Bridget Harvey Copps: Tracing Her Elusive Life from Ireland to Vermont and Utah

My grandmother said that her mother, Julia Harvey, was from Limerick. However, the place names in the records can be confusing. The microfilm containing the baptismal records for Julia and her sisters Mary and Bridget is labeled “Parteen, Limerick City - Diocese of Limerick | County of Clare, Limerick - also listed under variant forms of the parish name: Parteen and Meelick Parish.”

Julia’s marriage record states that her mother was from Clare and her father from Limerick. Her baptismal record states that her parents lived in Quinpool, which is in County Clare. While in Ireland, I looked for Quinpool near Parteen, County Clare. The closest we came was the entrance gates to Quinville House in Quinpool. Just minutes after driving past the house, we crossed into County Limerick, and within a few more minutes we were in Limerick City. That short drive helped me understand how close these places were—and why the family’s references to Clare and Limerick might not be contradictory.

Early Life in Ireland

Bridget Harvey was born in Ireland. Three census records indicate that she was born between 1832 and 1845. 

A Bridget Halvey, daughter of Patrick Halvey and Johanna Hartigan, was baptized on 21 February 1836 in Parteen, County Clare, Ireland. The record names John Halvey and Ellen Hehir as her sponsors. In American records, the family’s Halvey surname usually appears as Harvey. This Bridget Halvey was a sister of my second great-grandmother, Julia Harvey, who was also baptized in Parteen.

I believe that this Bridget, my second great-grandmother's sister, is the same Bridget Harvey who married Garrett Copps in Vermont in 1860, although I cannot yet prove it. The baptism is an important part of a larger body of evidence connecting the two, discussed below.

Marriage and Family in Vermont

By 1860, Bridget was living in Northfield, Washington County, Vermont, where she was enumerated as a servant. On 17 September 1860, she married Garrett Copps.

Bridget was not alone in Northfield. Julia, Mary, and Catherine Harvey also appear there as residents in the early 1860s. I wrote about the sisters and their Northfield connections in an earlier post, 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks: #25 Catherine Harvey, #26 Mary Harvey, #27 Bridget Harvey.

Their marriage record does not name Bridget’s parents. Bernard Gorman and Mary Ann Burk served as witnesses. I suspect that Mary Ann Burk was actually Mary Ann Harvey Buck, Bridget’s sister. The handwritten record clearly reads Burk, but other records also spell the Buck surname as Burk and Burke.

Bridget and Garrett began their married life in Vermont. Their daughter Mary was born in Northfield on 6 July 1861, followed by Julia Frances in 1865, Elizabeth in 1867, and Alice in 1869. The three younger girls were born in St. Albans. The family attended St. Mary’s Church in St. Albans, as did Bridget’s possible sisters Mary and Catherine and their families.

A Move West

By 1870, Bridget and Garrett had moved west to Utah Territory and were living at Terrace in Box Elder County. After the move, at least two more daughters were born, including Sarah, the last known child, in 1875.

Bridget’s name continues to appear in Utah records into the 1880s. She was listed with several of her daughters in the 1880 census, appeared on a Salt Lake City voter registration list in 1882, and was described by Garrett in an 1884 court document as living with him and their minor daughters.

A Troubled Marriage

Bridget and Garrett’s marriage was clearly troubled, and Garrett’s violence was well known.

In January 1880, the Daily Ogden Junction reported that Garrett, then running a saloon at Terrace, struck a customer across the bridge of the nose with a knife during a dispute over money, then took the man’s overcoat by force. The paper called him “a notorious and rather unpopular character.” Two months later, Garrett was shot at Terrace. He claimed that a mob of armed men had come to his saloon to hang him, but the Ogden Semi-Weekly Junction reported his account with obvious caution, noting that he had been drinking very hard and that “it is said that he has lately treated his family very badly.” When the census taker came through a few months later, Bridget and the girls were living apart from him.

His behavior did not change after the family’s years in Terrace. In July 1891, Garrett was working as a watchman at the Frederick tunnel in the mining town of Alta when he ambushed a neighbor, Mrs. Watson, with a six-shooter, apparently mistaking her for another woman. He was placed under a $1,000 bond to keep the peace. The Salt Lake Times described him as “a dangerous character” who had once nearly beheaded a man named Pickett with a Bowie knife. The same article gives the only account I have found of what Garrett did to Bridget: “His wife abandoned him after his attempt on her life and after her fingers had been nearly severed from her hand.”

In 1890, Garrett filed for divorce, claiming that Bridget had abandoned him in 1888. Newspaper reports indicate that Bridget did not appear in court. Garrett told the court that she had left him; the 1891 newspaper account suggests she had every reason to.

Bridget’s whereabouts may have been uncertain for a decade before the divorce. In the 1880s, she appears only as a name on paper: a census entry, a voter registration list, and a statement made by Garrett. None of these records came from Bridget herself, and none confirms that she was actually there.

What Happened to Bridget?

More than half of online family trees on Ancestry.com say Bridget died in 1879, but I have found no source for that date. The 1880 census, the 1882 voter registration list, and Garrett’s 1884 court statement suggest that she was still alive in the early 1880s, but as noted above, none of them establishes it beyond doubt.

What happened to Bridget remains unknown. She may have left Garrett and gone to live with one of her daughters. She may have moved elsewhere and disappeared from the records I have searched. It is also possible that she died earlier than the later records suggest.

What can be established is that Bridget was deceased by 1919. When her daughter Elizabeth died on 9 April 1919, Elizabeth's obituary identified Bridget as deceased. Her date and place of death remain unknown.

Connecting Bridget to the Parteen Family

In addition to Bridget, the Parteen parish records list Julia and Mary as daughters of Patrick Halvey and Johanna Hartigan. Julia was my second-great-grandmother. Catherine, believed to be another daughter of the couple, was born before the surviving parish records begin. Although I have not found her baptismal record, a later obituary identified her as Mary's sister.

No record yet found directly connects the Bridget Halvey baptized in Parteen with the Bridget Harvey who married Garrett Copps in Vermont in 1860. Several pieces of evidence, however, point in that direction.

Bridget was born in Ireland at about the same time as the Bridget baptized in Parteen, and she later lived in places associated with the known Harvey family. In St. Albans, Bridget and her family attended the same Catholic church as Mary Harvey Buck, Catherine Harvey Daley, and their families. Thomas Buck, Mary’s husband, served as sponsor to Bridget’s daughter, Elizabeth; Garrett Copps sponsored Mary and Thomas Buck’s son, Francis; and Bridget sponsored Mary and Thomas Buck’s son, John.

DNA adds another layer of evidence. Other descendants of Julia Harvey and I have multiple DNA matches with descendants of Garrett Copps and Bridget Harvey. Members of the Buck family also match some of these same Copps descendants, creating an overlapping pattern among the Harvey, Buck, and Copps families. The number of these matches continues to increase. Catherine’s Daley line cannot provide another group of descendants for comparison: she had no grandchildren, so she left no descendants through whom this relationship could be tested.

None of these clues by itself proves that the Bridget baptized in Parteen was the woman who married Garrett Copps. Taken together, however, the baptismal record, common locations, church and family associations, and repeated DNA matches across several descendants provide a strong case that they were the same person and that Bridget was another daughter of Patrick Halvey and Johanna Hartigan.

Bridget remains one of this family’s more elusive members. The evidence connecting her to the Parteen Harveys continues to grow, but questions about the final years of her life remain unanswered.

If you are a descendant of Garrett and Bridget Copps, or have records or family stories about Bridget’s life in Utah, I would love to hear from you.

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.

1870 U.S. census, Box Elder County, Utah Territory, Terrace Station, population schedule, p. 38A (stamped), dwelling 4, family 4, Garrett Copps household, Alice Copps, age 1, line 15; digital image, Ancestry (https://www.ancestry.com : accessed 3 August 2025); citing NARA microfilm publication M593, roll 1610.

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).

AncestryDNA, “DNA Matches,” match list for cousin (JT), test administered by JT, results viewed by Diana Bryan Quinn through shared access, accessed 26 October 2026; private data, screenshots held by Diana Bryan Quinn.

AncestryDNA, “DNA Matches,” match lists for four testers: my mother, my aunt, my brother, and myself; tests administered by Diana Bryan Quinn; accessed 26 October 2026; private data; screenshots held by Diana Bryan Quinn.

“Ancestry Public Member Trees,” database, Ancestry ( https://www.ancestry.com : accessed [date]), search for Bridget Harvey, born 1839, spouse Garrett Copps; 27 of the 51 trees found give a death year of 1879, and others give 1880 or 1881.

“Born,” Sacramento Daily Record (Sacramento, California), 22 March 1871, p. 3, col. [#], birth of a daughter to the wife of Garrett Copps at Terrace, Utah; digital image, GenealogyBank ( https://www.genealogybank.com : accessed 6 August 2025).

Diana Quinn, photographs taken while crossing the boundary between County Clare and County Limerick, Ireland, 7 September 2022; privately held by Diana Quinn.

Oakland Tribune, April 10, 1919, Page 19. via Newspapers.com (https://www.newspapers.com/article/oakland-tribune-elizabeth-copps-obitua/178354513/ : accessed September 26, 2026), clip page for Elizabeth Copps - obituary by user Diana Quinn.

Northfield, Vermont, birth card for Mary Copps, born 6 July 1861, daughter of Garrett Copps and Bridgett Harvey, town record p. 560, certified by V. H. Averill, town clerk; “Vermont, U.S., Vital Records, 1720–1908,” database with images, Ancestry (https://www.ancestry.com : accessed 3 August 2024), citing State of Vermont, Vermont Vital Records through 1870, New England Historic Genealogical Society, Boston.

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). 

“The Registry: Names of the Voters of Salt Lake City, by Precincts,” Daily Tribune (Salt Lake City, Utah), 17 September 1882, p. 8, col. [#], Second Precinct, entries for “Copps Garrett” and “Copps Bridget”; digital image, NewspaperArchive (https://access.newspaperarchive.com/salt-lake-daily-tribune/1882-09-17/page-8/ : accessed 20 September 2026).

Salt Lake County, Utah, Probate Court, guardianship case no. 59, Lizzie and Alice Copps, minors, petition of Garrett Copps, 10 May 1884 (image 189), and nomination of guardian signed by Lizzie M. Copps and Alice B. Copps, 10 May 1884 (image 191); Utah State Archives, Series 1621, Box 31, Folder 7; “Salt Lake, Utah, United States records,” images, FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3QS7-8933-6J2B : accessed 4 August 2025), image group no. 005672479.

Salt Lake Times (Salt Lake City, Utah), 11 July 1891, p. 4, col. 2; "Drew His Little Pop," article about Garrett Copps; digital image, OldNews.com ( https://www.oldnews.com/en/record?record_id=record-12010-987277907&ocr_panel=1&referred=mh_record_page : accessed 9 July 2025).

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).

St. Albans Daily Messenger. 16 January 1912, p. 7; via Newspapers.com (https://www.newspapers.com/article/st-albans-daily-messenger-harvey-buck/83967254/ : accessed 13 August 2026), clip page for Mary Harvey Buck's obituary, and naming her sister, by user dewquinn.

The Daily Ogden Junction, January 13, 1880, Page  4. via Newspapers.com (https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-daily-ogden-junction-garrett-copps/178346498/ : accessed October 27, 2026), clip page for Garrett Copps - excessive violence by user Diana Quinn.

The Ogden Junction, March 6, 1880, Page 2. via Newspapers.com (https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-ogden-junction-garrett-copps-shot/175568078/ : accessed October 27, 2026), clip page for Garrett Copps - shot / treated family badly by user Diana Quinn. 

Vermont French-Canadian Genealogical Society, comp., Baptism Repertoire, Saint Mary’s Church, St. Albans, Vermont, 1847–1934 (n.p.: Vermont French-Canadian Genealogical Society, n.d.), entries for Frances Burke [Buck], baptized 25 March 1865; Jean Burke [John Buck], baptized 21 July 1867; Julia Frances Copps, baptized 22 January 1865; Elisabeth Mary Copps, baptized 24 March 1867; and Bridget Copps [possibly Alice Beatrice Copps], baptized 31 January 1869; book privately held by researcher.

Vermont French-Canadian Genealogical Society, comp., Marriage Repertoire, Saint Augustine Church, Montpelier, Vermont, 1855–1930 (Vermont French-Canadian Genealogical Society, 2010), entry for Garret Copp and Bridget Harvey, 17 September 1860, noting marriage at Northfield, Vermont.

Walpole, New Hampshire, Marriages, 1857–1894, p. 67, marriage record for Albert Glynn and Johanna Harvey, 9 June 1861; digital image, Ancestry.com, “New Hampshire, U.S., Marriage and Divorce Records, 1659–1947” (https://www.ancestry.com/search/collections/5241/records/15910753 : accessed 10 August 2026); citing New Hampshire Bureau of Vital Records, Concord, New Hampshire; images provided by New England Historic Genealogical Society.