52 Ancestors: #1 Johanna Donoghue

Amy Crow over at No Story Too Small had a great idea to encourage family history blogging: 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks. Posts can be anything (stories, pictures, etc…), just focus on one ancestor. I hope to meet the challenge.

My first post is on my 2nd great-grandmother, Johanna Donoghue (1849-1922). She left the family farm in Shroneboy, Ireland in 1871 and came to America with her cousin Elizabeth Mahoney.

In 1875, she married James Edward Lucey in South Groveland, Massachusetts. They had 10 children, three of which died young of diphtheria. They made their home at 66 Church St in the Gonic section of Rochester, New Hampshire where Johanna planted lilac bushes (her favorite) and they built a lawn-tennis court.

Shortly after she died in 1922, the following appeared in the Rochester Courier.

By the death of Mrs. James E. Lucey, which was announced in the Courier last week, Gonic loses one of its most highly respected ladies. She had a very pleasant disposition and always looked on the bright side of life and well does the writer remember, when he was a boy playing with other boys around the Lucey homestead, making much noise and doing many tricks we ought not to do, Mrs. Lucey would not scold us but approach us in a bright and cheerful mood and kindly asked us to be good boys, and we would always mind her. She was honored, respected and beloved by all who knew her and is a big loss to the community. She was a loving wife and a devoted mother and her husband and children have the heartfelt sympathy of the whole village in their great loss.