David Fitzgerald

Life

How we know this: His birth and parentage are documented; his marriage, children, migration, and death is recorded here but not yet supported by a document. [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12]

Work and occupation

• labourer — 1925–1926

  [COMPILED] “Fitzgerald David (Cath) lab h200 18th.”

  Citation: Jersey City directory — David and Cath Fitzgerald at 200 18th Street, 1925–1926 [3]

Where they lived

• 1925–1926: 200 18th Street, Jersey City, Hudson County, New Jersey

Use the place list first. The map below is optional.

The pins show approximate places. The line only joins them in time order; it does not prove the route travelled. 4 of the places listed above are recorded only as a county or country, so they are not pinned. Cemetery and burial places have red pins.

Images of these addresses and sites

Insurance maps show a historical footprint, while recent street photographs show the site today. A recent view is not proof that the family’s building survives.

Historical context

These background articles explain the places, work, and events in this entry.

What we still don't know

• Which Cullane locality the birth record identifies
• His marriage to Catherine Condon
• His migration history
• A record of his reported death in Jersey City about 1939
• Search the offline Hudson County Court of Common Pleas Naturalization Records, 1834–1920, control CHDCP003—especially the loose naturalization papers, 1834–1906—for David Fitzgerald.
• [CONDONS AT CULLANE — TESTED, AND LARGELY A DEAD END] He was a Fitzgerald of Cullane, Ballylanders, and married Catherine Condon of Flemingstown, County Cork, at Jersey City. How that meeting happened has never had an explanation. Two Condons turned up living at Cullane itself — Patrick, a bachelor farmer who died there in October 1915, and Margaret, a spinster, in February 1916 — which looked like it might be one. The census closes it, mostly. Both censuses find the household: Patrick as head with his two unmarried sisters Nora and Margaret farming with him, at house 9 in 1901 and house 7 in 1911. All three are entered as born in County Limerick, and so is the second Condon household in the townland. Catherine's people are Cork. A shared surname in one townland is not a connection, and this one is now checked rather than merely assumed. It does not rule out kinship further back than the census reaches, and it leaves the original question exactly where it was: nothing yet explains how a Cullane Fitzgerald met a Flemingstown Condon. The likeliest answer remains that they met in New Jersey, not in Ireland.
• [TWO NORTH CORK PARISHES, AND A MARRIAGE IN NEW JERSEY] David Fitzgerald was born on 28 March 1875, the son of a farmer married at the chapel of Kildorrery five years earlier. Catherine Condon was baptised on 20 April 1874 at Ballindangan, in the parish of Ballydeloughy, and her father's household appears at Ballindangan in Derryvillane. Kildorrery, Ballydeloughy and Derryvillane adjoin one another in north Cork, all within a few miles, and both families were in the Mitchelstown country. The two were born thirteen months apart in neighbouring parishes — and they married in Jersey City. Whether they knew each other in Cork, or whether the two families found each other again in Hudson County among a great many other Cork emigrants, is not something a record will easily settle. But they are Andrew Leahey's great-great-grandparents, and they began about five miles apart.
• Obtain a 1930 census schedule or directory continuity chain before joining the 775 Newark Avenue lead to the strong 200 18th Street David-and-Cath match.
• The family's registration geography is now precise. Cullane, Ballylanders sits in the Galbally registrar's district, County Limerick, inside the Mitchelstown Poor Law Union. Flemingstown, where Catherine Condon was born, is in the same Mitchelstown union. An earlier note in this archive described the Fitzgeralds and Condons as families 'twenty miles apart in different counties' — that overstated the distance. Both were inside one union, which makes the marriage an ordinary local one. Galbally had never been searched before August 2026 because it was absent from the district lists used.
• [LEAD] The 1920 census dates his arrival to 1897 and Catherine's family came separately from Cork. Two passenger manifests are therefore findable in a narrow window, and a post-1906 manifest names the nearest relative left at home — which for David would be his father John Fitzgerald of Cullane South, the man who signed his own name four times.
• His exact death date. The memorial gives April 1939 and no day; a New Jersey death record would give it, and would also name his parents a second time.
• [THE CERTIFICATE WOULD PUSH THIS LINE BACK A GENERATION] New Jersey marriage, 1908, volume 9, page 563. New Jersey returns of this date name both parties' parents, ages, birthplaces and occupations. It is the cheapest way to put a father and mother behind David Fitzgerald, and it would test the Catherine Condon identification at the same time. See BLOCKED_AND_PAID.md.
• [NOT FINDABLE IN THE DIGITISED NEWSPAPERS, AND THE REASON IS COVERAGE] Two separate walls stand between this man and Chronicling America. His life is on the wrong side of the dates: he married in 1908, lived at 200 Eighteenth Street, Jersey City, in 1925–26 and died in April 1939, and Hudson County's newspaper coverage ends in 1906. And the surname is unusable — Fitzgerald returns 8,049 New Jersey hits for 1890–1930, so nothing can be picked out without a qualifier the archive does not have. Searched with OCR variants as well; the variants add manglings like fitzgcrald and fltzgerald but not discrimination. [NEGATIVE, CONTROLLED]

References

1. [1] Irish civil birth register — David Fitzgerald, 28 March 1875, Cullane, Ballylanders, Co. LimerickBack to citation 1a Back to citation 1b
2. [2] Jersey City directory — David Fitzgerald at 775 Newark Avenue, 1902–1903Back to citation 2a Back to citation 2b
3. [3] Jersey City directory — David and Cath Fitzgerald at 200 18th Street, 1925–1926Back to citation 3a Back to citation 3b Back to citation 3c
4. [4] Jersey City municipal schedule — 775 Newark AvenueBack to citation 4
5. [5] Irish civil birth register, David Fitzgerald, 28 March 1875, Cullane, BallylandersBack to citation 5
6. [6] Irish civil birth register, Richard Fitzgerald, 17 April 1872, Cullane, Ballylanders, Galbally districtBack to citation 6
7. [7] Catherine Condon Fitzgerald memorial, Holy Cross CemeteryBack to citation 7
8. [8] David Fitzgerald memorial, Holy Cross CemeteryBack to citation 8
9. [9] Rejected Patrick Condon death candidate — 22 October 1915, Cullane, Ballylanders, Co. LimerickBack to citation 9
10. [10] Census of Ireland 1901 and 1911 — the Condon households of Cullane, Ballylanders, Co. LimerickBack to citation 10
11. [11] New Jersey Marriage Index, Brides, 1904–1909, A–C — Condon, CatherineBack to citation 11a Back to citation 11b
12. [12] Chronicling America coverage audit for this family's places, 12 August 2026Back to citation 12

See also

• Return to the Fitzgerald branch
• See this family in the full tree
• Browse all original records