Wedding Wednesday - Martin Blanchfield and Anna Boyle

As I wondered what I was going to post on this evening, I received an email from a cousin (thanks for the post idea, Rebecca!) with a great article published in the New York Times, published on February 26, 1875.  Why was this significant?  It was a story on a horrible collapse that occurred at St. Andrew's Church in New York City.  The same church that our ancestors, Martin Blanchfield and Anna Boyle, were married in less than a year later.

So I figured I'd post the marriage certificate that was sent to me a few years back from Saint Andrew's.  It's a transcription as you can see from the "19" being crossed out in the year and "18" being written.  I may transcribe the article at some point as well, but not today.  It is a tale of panic, and not something for a wedding!

Sacrament of Matrimony (transcribed from church records)

Martin and Anna Blanchfield nee Boyle were my 2nd great grandparents.  Martin was born in Ireland.  Anna in Pennsylvania.  Married in New York City at Saint Andrew's Church on January 9, 1976.  They would have twelve(-ish) children:

Mary, Alice (my great grandmother), Annie, William, Josephine, Lillian, Catherine, Joseph, and 4 children of unknown name/gender that are remembered as numbers in censuses.  We don't know if they were stillborn or died young, but they didn't live long enough to have their names recorded in a census.

Anna has always been dear to my heart, but what ancestor isn't?  You love them all, right?  As I approach my first blogiversary, I have been preparing a series of posts on what started my world of blogging and it happens to be an incident that took her father's life.  Anna is dear to me because she was born after her father left America to mine for gold in Australia, and he died on his way back.  A great sacrifice made by a man that wanted to bring a better life to his family.  Years away from his family in a great effort to try to escape the coal mines of Northeastern Pennsylvania.  That sacrifice was not to benefit them, however, and his youngest daughter would never know the arms of her father.