The Gallaghers of Ballinrobe

Uncle Pat and Father-in-Law Ange Rodriguez built 'a beautiful summer cottage' in Ortley Beach, N.J. It was the first
of two houses they built together. The photos are from 1967 of a house they moved to across from the original cottage.
still talk about those times with wonderful memories.
“After I got married, I carried the Sunday ritual to my home
and all were welcomed,” she says.
Uncle Pat and his father-in-law built two houses
together from the ground up – the first at the New Jersey
shore and the second in the Bustleton section of Northeast
Philadelphia.
They would work in their spare time after their
jobs and on weekends. Uncle Pat bought an old bread truck
that they would drive to the lumber yard, brickyard or
plumbing-supply store, load it up and trundle back to the
job site. They would do everything, except for the finish
work on the masonry. Uncle Pat and Ange would dig and
set the cinderblock for the foundation. They were skilled
carpenters and would do the framing. Likewise, they would
put in all the plumbing and electric lines. They would even
install the cabinetry and fixtures, as well as take care of the
roofing.
At some point, Aunt Catherine’s mother and
stepfather had purchased a house in Ortley Beach, a barrier
island at the Jersey Shore near Toms River. The house had a
vacant lot next to it that Uncle Pat bought as the site for his
first housing project. Much of the inside was knotty pine.
Mary Kathryn remembers the house as gorgeous. “A
beautiful summer cottage,” she called it. Ange later bought
a larger house across the street, and both he and Uncle Pat
sold their smaller cottages. In his daughter’s eyes, the new
house may have had more room, but it wasn’t half as cute
or charming as the one her father built. In 1962, the “Ash
Wednesday” storm ravaged the Atlantic Coast, including
Ortley Beach. By this time Uncle Pat’s family was in the
Pat and Ange pause for a moment while building his
family's home in Bustleton in the early to mid-1950s.
larger house across the street from the old cottage. It did
not sustain any damage, but the rest of the community was
not so lucky that March. The beach was a total disaster in
the wake of the three-day nor’easter, one of the largest of
the century. Pieces of houses were everywhere; roofs were
completely ripped off. Mary Kathryn’s most vivid memory
of the storm is of a toilet sitting in the sand in the middle of
the beach.
The second house Uncle Pat and Ange built
together was on Foster Street in Bustleton. Mary Kathryn
thinks the family lived there from her days in seventh to
11th grade, probably 1955 until 1959. They moved to
Glendale Street in 1960, when she was a senior in high
school. She attended St. Hubert’s High School for girls on
Torresdale Avenue. Her cousin Owen Gallagher would
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