Michael McLaughlin: A Civil War Navy Engineer's Road to St. Paul's

The McLaughlin family stone at St. Paul's. NPS.

The Civil War changed Michael McLaughlin's life in several ways.

From Ireland to the Navy

• Immigrant: born in Ireland, he came to Massachusetts as a teenager in the 1850s and, like many immigrants in seaboard cities, worked in shipyards and on the docks, gaining the mechanical skills the Navy would need.
• Engineer: enlisting in April 1862, Assistant Engineer McLaughlin helped keep the steam engine of the newly launched 803-ton gunboat Genesee running as it patrolled the blockade in the North Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico under Admiral David Farragut.
• Under fire: during the pivotal 1863 campaign on the Mississippi, working in brutal heat below deck, he survived when the 209-foot steamer was badly damaged and many of its crew were hit running past the Confederate batteries at Port Hudson.

New York

Discharged in New York, he stayed in the nation's largest city, with its large Irish-American community. His wartime skills won him steady, well-paid work with the Ward Steamship line for decades — and New York led him to St. Paul's.

A mixed marriage

He married Pauline Tigh, who had been baptized at St. Paul's. It was an unusual match for the 19th century: he was Catholic, she Protestant, and family tradition recalls that marrying outside her faith caused serious strain with her family.

The couple had a long marriage and raised a large family in Brooklyn. Despite the Tighs' rejection — and perhaps because of his own immigrant roots — Michael embraced Pauline's heritage, taking over the Tigh family plot in the St. Paul's cemetery. Three of their children, who died young in the 1870s and 1880s, were buried there.

Rest

When McLaughlin died in 1912, at 75, Pauline bought another plot behind the church and raised a large granite monument honoring his service under Admiral Farragut. She was buried beside him 20 years later.

Sources

Based on "The Long road of a Civil War sailor to St. Paul's Church," St. Paul's Church National Historic Site, National Park Service; a work of the United States government in the public domain. The original spells the ship Genesse; it was the USS Genesee.