Were all of the older threads and posts lost at some point from this site? There had been a thread here about my great-aunt in the past, one where they claimed she and Tobin were going to Mrs. Egan's boarding house, and I corrected it then, that it was her sister.
In any case, there is still some misinformation on her page here.
Katie’s siblings were William (b. 1873), John (b. 1873), Edmund (b. 1874), Mary (b. 1876), Richard (b. 1879), Thomas (b.1885), James (b. 1886), Bridget (b. 1889), Margaret (b. 1892), Helena (b. 1894), and Johanna (Josie) (b. 1899).
My Great-Grandmother Mary was the elusive Mrs. Egan, who Katie and several brothers stayed with when they emigrated, and who for years was speculated upon on this site and in a few books as a boarding house. Those names and dates of the siblings come from several 3rd cousins, who still live in Ballydrehid, Tipperary, Ireland and acquired birth certificates, and the parish registry is easily available online.
Katie was much beloved by her older sister and both of her daughters named their own daughters Catherine, as did several other descendants in Ireland. That photograph is highly unlikely to be of my Great Aunt, as she was a cleaning lady, the same as my Great-Grandmother, who had moved up by then to a maid. It was not in the possession of either the Ballydrehid lines nor those in New York and surfaced at a London auction house out of nowhere and sold for 600 pounds. When I wrote to enquire about the provenance, I received no reply.
In fact, at the 100th anniversary of the sinking, the Irish relatives asked me for a younger photo of Mary to use instead, and I could only provide the one for her naturalization many years after 1912. The family had no money for that sort of portrait on either side of the Atlantic prior to 1912. The only pictures of her siblings in Ireland are all when they were elderly, and photography was not as expensive.
