The County Monaghan Connection

From Ulster to Michigan

While the majority of Hubbardston's Irish settlers traced their origins to County Wexford in Leinster, a significant contingent came from County Monaghan in the province of Ulster, in the north of Ireland. The Monaghan connection adds a geographic and cultural dimension to Hubbardston's Irish story — these were families from a different part of Ireland, with distinct local traditions, who joined the Wexford settlers to build a shared community in Michigan.

County Monaghan lies in the heart of Ulster's drumlin belt — a landscape of small, rounded hills left behind by glacial activity, interspersed with lakes and bogs. In the 19th century, it was a densely populated farming county where Catholic families worked small tenant holdings, often on marginal land. When the Great Famine struck, Monaghan's population collapsed: the county lost more than a quarter of its people to death and emigration between 1841 and 1851.

The McKenna Family

The best-documented Monaghan family in Hubbardston is the McKenna family. Mathew McKenna, born in December 1830, emigrated from County Monaghan to the United States, eventually making his way to Hubbardston's Irish settlement in North Plains Township.

The McKenna surname itself carries deep Monaghan roots. In Irish, the name is Mac Cionaoith (sometimes anglicized as Mac Cionaith), meaning "Son of Cionaoth" — a personal name that translates roughly as "born of fire" or "fire-sprung." The McKennas were historically one of the leading families of County Monaghan, and the surname was first documented in that county, where the McKenna chiefs held territory in the barony of Truagh in the northern part of the county.

By the time Mathew McKenna emigrated in the mid-19th century, the era of Gaelic chieftains was centuries past, and the McKennas of Monaghan were Catholic tenant farmers like their neighbors — but the name's deep connection to Monaghan makes the family's county of origin unusually certain.

The Gravestone Evidence

One of the most remarkable pieces of evidence connecting Hubbardston to County Monaghan stands in St. John the Baptist Cemetery. The McKenna gravestone records the county of origin for both parents:

• Under "Father": County Monaghan
• Under "Mother": County Wexford

This single headstone is a genealogical treasure. It documents the merging of two Irish counties in a single Hubbardston family — a Monaghan man married to a Wexford woman, their union literally carved in stone. The mother's Wexford origins connect the McKenna family to the Roach/Roche family, as Katherine Roach (born 1833 in County Wexford) married into the McKenna line.

Gravestones with county-of-origin inscriptions are uncommon in American cemeteries. Their presence in Hubbardston suggests that the immigrants and their children considered their Irish county identities important enough to preserve for eternity — a statement of origin that has proven invaluable to genealogical researchers more than a century later.

Life in County Monaghan Before Emigration

County Monaghan in the 1840s shared many characteristics with other Irish counties, but had its own distinctive features:

• Small farms — Monaghan was one of the most densely populated counties in Ireland, with farms subdivided to the point of unsustainability. Families survived on tiny plots, growing potatoes and oats.
• The linen industry — unlike many Irish counties, Monaghan had a significant cottage linen industry that supplemented farm income. Families spun flax into linen thread and wove it into cloth for sale. The decline of this industry in the early 19th century, even before the Famine, pushed families toward emigration.
• Ulster character — Monaghan, though a Catholic-majority county in the predominantly Protestant province of Ulster, shared some of the province's reputation for independence and self-reliance.
• Famine impact — Monaghan was severely affected by the Great Famine. Workhouses overflowed, fever spread, and mass emigration depopulated entire townlands.

The Monaghan-Wexford Marriage Pattern

The marriage of McKenna (Monaghan) and Roach (Wexford) families in Hubbardston reflects a broader pattern. Once in America, the distinction between Irish counties mattered less than the shared identity of being Irish and Catholic. Families from Monaghan, Wexford, Tipperary, and Wicklow intermarried freely in Hubbardston, united by faith, language, and the shared experience of emigration.

This intermarriage created a community where, within a generation or two, virtually every Irish family in Hubbardston was related to every other. The county distinctions that had been meaningful in Ireland gave way to a unified Irish-American identity rooted in the Catholic parish of St. John the Baptist.

The Monaghan Legacy

For descendants tracing their Hubbardston roots to County Monaghan, several resources are valuable:

• Monaghan County Museum in Monaghan town maintains local historical records
• Catholic parish registers from Monaghan parishes have been digitized by the National Library of Ireland
• The Clogher Historical Society covers the diocese of Clogher, which includes much of County Monaghan
• FamilySearch and Ancestry databases include Monaghan civil registration records from 1864 onward

The McKenna gravestone in St. John the Baptist Cemetery remains the most tangible link between Hubbardston and County Monaghan — a stone marker in a Michigan cemetery that points across the Atlantic to a small county in Ulster where a family named Mac Cionaoith, "born of fire," began their journey to America.