If you look deep enough, you’ll find that almost all family trees have questionable ancestors or even hidden scandals. Ours is no exception. Read on for the story of our great, great grandfather Cornelius O’Rourke.

Known as Connie or Con, he was the father of Mary O’Rourke who married Henry B. Mattimore. My mother and uncles referred to Connie as a blaggard, presumably because their great Aunt Kate did — and she would know since Cornelius was her father. Kate never had anything good to say about him. He was bad news, so she said.

So what exactly do we know about our 2x great grandfather? Cornelius was born to Philip O’Rourke and his wife Bridget about 1844 in Oswego, New York. His parents were both from Ireland, but I have no idea where in Ireland they came from (Bridget’s maiden name is also unknown). At the time of the 1850 U.S. census for Oswego, we find 5-year-old Cornelius with his parents and two younger siblings, Michael and Mary.

Just five years later, when Cornelius is 10 or 11, he and his siblings are living with an aunt named Ann Ratcliff according to the 1855 New York State Census. What happened to the O’Rourke parents? Did they die? Or move elsewhere? Go back to Ireland? Unfortunately, I can’t find a trace of them anywhere in any records. So for Cornelius, sometime between ages 5 and 11, something major, and probably traumatic, happens to cause him and his younger siblings to have to move in with an aunt.

At age 16, Cornelius is already working as an apprentice tin smith, likely to help support his siblings. But still no sign of the O’Rourke parents. My gut tells me that they died as it would be unusual for both parents to just leave their children. But I just don’t know.

A pair of IRS Tax Assessment Lists show Cornelius at age 21 being taxed as a retail liquor dealer and for hotel space, so he is likely running a hotel bar in Oswego. A young entrepreneur? Very likely, but in an industry that brings him trouble, in the end.

In the next major census, we find that Cornelius is now married to Catherine (King) with a young son, Frederick, eight months old. This 1870 U.S. Census lists Cornelius as a hotel keeper. And over the next few years, various city directories list him as hotel keeper and in business as a small beer manufacturer. Even before showing these records to my mom, she always knew Connie was in some sort of bar business. Aunt Kate often eluded to his heavy drinking and would proclaim that her father “was his own best customer.”

By the summer of 1875, Cornelius and Catherine now had three children. Our great grandmother Mary O’Rourke appears for the first time in a census at age one year, four months.

By year’s end, however, change comes to the young O’Rourke family. Catherine is expecting a fourth child, and Connie’s drinking catches up with him.

On Christmas night 1875, Connie assaults a patron at his saloon, causing the man to almost loose an eye. An arrest warrant is issued, but because it was a weekend and the warrant wasn’t acted upon right away, Connie fled rather than face arrest. The “non-arrest” at the time of the incident caused a stink within the local police department. Con’s “escape” made the headlines and was front page news as was the major police investigation that followed.

None of this was good news for our great, great grandmother Catherine. She was pregnant with three children under the age six at the time. Close to five years later, we find her living with her parents in Oswego, now with four children. No sign of Cornelius. I speculate that he fled to Canada, which would have been fairly easy from Oswego. But that’s just my theory.

I’m not able to pick up his trail again until 1886 when he is living and working in a Buffalo saloon and boarding house at 68 Ohio Street. The following year, 1887, he resides at 2 Elk Street. Whether or not he was back living with his wife and children who also ended up in Buffalo is unknown.

At the end of that year, on December 21, 1887, our 2x great grandfather Cornelius O’Rourke died of consumption in Buffalo at the young age of just 43. His death certificate lists Phthisis, the archaic name for TB or consumption, the very same cause of death and devastating disease his daughter Mary would die of just 14 years later.

Until I discovered the Oswego news clippings in October of 2016, my mom never knew Cornelius’ story. When I found his death notice from an 1887 Buffalo paper, this was a huge surprise to her, along with the fact that he was buried right in Holy Cross Cemetery, not far from the Mattimore plots. She never remembered Aunt Kate saying anything about when, where or how he died or ever visiting her father’s grave.

The next time I visited Buffalo, I went to look for his grave, only to learn that the section of the cemetery he was in was for “single graves,” the vast majority with no markers. It was explained to me that this section included people who had died poor or young or unexpectedly — those with no pre-arranged family plots at the time. I was able to find the right section, but there was no way for me to locate his row or grave. So I bowed my head and gave up a prayer for everybody in the whole section.

My take on Cornelius and his story is this: despite some poor decisions in life, we should remember that he was left to navigate life as a boy without his parents. So I cut him a little slack.

“The black sheep, the skeletons in the closet these days are celebrated, if anything, because we have become more open-minded and flexible,” says Megan Smolenyak, genealogist and author of “Hey, America, Your Roots Are Showing,” a book about surprising genealogical discoveries. Her advice: “When you look at what your ancestors did, you don’t get the glory and you don’t get the blame. It just means you have a colorful story to share.”

Colorful, indeed.

SIDE NOTE: I haven’t stopped trying to figure out where in Ireland our 3x great grandparents Philip O’Rourke and wife Bridget came from. In all likelihood, the only way I will achieve that at this point is through analysis of DNA matches. That will take time, luck, skill and cooperation of strangers who share DNA.

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