890. Bridget was gone by 1919, named as deceased in her daughter Elizabeth’s obituary that year. 

A strong, growing cluster of DNA matches connects her descendants to Mary’s—and to mine, through Julia. Her life had more than enough in it for its own post, which is coming later.

Julia Harvey

Julia Harvey was baptized in Parteen on 3 March 1839, daughter of Patrick Halvey and Julia Hartigan — and my own direct ancestor. I’ve already written some of her story on this blog, and there’s still more to find. In short, Julia married JosephAlbert Glynn in 1861, raised four children between Vermont and Staten Island, and spent six years in the New York City Home for the Aged and Infirm, leaving the home in 1915. She lived with her daughter Carrie until her death in 1919.

Next

Patrick Halvey and Judith/Julia/Johanna Hartigan

If you would like to learn more about the families I research, follow my Facebook page, where I share each post and other genealogical finds.

Diana

© 2026

Sources

1860 U.S. census, Washington County, Vermont, population schedule, Northfield, p. 261, dwelling 2092, family 2123, John Daily household; digital image, Ancestry.com (https://www.ancestry.com : accessed 14 August 2026); citing NARA microfilm publication M653.

1875 New York state census, Richmond County, town of Southfield, first election district, p. 25, Albert Glynn household, lines 1–5; digital image, Ancestry.com, “New York, State Census, 1875” (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 15 July 2026).

1880 U.S. census, Box Elder County, Utah Territory, population schedule, Terrace, enumeration district (ED) 7, p. 117B, dwelling 20, family 16, Bridget Copps household; NARA microfilm publication T9, roll 1335; digital image, Ancestry.com, 1880 United States Federal Census (https://www.ancestry.com : accessed 26 September 2026).

1900 U.S. census, Franklin County, Vermont, population schedule, St. Albans city, Ward 6, enumeration district (ED) 116, sheet 3, dwelling 145, family 231, John Daly household; digital image, Ancestry.com (https://www.ancestry.com : accessed 14 August 2026); citing NARA microfilm publication T623.

1910 U.S. census, Franklin County, Vermont, population schedule, St. Albans city, Ward 6, enumeration district (ED) 113, sheet 2-A, Joseph T. Daley household (Catherine Daley, mother-in-law); digital image, Ancestry.com (https://www.ancestry.com : accessed 14 August 2026); citing NARA microfilm publication T624.

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Parteen Roman Catholic Parish (County Clare, Ireland), baptism register, 29 March 1833, Mary Halvey, daughter of Patt Halvey and Judith Hartigan, sponsor Mary Carty; digital image, Catholic Parish Registers at the NLI, microfilm 02410/03, p. 12, National Library of Ireland, Dublin, Ireland (https://registers.nli.ie/pages/vtls000634992_012 : accessed 11 August 2026).

 Parteen Roman Catholic Parish (County Clare, Ireland), baptism register, 21 February 1836, Bridget Halvey, daughter of Patt Halvey and Johanna Hartigan, sponsors John Harvey and Ellen Heily; digital image, Catholic Parish Registers at the NLI, microfilm 02410/03, p. 28, National Library of Ireland, Dublin, Ireland (https://registers.nli.ie/registers/vtls000634992?locale=en#page/28/mode/1up : accessed 14 August 2026). 

 Parteen Roman Catholic Parish (County Clare, Ireland), baptism register, 3 March 1839, Judit [transcribed elsewhere as “Jud”] Halvey, daughter of Patritii [Patrick] Halvey and Julia Hartigan, sponsors Michaela Halvey and Maria Flynn; digital image, Catholic Parish Registers at the NLI, microfilm 02410/03, p. 46, National Library of Ireland, Dublin, Ireland (https://registers.nli.ie/pages/vtls000634992_046 : accessed 11 August 2026). 

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Salt Lake Times (Salt Lake City, Utah), 18 November 1890, p. 5, col.3, Jarrett and Bridget Copps Divorce  (untitled article); digital image, OldNews.com (https://www.oldnews.com/en/record?record_id=record-12010-746274866&ocr_panel=1&referred=mh_record_page : accessed 9 July 2025).

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