He was born to Irish immigrants in Renovo, Pennsylvania. He came to Buffalo as a young man working the trade of a boilermaker. Among his seven siblings, he had a sister who was a nun and a brother who was a professional baseball player. His wife Mary died at 27 from tuberculosis. Through his two children, Harry and Joseph, he left a legacy of generations that carry on. He was our great grandfather Henry B. Mattimore, and here is some of his story….

I’d always heard of him as “Henry B.” There was a long-standing debate about what the “B.” stood for. Was it Bartholomew or Bernard? His grandson, my Uncle Hank, was named Henry Bartholomew, so it would make sense that the B stood for Bartholomew. But there were also stories and evidence about it being Bernard. In discovering the truth, I also found out that what we thought was Henry’s year of birth was wrong.

According to the Catholic Vital Records of Central Pennsylvania, Henry’s baptismal record from Immaculate Conception Church in Lock Haven, Pennsylvania, lists his name as “Henricum Bernardum,” Latin for “Henry Bernard.” Case closed! Also in that same baptismal record, we see that Henry was born in 1862 to Michael Mattimoe and Teresa Madden, NOT 1864 as was thought from some later documents. And I might add, this church record lists the last name as Mattimoe not Mattimore. But hey, but what’s in a name, right? The baptism sponsors were his uncle James Cody and aunt Catherine (Madden) Cody — his mother’s sister.

We don’t have a lot that describes what life was like for Henry as a boy, but being from a large Catholic family with eight children — 5 boys and 3 girls — I think it’s safe to say it was a spirited or loud household, sometimes chaotic, and likely to include lots of baseball games as Henry’s brother Michael went on to become a pro player. And with both parents coming from Ireland, Henry would grow up hearing the sweet sound of their Irish brogues. There was also likely much talk of, and letters to, the families his parents left behind in Ireland — Michael’s in County Roscommon and Teresa’s in County Dublin.

The family homestead was at 908 Erie Avenue, a house built by Henry’s father around 1866. It was in an Irish settlement clustered between Eighth and Tenth Streets centered around the Catholic Church — St. Joseph’s — in an area known as Irish acre.

Renovo, which means “I renew” in Latin, was built for and by the Philadelphia & Erie Railroad as the midpoint between Philadelphia and Erie. The town was laid out on a mostly-flat flood plain along the West Branch of the Susquehanna River in North-Central Pennsylvania, and was incorporated in 1866. (The Philadelphia and Erie Railroad, along with many other relatively smaller lines eventually became incorporated into the Pennsylvania Railroad.)

Nothing would have had more of an impact on young Henry than the railroad, which was literally in his front yard. Erie Avenue, a main thoroughfare in Renovo, ran alongside the railroad shops and tracks. Imagine the excitement growing up seeing and hearing the huge steam engines passing by every day.

Henry left his family home sometime around 17 as he is listed as a single boarder in Renovo’s 2nd Ward while working as a “clerk in store” according to the 1880 U.S. Census. At that age, it was likely his first job. But as soon as he was able, he went to work in the Pennsylvania Railroad Shops and learned his trade as a boilermaker.

Three of his brothers also worked in the railroad industry, and his sister Kate married the superintendent of the railroad shops in Renovo. Before long, Henry moved to Buffalo where the railroad shops were larger. In 1886, we find him at age 24 in a U.S. City Directory for Buffalo living on 315 Michigan Avenue. The following year he is residing at 267 Seneca Street. Both addresses are near the Farrar & Trefts Boiler Works where Henry worked as a boilermaker. And we know from the 1892 New York Census that he appears just two people away from Mary O’Rourke: a likely nexus for their meeting.

Henry and Mary were married in Buffalo in 1894. They belonged to St. Brigid’s Church on the corner of Fulton and Louisiana Streets, and were most likely married there. The first Catholic parish to be erected in the city’s First Ward, St. Brigid’s Roman Catholic Church was the center of the Irish community in the neighborhood for more than a century. More than just the home of spiritual life, St. Brigid’s — and specifically St. Brigid’s Hall — was a center for union meetings, political rallies, parties, sporting events and theatrical performances. Unfortunately we can’t find it today as the church was badly damaged in a fire in 1968 and razed the following year.

The young Mattimores had three sons: Harry, born in August of 1895, Joseph born in May 1898, and a third son who died in infancy. I haven’t been able to find any information about the third boy. I wish we knew his name and when he was born. I suspect that he followed closely behind Joseph, and that was likely around the same time that Mary became ill. Perhaps that was a contributing factor in the baby’s death? If anyone has an other information about the third son, I’d love to hear it.

We know the story of the family’s journey west in 1899 and of Mary’s death from tuberculosis in 1901. It was the following year, in 1902, that Henry brought his two boys home to Buffalo along with his sister-in-law Kate and mother-in-law Catherine O’Rourke. How sad that must have been for everyone to travel across the country back home to Buffalo facing their futures without their beloved Mary. Upon their return, the family lived at 482 Perry Street on the Southwest corner of Fulton and Alabama.

During those times, my mom surmised, Henry might have felt awkward, or thought it improper, living in the house with an unmarried woman — Mary’s sister Kate. That may have been the reason Henry took out of town jobs and was never home for long periods of time. He left the boys in the care of their Aunt Kate and Grandma O’Rourke. We know from his written family history that Harry Mattimore said this of the time after their move back to Buffalo:

“Henry and his cousin, Harry Cody, worked together in various cities of the West and Southwest. He always sent money home to keep Aunt Kate, Grandma, Joe and I living together in comfort. He and Harry Cody went prospecting in Montana and found a small gold mine which they sold. My father invested the proceeds of the sale in other mining and coal stocks, but unfortunately, they all proved to be poor investments. When a part of Texas was thrown open for homesteading, he and Harry Cody marked out a claim and gave Bert Higgins [Henry’s brother-in-law] money to live on the site until the claim became valid. However, Higgins did not live there long enough, and they lost their claim. That site later became part of the business center of Houston, Texas.”

On April 3, 1905, Henry went to work for the U.S. Government to help build the Panama Canal. Working in the office of the mechanical engineer, he was appointed a foreman of the Boiler Shops in the Canal Zone.

His service record indicates his pay in June 1905 was $175 a month. A little less than a year later, he was earning $200 a month, and in July of 1907, he was making $225 a month. The records also detail his leave each year when he took trips home to see his boys. On one of those vacations, Henry brought a parrot home with him to Buffalo, which became quite a celebrated addition to the family according to son Harry.

Harry’s family history goes on to say that his father Henry “died as a result of a ruptured diaphragm, suffered when he tripped and fell against the railing of the ship on which he was returning to Panama after spending his annual vacation with us.” The last entry on Henry’s service record reads that on March 8th of 1913 he died at Colon Hospital in Cristobal, Panama, and a cable was sent to the family back in Buffalo that same day. Henry was only 51 years old (or 49 so the family thought; but the baptismal record I located proved he would have actually been 51). Sons Harry and Joe, who lost their mother when they were young boys, now at 17 and 14, had lost their father.

The sad task of bringing the body home from Panama fell to Henry’s youngest brother, Joseph Aloysius Mattimore, who also worked with Henry in the Boiler Shops in Panama. Our great grandfather Henry B. Mattimore was buried March 22, 1913 in Holy Cross Cemetery in Lackawanna, New York.

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