The Catherwood-Bells

A Irish-Catholic Family in the American South

But when ye come, and all the flow'rs are dying,
 If I am dead, as dead I well may be,
 Ye'll come and find the place where I am lying,
 And kneel and say an "Ave" there for me;
 And I shall hear, though soft ye tread above me,
 And all my grave will warmer, sweeter be,
 For ye will bend and tell me that ye love me, 
And I shall sleep in peace until ye come to me,
 And I shall sleep in peace until ye come to me!
                 “Danny Boy”   (lyrics by Frederic Weatherly)


 

Civil War Veteran Father

Our ancestor Julius Bythewood Bell (1834-1897) was the youngest child of Sea Island cotton planters in the South Carolina low country. He was a civil war veteran whose militia unit probably participated in the very first battle of the Civil War at Fort Sumter in April 1861 and was involved in the very last at Bentonville, North Carolina, in March 1865. Julius himself was wounded in the penultimate battle of Averasboro, North Carolina.

From South Carolina to Georgia

After the war, his father dead and his family home and plantation having long been confiscated and auctioned off by the occupying Union forces, Julius limped to Savannah, Georgia. Many of Julius’s fellow veterans, South Carolina relatives, and neighbors had since settled in the burgeoning city of Savannah, a mere 40-50 miles south of the homes to which they could not return.

Irish-Catholic Mother

In August 1870, 35 year-old Julius – raised as an Episcopalian – lived in a boarding house with 25 others including a possible cousin and her husband – Ella and Bernhard McKenna. The apparent proprietors, Irish-born druggist Samuel Catherwood and his South Carolina-born wife Lydia Arden, were from Julius’ home town of Beaufort, though they had moved to Savannah in the years before the Civil War. Listed as age 20, their daughter Elizabeth Jane was the oldest of their five children. Julius and Elizabeth were married in 1872.

St. Patrick’s Church and School

America had not been welcoming to Irish immigrants like Samuel. Nativist bigotry was often open and hostile. The Irish in general, and Irish-Catholics in particular, were singled out for discrimination. ² Savannah in the late 1800s already had a large Catholic Church (The Cathedral of St. John the Baptist on Lafayette Square). In the 1870s the parish of St. Patrick’s was founded by Irish immigrants and their families, doubtless including the Bells and Catherwoods. A new church was built in 1882, and a parish grade school probably about the same time. Despite the sacrifices of the founding families, the parish existed for only two generations. When a destructive hurricane struck Savannah in 1940, the severely damaged St. Patrick’s Church was torn down shortly afterwards. Due to changing demographics, it was not rebuilt.³

Julius and Elizabeth had eight children, three girls and then five boys. Their children, and many of their children’s children, received their education, catechesis, and sacraments at St. Patrick’s school. The two oldest – Maggie (born 1873) and Annie (1875), along with Elizabeth’s sister Rosa Catherwood – were for many years teachers at St. Patrick’s.

Family Homes

The Catherwood boarding house would have been on President St. near Drayton, according to an 1871 Savannah City Directory. By the time all three girls were born, they lived at 153 Liberty St., and by 1892 the Catherwood-Bells were living at 18 E. Macon, where relatives would be born, live, and die for at least the next thirty years.

Orphans

The family was minimally educated, though perhaps Julius, a clerk for the Central of Georgia Railroad, had attended some college classes in Beaufort before the war. They would probably have been considered lower-middle class. Elizabeth Jane’s father Samuel died shortly after she and Julius married, in 1873. Her mother Lydia held four of her Bell grandchildren before she passed in 1882. Julius died of heart failure in 1897, and Elizabeth Jane died shortly thereafter.¹ In early 1900, even 27 year-old Maggie died, and the remaining seven likely felt orphaned twice over. Mary Agnes (1877) married in 1901, John (1880) in 1903, and Joseph (1883) in 1907. Twenty-five year-old Annie, who never married, found herself as surrogate mother to her youngest brothers. When 10 year-old Charles died of the measles in 1905, the family sorrows seemed to be at a low point. Sadly, more sorrows loomed. The remaining boys- Theodore (1885), and Percy (1889) – both worked as early as they were able to provide for the extended family.

Adapted from A String of Bells: Stories of a Southern Family © 2020 by Nick J. Guevara, Jr.

¹ With few exceptions, our 19th and early-to-mid 20th century Savannah ancestors are buried either at Laurel Grove or Bonaventure Cemeteries.

² When America Despised the Irish: The 19th Century’s Refugee Crisis by Christopher Klein https://www.history.com/news/when-america-despised-the-irish-the-19th-centurys-refugee-crisis

³ Coming of a Hurricane to Savannah Marked the End of Old St. Patrick’s Church by Rita H. DeLome, Southern Cross (newspaper), Diocese of Savannah 5 Jul 2018

Feature image is a detail from an 1890 pamphlet titled “Savannah and its Surroundings” by G.A. Gregory and published by the Savannah Morning News.