My great-great grandfather Michael J. Driscoll was born somewhere in County Cork on September 6, 1834 to Daniel Driscoll and Johanna Downey. The only information I have on his life in Ireland was a story he told his grandson that he went to school for one day at age 5, decided they weren't teaching anything he thought was worth knowing, and went to work the next day hauling water to men working in the quarry. He emigrated to the U.S. in 1868, supposedly arriving in Boston, and settled in Verplanck, New York, a small town in Westchester county next to Peekskill. He married Mary Gorman from Limerick a year later. He worked in the local brickyards until he was in his 70s and died in 1914 at age 80.

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