Third Generation

4. Patrick Joseph "PJ" LOONIE was born in 1846 in Ireland. He died on 3 October 1906 at the age of 60 in Colima, MEX. Family lore says that the Loonie brothers ... PJ, Michael, and James were born in Susquehanna County, PA and their mother's maiden name was McElligott. We now believe both assertions to be in error. Multiple census records say they were born in Ireland, though no certain record of their immigration could be found. In fact, it was the Foley great-grandmother whose maiden name was McElligott, and whose family lived in Susquehanna County, PA at the time of the 1870 US Census.

PJ was a civil engineer whose specialty was stone work. We first find PJ in the US in the 1870 census ... a 24-year-old single man born in Ireland and working as a stone mason on a railway construction project in Portland, OR. The 1880 census has him as a contractor on another railway project in Eastland, TX. By 1886, according to tax records, he owned a ranch of over 12,000 acres in Bosque County, Texas. That ranch was 12 miles outside Meridian (south of Fort Worth). Stone cut from a quarry on that ranch was used to build the Bosque County Courthouse in Meridian which was completed in 1886, and other notable buildings. Later PJ participated in the construction of railroads in both Nicaragua and Mexico.

In Mexico, he contracted to build, with his son William, the stone culverts and stone bridge foundations for the railroad from Guadalajara over the crest of the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific port of Manzanillo. In the 30-mile stretch from Tuxpan to Colima, along the gorge of the Tuxpan River, there are sixteen tunnels and a dozen major bridges. He was killed in a landslide during the construction of stone structures for this railroad. Anna E. FOLEY and Patrick Joseph "PJ" LOONIE were married in 1881 in Elmira, NY.

5. Anna E. FOLEY was born on 9 June 1851 in Owego, Tioga Cty, NY. Her NYC death registration gives her birth as 09 June 1854. She died on 17 April 1921 at the age of 69 in New York, NY. She was buried on April 19 in Madonna Cemetery, Fort Lee, NJ. According to the 1880 census, she was a widow (of Michael Loonie) living with her three children (Catherine, James, and Marion) in the same house as her mother and siblings (717 Columbia St. in Elmira) and was employed as a seamstress.

About 1908, as a widow again (of PJ Loonie), she began using "Loomie" as the spelling of the family name. Three of her children, Leo, Raymond, and Cecilia also began to use "Loomie" about that time.

She was called "Little Grandma" by her Loomie grandsons to distinguish her from "Big Grandma Murphy."

Children were:

	i.	William Patrick LOONIE was born on 27 November 1883 in Elmira, NY. He died on 27 October 1963 at the age of 79 in New Jersey. As a youth, he worked with his father, and was in Mexico at the time of his father's death. In 1910 we find a ship's manifest mentioning two young, single "clerks" ... William and his half-brother James ... returning to the U.S. from Brazil via Barbados in a first-class cabin aboard the SS Clement. William married Anna O'Donovan in New York in 1911. They had two sons. His son, William Jr. changed the spelling of his family name to Lonnie. Son Robert did not. According to his 1918 draft registration for World War I, he was employed as an "Inspector" in the NYC Finance Department. In the 1940 US Census, he was still employed as a "Scales Inspector" in the NYC Comptroller's Office.
2	ii.	Leo Stephen LOONIE.
	iii.	Anna LOONIE was born in September 1886 in New York. She died on 13 March 1903 at the age of 16 in Elmira, NY.
	iv.	Raymond LOONIE was born on 27 August 1889 in New York. He died in October 1970 at the age of 81 in Brooklyn, NY. He was an Indian motorcycle dealer. Later he managed a garage near 174th Street and Grand Concourse in the Bronx, NY.
	v.	Cecilia LOONIE was born on 2 June 1891 in Texas. She died in September 1981 at the age of 90 in New York, NY. She never married. She lived with her half-sister, Marion Loonie Hauver, on West 152nd Street in Manhattan, and worked at Gimbel's Department Store.

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