Thomas Faloon / Falloon

Thomas Faloon was born Thomas Falloon (two "L"s) in the parish of Aghalee, County Antrim, May 25, 1813.

He and his brother Charles, born in 1817, were cotenants of the Marquess of Hertford on a 51-acre plot in the town land of Ballynanaghten, Aghalee, Antrim.

Between 1862 and 1864, Thomas emigrated to the United States, fetching up in Minneapolis, Minnesota. According to family lore passed down in his brother Charles' family, Thomas emigrated because he and Charles had a big dustup about something serious enough that besides emigrating, Thomas swore he'd never spell his surname with two "L"s again (as far as I can tell from post-emigration records, he was true to his word).

Thomas and his wife Mary Loftus, a Catholic, had four children in America. James, the oldest, died at age 25, leaving no descendants. His three daughters, Priscilla, Anna and Margaret, led very divergent lives. Priscilla (my great grandmother) first appears in the U.S. Census of 1880, as a 14 year old servant girl in a boarding house near the Falls of St. Anthony. She married a teamster named Patrick Nolan, who committed suicide by gunshot on 10 November, 1918, the day before the armistice that ended World War I, leaving her with seven children (my grandmother, Mary Nolan, was the oldest). Anna married a man named Hafie, had two children, and died at age 33. Margaret, on the other hand, married William Kenney, who worked his way up to be president of James J. Hill's Great Northern Railway in the 1930's, and numerous Kenney descendants still live in St. Paul, Minnesota and environs.

As for Thomas, he was distinguished in death by being the only person to die in a forgotten piece of Minneapolis history called the Great Conflagragration of 1893, a fire which burned 23 blocks of the Northeast side of Minneapolis. Fleeing from the fire, Thomas, age 80, made it as far as 7th Avenue and Main Street, where he dropped dead of a heart attack. He was buried in a grave that was bought and owned by a nearby Episcopal church, which had led me to believe that the fire had left his family destitute. I was surprised to find later that in the following year a Dublin lawyer filed a will for him that indicated an estate of £150, a large sum in those days. A front-page newspaper article appeared the day after his death, in which it was reported, without elaboration, that he was well known in the northeast neighborhood for his "many eccentricities." I'd be delighted by any contacts from descendants of either Thomas or Charles Fal(l)oon.

Thank you! Richard G. Carlson Minneapolis, Minnesota