Mary Reilly

Mary Gallagher and her siblings were born in the cottage [see photo] in the townland of Cordiver, in the Kinlough parish of Co. Leitrim, "where the 3 counties meet." The Gallaghers lived there for several generations and ran a local grocery/spirits store out of one of the buildings. It's currently unoccupied. Her sister's family, the Morans, still live a few miles away in Donegal; another sibling's family, the Coopers, live in Belfast. Mary's mother's name, Cloake, is either Welsh or English. Her maternal grandfather was a policeman from Wexford who worked in Leitrim.

Prior to the 1901 Irish Census, Mary and her sister Kate came to America as servants. Kate had to return to Ireland for an arranged marriage to an older man, Kerrigan, who then brought her to Belmont, MA. Mary settled in Orange, NJ, where she met and married Eugene Reilly. They lived there on in the corner house Mt. Vernon Avenue/Mt. Vernon Place. Between 1908 and 1922 they had 9 children. By the time Vincent was born [and nearly died], Mary had endured the childhood deaths of Mae and Elizabeth. She assisted her husband Eugene with the florist business from the cemetery greenhouse and her home. Then he died in 1931. She raised Loretta and "the boys" by taking the train to NY and returning with arms full of flowers, which she used to make arrangements sold from her home. During the course of WWII, 5 of her sons were in service: Vincent, Raymond, Buddy, Frank and Edmund. Edmund was injured in England. On Sundays Mary would cook up a big dinner and have Fr. Ramsey, Fr. Mulcahy, and Winnie Reilly over for dinner with her sons Edmund, Paul, and Gene. Afterwards they'd play Bridge. Then Buddy [Raymond] was killed in CA driving an army vehicle outside base camp. After the war, Edmund secured a GI loan to start Reilly's Florist, across the street from Orange Memorial Hospital. In the 1950s Mary and her sons Gene, Edmund, and Paul moved to Park Avenue. Around 1962 Gene died unexpectedly, followed a few months later by Mary's death from cancer, after over 20 years of suffering. Edmund and Paul carried on the family's florist business until Edmund's head injury and Paul's illness and death.