A scandalous voyage to America
Fr. Dominick O'Grady and Mollie Gilmartin Pt. 1
Stipendium peccati mors est (the wages of sin is death) -Romans 6:23
“May God assist me to do what is right, no matter what happens after,” wrote Fr. Dominick O’Grady, a young Catholic priest, in his diary in December 1893 during his return voyage to Ireland after a controversial trip to America.
The trip to America
In November 1893, Fr. O’Grady sailed to America from his home in County Sligo, Ireland, with a beautiful nineteen year old girl, also from Sligo, Mary “Mollie” Gilmartin. The two had become the talk of their town in Ireland when rumors began to swirl that they were involved romantically.
Fr. O’Grady had pale violet eyes, chestnut hair, medium complexion, and a slender build. He kept a journal of his travels with Mollie from New York to their eventual arrival in Chicago. At one point while they were traveling through New York, O’Grady writes in his diary that he and Mollie had decided to quench what they had between them forever and that they were both happy at the time in their decision to do so.
A later journal entry of Fr. O’Grady states:
“Traveled through New York to Detroit, traveled as brother and sister but lived as &C.” (note: &C historically was an abbreviation for et cetera)
The departure of Fr. O’Grady
In Chicago, they met with Mollie’s brother, Fr. Michael. According to Fr. Michael, Mollie had always wanted to come to America where both he and another brother John, of Baltimore, lived, but she had not made Fr. Michael aware that she would be coming over prior to her arrival. Once Fr. Michael learned that O’Grady assisted her in escaping Ireland, he forbade further contact between the two.
Fr. Michael sent Mollie to Cincinnati, Ohio, with a letter for Mrs. Tibbles, a relative whose house she would stay at.
Fr. O’Grady would proceed to New York to return to his home in Sligo aboard the Etruria. During his return voyage to Ireland, Fr. O’Grady noted in his journal that he had a dream about his mother pleading and crying to him. He said, “I’ll never forget this dream, it impressed me so much, and I feel inclined ever since to change my life altogether, as this may be a really providential thing.”
Fr. O’Grady returns to America
Though Fr. O’Grady’s dream urged him to turn away from temptation, soon after his departure to Ireland, he boarded a steamer back to America, and ended up in Cincinnati where Mollie now lived.
The woman who she lived with, Mrs. Tibbles, claimed that there was no love between the two, and that Mollie was insistent that he leave when he showed up at their house. However, the description of the account of her daughter tells a bit of a different story: “She always seemed to be trying to shield Father O’Grady who was known as Mr. Reed. She was shielding him because she did not want anyone to know that a priest was making love to her.”
One Saturday night, Mollie was attending a dramatization of Goethe’s Faust with friends, and Fr. O’Grady showed up at the event. The plot of Faust, a story about a pact between a man of good reputation and the devil and the temptation and fall of a morally pure girl named Marguerite, would parallel the ongoing scandal of the two as well as foreshadow the dark turn that their story would soon take when their passions came to a dangerous peak.
Part 2 of Father O’Grady and Mollie Gilmartin will tell the story of this shocking event.
Source:
“The Priest: Penitent and Despairing,” The Cincinnati Enquirer, Friday April 27, 1894
Travelled as brother and sister but lived as et cetera reminds me of lady in the streets but freak in the sheets lol, I wonder what he really meant by it though...this story takes an awful turn from here. There will also be cool cemeteries involved ;).
I can't believe you've left us hanging!! Fascinating story.