Sgt. Peter Cooney and the three graves · The Leahey Family Archive

Peter Cooney served as a sergeant in Company M, 165th Infantry: New York’s 69th Regiment in its First World War designation. The 165th was part of the 42nd “Rainbow” Division, a National Guard division assembled from units across the United States. Its roster places him at 37 West 50th Street, New York City.

Father Francis Duffy, the regiment’s chaplain, names Cooney twice in Father Duffy’s Story. In his account of the 14 October 1918 assault, he writes that Company M lost Sergeant Peter Cooney. A later passage says Cooney “was out with the regiment in ’98.” Those two mentions make him more than a line in a casualty list: they identify an experienced Company M noncommissioned officer remembered by the chaplain who shared the regiment’s war.

14 October 1918

That morning the 165th attacked toward the fortified Côte de Châtillon during the Meuse-Argonne offensive. Duffy described artillery beginning before dawn, the infantry moving at 8:30, Companies I and M leading, shell fire crossing the advance, and German aircraft machine-gunning the lines. Company M went forward on the left toward the Côte de Maldah. By early afternoon, Duffy wrote, half the Third Battalion had been killed or wounded. His sentence about Cooney is brief because the losses were so numerous: “Company M lost Sergeant Peter Cooney.”

The Washington Times later printed his name in its casualty reporting, and the 165th Infantry roster preserves his rank and New York address. The Graves Registration card, however, is the document that carries his story beyond the day he died.

The card

Sgt. Peter Cooney's Graves Registration Service Form 13, showing his service, burials and sister Annie Farley — GRS Form 13 for Sgt. Peter Cooney. Select the image to open the full scan.

Typed copy, line by line
File number	49525
Name	COONEY, Peter
Army serial number	91675
Rank and organization	Sgt.; Co. M, 165th Inf., 42 Div.
Cause and date of death	Killed in action; 10/14/18
Date of burial	11/6/18
Confirmed first burial	Grave 4, isolated grave, Commune Landres et St. Georges, Ardennes; 35 NE E 300.9 N 285.9; cemetery no. C-331
First reburial	Disinterred and reburied 6/10/19 in Grave 118, Section 110, Plot 3, Argonne American Cemetery, Romagne-sous-Montfaucon, Meuse; cemetery no. 1232
Emergency address	Mrs. Annie Farley, sister, 37 W. 50th St., New York City
Later emergency address	Mrs. A. J. Farley (sister), 13 East 63rd St., New York City
Grave identification	Name peg: yes; cross: yes; buried with body: yes; on grave marker: yes
Permanent reburial	9/27/21, Grave 19, Row 37, Block E, Meuse-Argonne American Cemetery
Notification	Emergency address notified of reburial; card notation dated 11/7/23

His journey, in order

Read this numbered list first; it contains all the information shown on the optional map.

1Derrycriff, Islandeady, County Mayo, Ireland
Possible family origin — not proved for this soldier
Approximate location. Derrycriff was the Cooney–Needham family home place, but the archive has not proved that the sergeant was the Peter born there in 1890.
237 West 50th Street, New York City
Home of record in 1918
Approximate location. His 165th Infantry roster and Graves Registration card give this New York address.
3Battlefield grave near Landres-et-Saint-Georges, Ardennes, France
Killed 14 October 1918; first burial recorded in November 1918
This point is worked out from the map reference written on his card, “35 NE E 300.9 N 285.9”, using the French wartime grid the American army used in 1918. It falls about six kilometres from the village, in the Landres-et-Saint-Georges and Côte de Châtillon fighting where his regiment was on 14 October 1918 — so it marks the battlefield rather than the village. He was killed near here and placed in Grave 4, an isolated grave where he fell. Accurate to roughly a kilometre.
4Meuse-Argonne American Cemetery, Romagne-sous-Montfaucon, Meuse, France
10 June 1919 and 27 September 1921
Approximate location. He was first moved to temporary Grave 118, Section 110, Plot 3, then reburied permanently in Grave 19, Row 37, Block E. Both burials were at the same cemetery in Romagne-sous-Montfaucon.

The map could not load. The complete place list is above it.

The pins show approximate places. The line only joins them in time order; it does not prove the route travelled. Cemetery and burial places have red pins.

The line that connects him to us

The emergency-address field names “Mrs. Annie Farley, Sister,” followed by “Mrs. A. J. Farley (sister)” — Andrew J. Farley’s wife, at the West 50th Street address the regimental roster gives as the sergeant’s own. Two civil records call Andrew’s wife Mary Cooney, and the Army also named his other sisters: Bridget Horan of Jersey City and Nellie Cooney, matching this family’s Derrycriff daughters exactly. The one loose thread has since been tied: Anne Cooney married Michael Cawley and was raising his children in Manhattan through these years, so she cannot be Mrs Farley. Mary is.

Settled, and how. Father Duffy wrote at page 282 that the sergeant was “out with the regiment in ’98,” when the Derrycriff child would have been eight, and this archive once treated that single clause as decisive and detached the whole soldier record. That was the wrong order of evidence. The United States Veterans Administration Master Index lists Peter Cooney, born 1890, died 14 October 1918, with his residence place written “Islndeady Castlebar, Ireland” — Islandeady, the parish that contains Derrycriff, spelled by a clerk who had never heard of it. A federal index naming this family’s own Mayo district, alongside the Graves Registration card naming his sister and the roster giving her address as his, settles it. Duffy, writing from memory about hundreds of men, attached an older namesake’s service to the wrong Cooney; the regiment had another, Michael of Company C.

Peter Cooney’s person page · Military context and sources · Document archive