Overview of the Cunninghams

For my mother's birthday, I put together a family history book, with a two-page layout dedicated to each of her family lines. I only went back to her great-grandparents to determine how many family lines to include, but I talked about their multi-family ancestry, too, if I knew it.

Since there are a number of descendants of these families, I thought I would reproduce this information on the blog, as well. Some of this information I have posted before in greater detail or with a different focus, some of it is new. If you want to see all the posts together, just click on the "Mom Book" tag on this post.

Cunningham

Our first Cunningham ancestors to come to the United States were Maurice and Elizabeth, who arrived in New York on October 2, 1828, from Cork, Ireland. They were a young couple, aged 21 and 18, probably only recently married. Prior to 1828, most Irish emigrants were well-educated, well-to-do Protestants from Ulster, but in 1827 the British government repealed all restrictions on emigration, allowing more Catholics, more of the poor, and more people from outside Ulster to leave. Between 1828 and 1847, 400,000 Irish left for North America. They were looking for opportunities that weren't available for them back in Ireland, where overcrowding and failed harvests had led to epidemics of famine and disease that, eventually, would culminate in the horrors of the Potato Famine.

Upon entering the United States, Maurice gave his occupation as "carpenter", but he found work as the head gardener on the estate of Robert Livingston Pell of Pelham in Ulster County, New York. Robert Pell was known for his agricultural innovations, and Maurice's produce won prizes at the agricultural Fair of the American Institute in the 1840s. About the time Maurice started working for Pell, an orchard of 20,000 apple trees was planted on the estate. Pell eventually exported the fruit to England, where it sold for over $20 per barrel.

By 1860, Maurice and Elizabeth moved to Columbus, Wisconsin, where they farmsteaded. They had eight children. Their youngest, Robert Steven Cunningham, was born November 22, 1850. He trained to be a carpenter, like his father, and worked for a wagon-maker in Columbus where he met his future wife, Elizabeth Theresa Rooney. They were married November 24, 1880, at St. Jerome's church. A decade after their wedding, Elizabeth's family moved farther west, to Minnesota, to find new opportunities. Robert and Elizabeth moved as well, and Robert set up shop as a wagonmaker in Minneapolis.

Robert and Elizabeth had five children, the oldest of whom was Robert Francis "Frank" Cunningham, born in Wisconsin on December 6, 1881. Frank was ten when the family moved to Minneapolis. It was there that he met his wife, Medora LeFebvre, whose French-Canadian family had moved from Quebec to Maine to Minneapolis in the late 1800s. They were married June 9, 1908 and spent the rest of their lives in Minneapolis, raising two children, including Robert Francis, Jr. Robert married Mary Jane Leyes in Dayton, Ohio, on July 9, 1938.

References:

http://www.irishtimes.com/ancestor/magazine/emigration/pre-fam.htm

http://thedeanbeaverblog.blogspot.com/2015/08/robert-steven-cunningham.html

http://thedeanbeaverblog.blogspot.com/2015/08/cunninghams-of-columbus-wisconsin-part-1.html