Margaret E. Coughlan was born in Butte, Silver Bow, Montana, in the United States of America, on the 16th May 1912, the daughter 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 Margaret was born, her name was recorded as
Coughlan, whereas her siblings were Coughlin!
Her parents were originally from County Cork, in southern Ireland, and had married in Butte, Montana, on the 20th July 1905. She was the youngest of five children, however; by the time of her birth, her eldest brother and sister had died. Her two surviving siblings were her brothers named John, and Jeremiah Bernard, who was known as “Bernie”. The family lived at 420. Pennsylvania Avenue, Butte, Silver Bow, Montana, and her father was a miner.
In early 1915, her 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 her mother and two brothers survived the sinking and were later landed at Queenstown, poor Margaret and her father perished. She was only days away from her third birthday! The surviving members of her family eventually reached her mother’s family home at Derrymihan East, Castletown Berehaven, County Cork.
Unlike that of her father, Margaret’s body was recovered from the sea and landed at Queenstown, where it was given the reference number 62 in one of the three temporary mortuaries set up there. This number would indicate that it was amongst the first to be found. It must have been positively identified there by Mrs. Coughlan, but the following article appeared in
The Southern Star a week after the sinking: -
Skibbereen: On Wednesday a pathetic sight was witnessed at the Railway Station. The body of an infant was transferred on its way to burial in Goleen. The little coffin was labelled to Mrs. John Coughlan
(sic), Corrin, Goleen. The mother with two other children were survivors of the disaster and had travelled on Tuesday. Of her husband who sailed with them on the Lusitania there had, up to then, been no account.
The facts above must have been wrong, however, or maybe were just hearsay, because the body of the infant Margaret was, in fact, buried on Monday 10th May 1915 in The Old Church Cemetery, Queenstown, in Mass Grave B, 1st Row, Upper Tier, in the same coffin as the body of an unidentified male child, (reference number 68).
It was on that day that most of the victims of the disaster were buried, following a long funeral procession which began at the Cunard offices at Lynch’s Quay, on the waterfront, so it would have been impossible for Margaret’s coffin to have been seen at Skibbereen Station two days later!
Montana County Births and Deaths 1830 – 2011, 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, Graham Maddocks, Geoff Whitfield, Michael Poirier, Jim Kalafus, Cliff Barry, Paul Latimer, Norman Gray.
Copyright © Peter Kelly.