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Note: Ella Alice Kinlen is alleged to have been a twin to John F. Kinlen, but the 1900 census shows a difference of 4 years, John admitting to a birth date of Jan 1864, Ella to Jan 1868. At the 1880 census they are both shown as age 15, supporting their having been twins; Ella apparently "adjusted" her age a few years by 1900. According to her granddaughter, Mary Ethel O'Keefe Rafferty, Ella and her sister Catherine M. "Katie" Kinlen graduated from a Catholic girls finishing school in Latrobe, PA.
She married John C. Gallagher in 1887 and had a difficult life, by all accounts. She lost two young children to scarlet fever some time before 1900 and also lost another, unnamed child at birth. Her husband left her around 1900 (see Notes: John C. Gallagher) and he died in 1901. In the 1900 census she is shown as mother of 5 children, only two of whom were alive in 1900. In November, 1901 at the time of her husband's funeral, she was living at 2013 Webster St, Pittsburgh. His obituary refers to her as Ellen A. "Kinlan" Gallagher.
Sometime after her husband's death, Ella and her 2 daughters moved to the home of her mother (her father being deceased by the time) and unmarried sister, Catherine "Katie" M. Kinlen. Ella and Katie ran a business making wedding apparel - Ella made the gowns and Katie the hats, according to Mary Ethel O'Keefe Rafferty.
Ella was good friends with Rose Anne Kane McCrory; Mary Ethel Rafferty recalls her mother's friend that they called "Aunt Rose." This Rose's daughter, Rose Mary, later married Charles Houlihan and became sister-in-law to Ella's daughter Kathryn who married Charles' brother, John J. "Joe" Houlihan. Mary Ethel recalls staying with Rose Mary & Charles Houlihan's daughters - Dorothy, Rosemary and Helen - at their grandmother's house where they lived on the second floor until the elder Rose McCrory passed away.
Ella and the 2 girls moved to Bennett St., in the Homewood section of Pittsburgh, living in a row house there. She supported her two daughters with her sewing work until she slipped & fell outside the Jos. Horne Department Store in Pittsburgh and injured her neck. She was confined later to a wheelchair. She died of unknown causes when her daughters were still in their teens.
Grandson Francis X. Houlihan recalls seeing a photograph when she was in a wheelchair. She died of cancer and is buried at Calvary Cemetery, Pittsburgh, PA. - grave 2, lot no. 157, Section E, with her husband. Her burial took place 24 Aug. 1915; she would have been either 47 or 51. Her two children that died of scarlet fever (James and Mary) and an infant, likely stillborn, are buried in grave 1, along with John J. Houlihan, Jr (her grandson) and her daughter, Kathryn Gallagher Houlihan (d. 1950). Grave 3 is unused. On 19 April 1998 I visited this burial plot and found only one marker at the site, that of daughter Kathryn (Gallagher) Houlihan. A large, pale gray stone cemetery marker, level with the ground, marks the ownership of the entire plot and is engraved "John C. Gallagher."
Her death certificate indicates that she died from carcinoma of the gall bladder and stomach.
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