John Dwyer

Father of Cornelius (“Con”) Dwyer: an Irish labourer who followed the work. With his wife Mary Ryan: about 1848 at Canajoharie, New York; about 1851-1854 in Ohio; about 1853-1855 at Moriah, Essex County, as the iron mines at Mineville opened; in 1860 and 1870 at Black Brook, Clinton County, the iron-works town of the J. & J. Rogers company; in 1875 at Cohoes, the cotton-mill town, with two young Irish women boarding, Anne Ryan and Hanora Cahill; and by 1880 farming at Birch Cooley Township, Renville County, Minnesota, next door to the Tisdells, whose daughter Martha married his son Cornelius. In 1885 he and Mary, 71 and 62, were at Bandon Township (record); after that nothing is known.

Two John Dwyers merged. the Ancestry tree, and the FamilySearch tree, join him to a different man: John Dwyer of Cannon Lake and Wells Township, Rice County, husband of Mary (Shanahan), who was in Waseca County in 1860 when this John was at Black Brook, and who died at Wells in 1895 and is buried at Faribault. Their children were born in alternating years in two states. The Rice County man’s death, burial and children, the name “Frederick,” and an 1851 Lancashire census all belong to him or to others, not to Cornelius’s father; so do nine of the seventeen children the tree gives John and Mary, who are left out here (see research/decisions.md).

The Kilkenny claim. The trees make him the John baptized at Gowran, Co. Kilkenny, on 15 Aug 1816, son of Martin Dwyer and Mary Walsh. The baptism is real, but nothing ties it to either American John Dwyer beyond the name, one of the commonest in Kilkenny and Tipperary. It is not used here.

Open questions

• His death and burial, after 1885, in Renville County.
• His origin in Ireland. The Catholic baptisms of his children (Canajoharie 1848, Moriah or Port Henry about 1853-55, Au Sable Forks or Keeseville 1856-62, Cornelius included) would name sponsors, the best route to a county.