Page 18 - Always Virginia

6 Virginia Day Fritscher

For a time after his arrival young [Bartholomew]
Corbitt [sic] worked as a farm hand, cut cord wood [sold
to steamboats] and did various odd jobs such as he could
find to do, carefully hoarding his resources preparatory to
securing for himself a home. He finally bought one hun-
dred and sixty acres of the land he now occupies, which was
covered with timber and in the wild condition in which it
had been left by the aborigines. He was obliged to do the
pioneer work of clearing the place, and for several years
after he settled thereon he occupied a little shanty, 10x12
feet, made of logs with a clapboard roof. He lived in this
dwelling until he was able to build a better house. He added
to his estate as his affairs prospered and now owns two
hundred and eighty-five acres which he has brought to a
firm condition as regards its tillage and improvement. Mr.
Corbitt [sic] has served as School Director with credit to
himself and his constituents. In politics he is a Democrat
and in religion a Catholic. He has acquired a leading place
among the Irish-American citizens of Hamburg Precinct,
having gained the confidence of the business community
by his honesty and industry, and the respect of all who
admire sturdy enterprise, thrift and a law abiding spirit.

Not long after Bartholomew, Junior’s arrival, the bachelor
brothers decided that in the hard-work prosperity of their middle-
age, having built their “better houses,” they should each marry
“a nice Irish girl” as a helpmate. According to the 1860 census,
87,563 Irish immigrated to Illinois where they were five percent
of the population and where there were 92,000 more men than
women. Bartholomew, age 39 or 40, traveled to the Kerry Patch
neighborhood in St. Louis, just north of the present Convention
Center, where he was introduced to Mary Lynch, age 20, who
was born thirty miles from Fethard in Waterford, and whose fa-
ther, John (Jack) Lynch, was a sailor who drowned in Lake Erie,
leaving her with a maiden aunt. The name “Lynch,” from Clan