Eight generations live in this archive. The earliest is a Daniel Vaughan of Cloonusker, Co. Clare — a name preserved on the pedigree chart, with no occupation, no date, and no wife's name recorded. The latest were born at the turn of the millennium — Shane in 1989, then Eliesha, Rhiannon, Adam, Jessica, and Jason, finishing with Jason in 2000 — six grandchildren of a Michael Vaughan and an Angela Williams. Between the oldest and the youngest: seventeen children born at Quarry Road in Limerick, eight Atlantic crossings recorded by ship and date, four sister-branches that stayed in Limerick, and a family that has not run out.

None of the narrative here is invented. Dates come from Mt St Lawrence cemetery registers, 1901 and 1911 Irish census returns, the descendant reports compiled by Thomas Sullivan Jr, Daniel Maloney, and Malachy Ryan in 2000 (expanded 2014 by Ellen Robinson, Valerie Woods, Jessica Bowslaugh), and — wherever the voice feels close and detailed — from the notebook the family itself kept. Where a date, a church, or a name is still uncertain, this page says so.

Jeremiah "Darby" Vaughan(~1795–) was born around 1795 in Cloonusker, County Clare⁹. He married Bridget Minogue(~1797–), born there about 1797⁹. Both died in Limerick City — by the time their graves were dug, the family had left the countryside for good.

Jeremiah's father, the first Vaughan we can still name, was also a Daniel, born in Cloonusker — no date, no stone, just the name on a pedigree chart compiled a century and a half later⁹. Bridget's father was a Patrick Minogue, also of Cloonusker. Two families, one townland, one generation out.

On the opposite side of the oldest line sit Ellen McMahon's people — the family Mick would later marry into. Her parents were James McMahon (1823–1862) and Mary Dwyer (b. ~1825)⁹. James died in 1862 — two years before Ireland's civil registration began, so his death record is parish-only. Ellen's paternal grandparents were James McMahon Sr and Mary Moloney, both born around 1790 in Limerick. Four McMahon / Moloney / Dwyer names across two generations — preserved on the 2000 descendant chart, otherwise lost.

Ellen's own generation, by contrast, is no longer skeletal. Aoife Ryan of Limerick Genealogy, commissioned in 2013 by the cousin Ellen Robinson — a Vaughan descendant living in the United States who had been piecing together the same puzzle — took the St. Patrick's parish register off microfilm and rebuilt Ellen's immediate family from primary record²⁵. James McMahon and Mary Dwyer married on Saturday the 7th of May 1842 at St. Patrick's, Fr. Matt O'Connor officiating, Patrick Arthur and John Hickey witnesses²⁵. Ten children followed between 1842 and 1862, nine of them Ellen's siblings: the first Michael McMahon (1842) died in infancy, and a second boy, Michael McMahon, baptised three years later, was named in his memory. Mary McMahon, Thomas McMahon, Patrick McMahon, and Bridget McMahon followed in turn. An earlier Ellen McMahon (1854) did not live past infancy; our Ellen was baptised on Friday the 2nd of January 1857 and named for the lost elder sister²⁵. James McMahon (1859) arrived two years later, and Martin McMahon, the youngest, in January 1862 — seven months before their father was dead at Barrington's Hospital in Limerick. Park (Irish An Pháirc, “the field”), a fishing area on the banks of the Abbey River north of the city, was the family address through all of it.

Jeremiah and Bridget's son Daniel Vaughan(~1815–1867), born about 1815 in Limerick City, married Bridget Fitzgerald(1820–1885) — born 1820 in the same city — at St Munchin's Church on the 17th of January 1839¹³. Rev. M McCormack witnessed the register, with three men whose names survive alongside theirs: Martin Fitzgerald, Timothy Clancy, Patrick Halloran¹³.

Bridget died on the 6th of May 1885 and was buried in Mt St Lawrence, plot 126 Sa, the day after¹. Daniel had died eighteen years before her, on the 10th of March 1867, also in Limerick. Ten children between them — ten that we know of, a Clare researcher's chart recorded three quarters of a century later⁹ — all of whom stayed in Limerick (the emigrations came in the next generation). One became the carrier whose family this story is actually about. Four daughters stayed in the city and married into branches that still carry the line.

Mick worked as a carrier — the 1911 census word for a horse-and-cart haulier² — and lived his whole life at the Quarry Road address he was born in. In 1911 that address was recorded as House 34 Quarry Road, Thomondgate, on the north bank of the Shannon². He died there on the 12th of February 1919, aged sixty-nine^1·Go9, and was buried in plot Go9 at Mt St Lawrence Cemetery — the grave his son Michael erected for him¹ and that went on to hold eleven of the family by the end of the century¹.

Ellen McMahon came from Park, Limerick. Descendant records place her birth in 1857⁹; the 1901 Irish Census recorded her age as 46, implying 1854–55². Either date is within the ±2-year uncertainty the archive keeps flagged for her. She died on Christmas Eve 1921 at 41 Quarry Road — the family remembered the address as 41; the 1911 census had recorded it as House 34² — two and a half years after Mick, aged sixty-four on the Mt St Lawrence headstone¹. Her oldest surviving daughter was on the other side of the Atlantic by then.

The children, in order of birth, are listed below. They are the generation that split in two. Eight of them crossed the Atlantic; the others stayed within a mile of the Shannon. Three never made it through childhood.

Bridget Vaughan married Patrick Sheahan⁹. Ten Sheahan children are named on the descendant chart. Hanora Vaughan married Stephen McNamara, born around 1874, and at least ten McNamara children are recorded⁹. Margaret Vaughan married Michael Lynch; the Lynch branch is the smallest — the descendant chart names three children, only one of whom (John Lynch) has made it into this archive so far. Ellen Vaughan (the older one, not her niece Nellie) married James McInerney. The McInerney branch is the largest on record: fourteen children⁹.

Mick's older brother Jeremiah Vaughan Jr, named for the great-grandfather in Cloonusker, left no recorded marriage; nor did his brother John, nor his sister Catherine. Two older Marys⁹ are listed with no dates at all — it is likely the first died in infancy and the second was named after her.

Two other Mary Vaughans appear on Mick's generation of the descendant chart — Mary (elder) and Mary (younger) — recorded without dates. Both likely died in childhood given the name re-use pattern common in the period; neither has a marriage or descendants on record. The archive carries them as the ambiguous entries they are.

The named children per branch, as the 2000 descendant chart recorded them, follow below. Ages and birth years are missing from the original source for almost every one of these children; this is the earliest recorded layer of the collateral branches, and most of what followed is still unwritten.

These are the eight crossings the archive has by name and date⁹. Seven landed at Ellis Island; the first landed at Boston. The sisters went out ahead of the brothers — Agnes, Nellie, Mary all across the water before a brother followed.

Most of them stayed in America — whether any of the eight ever returned to Ireland, even briefly, is not recorded in the archive. John was dead within fourteen years of landing, in Manhattan in October 1924 aged thirty-three⁴. Nora lived into 1991¹⁰ — she and her husband William are buried in the United States, not in the Limerick Lysaght plots that round-one research briefly conflated with them³¹.

Agnes (Bridget) Vaughan married Thomas Sullivan(1866–1925) in Manhattan on the 22nd of February 1924⁶. The Sullivan branch grew there and drove much of the original 2000 descendant report — Thomas Sullivan Jr. compiled it⁹. He was one of three named children of Agnes and Thomas: Mary Sullivan, Thomas Jr., and Kathleen Sullivan, all raised in the Sullivan apartment at 112th Street and Broadway in upper Manhattan — their mother was known as Nana Sullivan to her American descendants¹².The family notebook also records a second Upper West Side address — 73 West 89th Street — tied to one of the Vaughan sisters a couple of blocks south of the Sullivans' place¹¹.Tommy Jr. went off to the Second World War in uniform; a photograph of him and his mother on the rooftop of that building, his daughter's own photograph, survived into the Collins extended-family Facebook group seventy-odd years later¹². Ellen “Nellie” Vaughan had crossed first — S.S. Campania, 19 April 1902, age 18 at arrival¹⁷. She then married John Maloney(1883–1932) in Manhattan on the 2nd of February 1908³. Their son Daniel Moloney(1908–) was born in NYC later that year — and appears aged 2 in the 1911 Irish Census at 34 Quarry Road, visiting his grandparents back in Limerick². He is the first American-born Vaughan-line descendant on record. The Maloney line in Manhattan ran into the research team fifty years later. Mary Vaughan (b.1886) followed three years later — S.S. Celtic, 2 April 1905, age 18²⁶ — and married William Browne(1878–1943) in Brooklyn⁹. Margaret “Peg” Vaughan married Stephen Patrick Ryan(1884–after 1940) — ceremony 28 December 1918 in Manhattan, civil cert filed as #12 of all Manhattan marriages in 1919⁵ — another Manhattan household, one of two unrelated Ryan branches that come from two different Vaughan daughters. The couple later appear at 2589 Bedford Avenue in Brooklyn's Flatbush, the Ryan household linked to Peg in the archive notes.

John Vaughan — the only brother to cross and marry in America — married Annie M. T. Dowd(1890–~1953) at St Patrick's Church, Brooklyn on the 12th of April 1914⁴¹⁴. The wedding fell on John's 23rd birthday. Annie was born 20 April 1890 on Upper Careys Rd, Limerick¹⁴; by the time her father Michael O'Dowd died in 1906 the family was at 17 Quarry Road, the same Thomondgate street the Vaughans lived on⁸. John and Annie were Limerick neighbours before they were Brooklyn spouses. John died in Manhattan in 1924, aged thirty-three; Annie remarried a William Dower in 1930⁸. John and Annie had four children per the descendant report; the archive does not yet hold their individual records and they are one of the targets of the open-contribution form. Christina Vaughan crossed on the S.S. Republic, 9 November 1924, age 28³⁰ and married Thomas O'Connell(1897–1948) in New York⁹. Hanoria “Nora” Vaughan married William Lysaght(1894–1945) on the 27th of September 1924 at St Munchin's Church, Limerick — before her 1928 emigration, not after¹⁴. They emigrated together; the couple are buried in the United States, not in Limerick. Through her daughter the line expanded into the Robinson, Collins and Valentine branches¹⁰. Hannah Vaughan crossed on the S.S. Cedric, 3 April 1923, age 22²⁹ and married John Glynn in NYC — Hannah lived a long life, though her exact death year is still missing.

Daniel Vaughan, the oldest son, married Mary Charley(1887–1929) on the 5th of November 1904 at the Cathedral, Limerick¹⁴. Daniel and Mary had seven children between 1905 and 1918 — three of them buried in infancy within the first three years. He died at 61 New Road, Thomondgate — a few streets from the house he was born in — on 12 April 1933, aged 53. The surviving children are listed in Table 6. Patrick married Margaret Benson(1883–1964) and built the Redgate side of the family. Patrick died on the 10th of April 1939, aged 53, and was buried with his parents in the Go9 family plot¹. Michael Vaughan — named for his father, the second of that name in the generation — married Bridget Burke(–1979) and kept 41 Quarry Road going; he died at St John's Hospital aged 54¹. His widow Bridget outlived him by thirty years, buried Go9 on the 18th of September 1979¹.

Katherine "Katie" married James Ryan(1893–1972) — the second Ryan marriage in the family, completely unrelated to Peg's Manhattan Ryan⁹. Kirwin and Sherlock surnames have been reported by family informants as descending from this Limerick Ryan line, but none of those descendants is yet in the archive and the link is unsourced in primary records. Martin married Margaret Tobin(1905–after 1930) in Manhattan on the 30th of April 1927⁷ — he emigrated too, contrary to the earlier read of him as Limerick-only. The Foley surname has now been traced to his daughter Mary Vaughan Foley Hamilton(1928–2022), born Manhattan 1928, married first a Foley and later a Hamilton, and died on the 19th of April 2022, the day before her 94th birthday¹². Her death notice passed through the Collins extended-family Facebook group, where Ellen Robinson named the lineage directly: daughter of Martin, granddaughter of Mick and Ellen. Bagatta, the other surname reported in the 2014 descendant chart, is still unverified. And Jimmy — the youngest — has his own chapter.

Two of the four surviving children married in the inter-war years: Michael (1909–1970) to Margaret "Madge" Fitzpatrick(–1962), and Paul (1918–1992) to Angela McSweeney(–1993). Paul and Angela had no children recorded; Michael and Madge had eight — the table that follows.

With Margaret Lowe, Jimmy had six children across the 1930s — Mary Ellen "Myra" Vaughan, Kathleen "Kay" Vaughan, Josephine "Josie" Vaughan, Rita Vaughan, Michael Vaughan and Agnes Vaughan⁹. Each of the daughters married a Limerick man and raised a family there. Myra married Michael "Mick" Cronin(1930–2016) (four children). Kay married Sean Hayes(1933–) (three). Josie married Thomas McNallay (nine — the largest of the post-war cohort). Rita married Harry Brambles — no children; the only one of the six whose line did not continue. Agnes married Ultan Devine (seven children). Michael (1940–2026) had his own chapter; his one son went on to have six of his own. Myra lived to 2023.

After Margaret's death, Jimmy married Charlotte Kirkland (d. 1987). They had one son — Seamus Vaughan, born 1946¹⁰. Seamus's four sons run parallel to his half-brother Michael (b.1940) (Jimmy's fifth child with Margaret Lowe); between the two half-brothers they account for the generation in Chapter 9. Jimmy himself died on the 6th of November 1975, buried Go9¹.

James "Jimmy"1905–1975

Margaret Lowe?–1939

CKCharlotte Kirkland–1987

SVSeamus Vaughan1946–

Michael Vaughan (1940–2026) — the fifth child of Jimmy and Margaret Lowe; the Michael this archive was compiled for — married Veronica O'Donoghue(1944–2004)¹⁰. Michael died on the 11th of January 2026¹². Their son, also called Michael (Michael Jr. in this archive to keep him apart from his grandfather, his father, and his great-grandfather), married Angela Williams¹². Their six children — born over eleven years between 1989 and 2000 — are Michael Sr.'s grandchildren:

Michael Vaughan1940–2026

Veronica O'Donoghue1944–2004

MJMichael Vaughan Jr.1963–

AWAngela Williams

SVShane Vaughan1989–

EVEliesha Vaughan1991–

RVRhiannon Vaughan1993–

AVAdam Vaughan1995–

JVJessica Vaughan1998–

JVJason Vaughan2000–

Jimmy's son by Charlotte, Seamus Vaughan, married Dolores Sheehan(1949–)¹⁰. They had four sons in Limerick: Anthony Vaughan, James Vaughan, Michael Vaughan, and Christopher Vaughan. Christopher confirmed his own birth year — 1983 — via a community submission in April 2026¹², completing the sibling run: Anthony (1974), James (1977), Michael (1980), Christopher (1983).

Her older sister Eliesha Vaughan, the second of the six, had begun her own family earlier and at greater scale. With John Mongan(1990–) (son of Martin Mongan and Nora McCarthy) she had eight children between 2010 and 2024, all in Limerick. In order:

Eliesha filed the record through the same /contribute form her sister used, a day apart¹². Together Rhiannon's three and Eliesha's eight make eleven great-grandchildren of Michael Sr. recorded so far. Shane's line is still to be written in. The “Most recently added” block below will keep showing new additions as they come in; the curator will weave them into this chapter over time.

This archive was compiled by people who are not here anymore. Thomas Sullivan Jr. and the two Daniel Maloneys gathered what they could in 2000. Ellen Robinson and Valerie Woods and Jessica Bowslaugh pushed it further in 2014. Their work stops roughly where the 20th century stops. It does not include the two-year-old Vaughan somebody in this family is currently carrying around a kitchen in Limerick or Queens or somewhere in between.

If you're reading this and a name is missing — yours, your child's, your parent's, your aunt who nobody wrote down — the archive is open. A form follows. Enough detail to be sure; not so much that it's a chore. The family is still the editor.