Harold Leddy on his ancestors: letter from approximately May, 1967

"I wish I could give you some good leads on the Leddy geneology (?)  Msgr. Leddy think we came from County Clare or Cavin,  They kept no passenger lists of the Irish who came over at the time of the potato famine (1848 et sec)  There is a paper in Belfast that used to print a list of family names and trace them back to some early king or saint.  I'm sure we would be included and probably could boast a coat of arms.  All I know is that my father was born in New York; that his father (whose name I believe was Andrew Leddy) served in the civil war.  That he died from wounds tho not on the battlefield.  That Papa was raised by an uncle named Daley or Daley who operated a shoe blacking factory near the waterfront in Philadelphia.  Helen says there is a A Snee living in New York or Brooklyn;  Jennie Snee was Papa's sister.  The operated a ship chandlers business and made a lot of money converting passenger ships to troop ships in W.W.I. and vice versa.

Some day you might carry on my research.  On my mothers side Anna Breen has the complete dope (or thinks she has)   She wanted to belong to the D.A.R. and for a price the experts produced a long line of ancestors which went beyond the Revolution and an ancestor is busied in Old Swedes churchyard in Phila.

As to Mother's ancestry you have all the information needed.  At least you have living Scottish relations.

Have a Happy Trip and tell the boys to watch out for those French girls.

Love Dad [Harold Leddy]"

Msgr Leddy was not a relative but a parish priest with the same last name in Bakersfield.  He married Jack and Jane.  Patrick Leddy

John Thomas Leddy and Mary Amanda Murray

John Thomas Leddy (my grandfather's father) married Mary Amanda Murray at this church in Philadelphia in 1882.