Patrick Charles McFadden

Patrick Charles McFadden was born October 14, 1824 to James McFadden (appears on the 1830 tithe Aplotment of Tawney) (Towney) Kilcar. His early life spent as a fisherman, his siblings were Winifred ( Una), Margaret, and a possibly a William and others.

In 1849 Patrick emigrates to Philadelphia, possibly aboard the ship Leviathan, and in October 1852 enlists in the United States Navy aboard the Sloop U.S.S. Vandalia as part of the Pacific Squadron of the Commodore Matthew G. Perry Expedition to Japan with the intent of establishing trade and safe conduct for shipwrecked American sailors.

Japan was then a hermit kingdom, and foreigners shipwrecked in it's waters were treated most harshly.

For the next four years, we know Patrick's exact daily whereabouts from the Vandalia's logbooks. In spring of 1853 he sails from Philadelphia to Brazil, and then around the Cape of Good Hope to the Indian Ocean, thence to the Philippine Sea, and then to the Ryukyu Islands and enters Tokyo Bay ( Edo, as it was then named) Japan twice in the years 1854-55. The U.S.S.Vandalia visits are well documented and illustrated.

Between these visits to Japan Patrick was posted with 24 other Seaman and Officers to the U.S. Consulate in Shanghai to protect Americans there during the Tai Ping Rebellion, and according to his narrative taken from an application for a disability pension from the
U. S. Navy: " ...watched the city burn down around us..." His return to Japan in 1855 allowed him to view closely the interaction of Commodore Perry ( USN) and Japanese Government officials as the run-up to the signing of the Treaty of Kanagawa. In the fall of 1856, Patrick returns to Kittery Maine, and is Honorably Discharged. He married a possible distant cousin, a Margaret McFadden of Killybegs Parish in 1857 in New York City, their son James born the following year in either Temperanceville, Pennsylvania or East Providence Rhode Island; narratives differ.
Their first daughter is named Ellen in 1860, and a daughter Mary A. Is born in 1861. Margaret dies in 1861, and Patrick works in the Brooklyn Navy Yard during the Civil War. He married again in 1866 to Grace Gallagher in NYC.
Grace & Patrick's first born is named Mary in 1869, Charles Francis is born in 1870, and John about 1872. The family moves to Canton, Fulton County Illinois in 1874. His obituaries relate an incident when as an aged man, he climbed a ninety foot flag pole in 1880 to free the hoisting mechanism during the playing of the National Anthem, facilitating the unfurling of " Old Glory" .
Patrick carries on his skills as a sailor in his civilian occupations, becoming an awning and tent fabricator. He dies in Canton, Illinois in February,1901, a well-liked and honored Citizen from the narrative of two obituaries. Recent DNA testing shows distant cousins still in the Kilcar area related to Patrick and myself.