Letter from J. F. Stokes (St. Patrick's, Dundalk) to Mrs. J. P. Walker, June 5, 1944
Book 1, Page 21 ·1762–1944
Transcription
A typewritten letter on plain paper, folded into quarters. At the upper left, printed vertically: PHONE: 184. At the upper right, the printed letterhead in script:
St. Patrick’s,
Dundalk,
Co. Louth.
Below the letterhead, the typed date:
5th June, 1944.
The inside address:
Mrs. J. P. Walker,
3657 Richmond Street,
Jacksonville, Florida,
U.S.A.
The body of the letter:
Dear Mr. Walker, [sic — the inside address gives ‘Mrs. J. P. Walker’, but the typist of the letter mis-rendered the salutation as ‘Mr.’, evidently treating ‘J. P.’ as the recipient’s initials]
In reply to your letter I wish to state that our Baptismal records do not start till 1798, and therefore we would have no record of the Baptism of Christopher Fitzsimons or Cashel Fitzsimons.
There are three families of the name of Fitzsimons at present residing in Dundalk, but none of them have any recollection of their ancestors back as far as 1762.
Regretting that I cannot give you the information desired.
I remain, dear Mrs. Walker,
Very sincerely yours,
J. F. Stokes Adm. (signed in ink)
AI Notes
A typewritten letter on plain paper from J. F. Stokes, Adm., of St. Patrick’s, Dundalk, County Louth, Ireland, dated 5 June 1944, to Mrs. J. P. Walker at 3657 Richmond Street, Jacksonville, Florida. Stokes replies that the parish’s baptismal records do not start until 1798 and so contain no record of the baptism of Christopher Fitzsimons or Cashel Fitzsimons. He notes three Fitzsimons families currently in Dundalk but none can trace ancestors as far back as 1762. The phrase ‘PHONE: 184’ is printed vertically at the upper left of the sheet. The salutation reads ‘Dear Mr. Walker,’ (not Mrs.) — evidently the typist mis-treated ‘J. P.’ as the recipient’s own initials; the source ‘Mr.’ is preserved in the body with an editorial [sic]. The signature ‘J. F. Stokes Adm.’ identifies Stokes as the parish administrator at St. Patrick’s, Dundalk (the same Dundalk where Christopher FitzSimons the emigrant was born in 1762). ‘Fitzsimons’ is the spelling Stokes uses throughout, matching the surviving Irish-side variant.
This 1944 letter is the only direct reply the album preserves from Dundalk, Christopher the emigrant’s 1762 birthplace. St. Patrick’s baptismal register beginning only in 1798 ruled out documentation of Christopher’s actual baptism (he was 36 when the register opened). The three Fitzsimons families Father Stokes named as still resident in Dundalk in 1944 were unable to trace ancestry as far back as the 18th-century Catholic-merchant gentry line that produced the Charleston emigrant. The letter reached Mrs. J. P. Walker in wartime Jacksonville under the British censorship regime active throughout WWII — the same regime that examined the envelope on page 004.