John Coughlin was born in Butte, Silver Bow, Montana, in the United States of America, on the 1st June 1910, the son of John J. and Catherine “Kate” Coughlan (née O’Neil). For reasons unknown, at various times the family name was spelt
Coughlan and Coughlin, and when John was born, his name was recorded as
Coughlin, and this was the name he carried with him throughout his life.
His parents were originally from County Cork, in southern Ireland, and had married in Butte, Montana, on the 20th July 1905. He was the third of five children, however; by the time of his birth, his older brother and sister had died. His two surviving siblings were a sister named Margaret, and a brother named Jeremiah Bernard, who was known as “Bernie”. The family lived at 420. Pennsylvania Avenue, Butte, Silver Bow, Montana, and his father was a miner.
In early 1915, his parents sold their home, as they had decided to return home to County Cork, Ireland, and on 1st May 1915, they boarded the
Lusitania at New York as third class passengers, to make the journey to Liverpool on the first leg of their journey back to Ireland.
When the liner was torpedoed, six days later, by the German submarine U-20, the family must have become separated, because although John Coughlan, his mother and his brother, Bernie, survived the sinking and were later landed at Queenstown, his father and his sister Margaret perished. The surviving members of the family then eventually reached his mother’s family home at Derrymihan East, Castletown Berehaven, County Cork.
Although his father’s body was never found and identified afterwards, his sister’s was and she was later buried in a mass grave just outside Queenstown.
A number of reports appeared in local newspapers about the family shortly after the disaster. The
Cork Examiner reported on the 11th may 1915: -
Wife and Two Children Saved from Lusitania
Tragic Fate of Husband and Child
Skibbereen, Wednesday
Mrs. John Coughlan, of Corranmore, Goleen, who with her husband and three children were passengers on the ill-fated Lusitania, passed her last night.
Her husband is not accounted for, and it is feared he is lost. She had with her two young children, and a third who was picked up dead at sea and conveyed to Queenstown, was brought to Goleen today for interment.
The family were coming home from America to take up the farm which was the ancestral home. A large number of bodies were seen floating off Glandore by fishermen who communicated through the Police with the Admiralty and the Cunard Co.
On the 15th May 1915, the Cork County Eagle reported: -
On Wednesday a pathetic sight was witnessed at the Railway station, Skibbereen, when the body of an infant passed through on the way to the burial ground of his ancestors at Goleen. The little coffin with the body was sent on by rail from Queenstown with a label addressed to Mrs. John Coughlan, Corran, Goleen.
The mother, with two of her children, survivors of the disaster, travelled by the 4.15p.m. train from Cork to Skibbereen on Tuesday. Of her husband who sailed with her and the three children on the Lusitania from America, there is no account.
The little coffin reached Schull at 2.30 o’clock on Wednesday and was taken by road to Goleen where interment was made.
In fact, Margaret Coughlan was not buried in Goleen, but was buried in Common Grave B, first row, upper tier, as body number 62. She was buried with body number 68, which was that of an unidentified young boy, aged about 2½ years.
In January 1925, the Mixed Claims Commission in New York awarded John Coughlan the sum of $2,500.00 in compensation for the loss of his father.
On completion of his education, in 1927, John Coughlin entered the Franciscan Seminary in Killarney, County Kerry, and was ordained a priest of the Roman Catholic Church on the 2nd July 1933. He spent a number of years in Australia, and also Louvain, Belgium, before returning to Ireland to teach in his old seminary in Killarney. In his later years, he resided in the Franciscan Friary in Wexford, County Wexford, and it was here, on the 21st December 1980, that he died, aged 70 years.
Register of Births, Marriages and Deaths, Montana County Births and Deaths 1830 – 2011, Massachusetts Passenger and Crew Lists 1820 – 1963, Cunard Records, Mixed Claims Commission Docket No. 2489, Liverpool Record Office, PRO BT 100/345, Deaths at Sea 1871 – 1968, Cork Examiner, Cork County Eagle, Southern Star, Great Fall Tribune, Graham Maddocks, Geoff Whitfield, Michael Poirier, Jim Kalafus, Cliff Barry, Paul Latimer, Norman Gray.
Copyright © Peter Kelly.