The Gallaghers of Ballinrobe

NOT AN ENDING
Uncle Jim and Aunt Catherine had three children:
Pat Gallagher would work 30 years for the Postal
Service, most of the time in the Engineering Unit of the
Delaware Mail Processing plant, where he worked as
manager. He married Veronica (Ronnie) Roehsler on Oct.
20, 2000, at St. Thomas Church in Wilmington. They have
one son, James.
Owen Gallagher would work for 33 years at The
Press of Atlantic City in South Jersey as a writer and editor.
He married Lynn Keough, of Philadelphia, on April 23,
1993, at St. Thomas Church in Wilmington. They have one
daughter, Catherine, adopted from China.
Margaret Gallagher would work at Macy’s in the
Christiana Mall, managing the Housewares and Jewelry
departments. She married Richard Burkholder on Sept. 14,
1985, at St. Thomas Church. They had three daughters:
Jessica, Angela and Catherine. Angie married Jason
Chandler and they have one daughter, Poppy. Catie married
Drew Bergstresser. Margaret and Rick divorced in the late
1990s and she has been with Curt Robinson since.
CATHERINE HOOPES' FAMILY
Aunt Catherine’s parents were Bayard
Aloysius Hoopes and Margaret May. Her grandparents
on her father’s side were Jefferson Hoopes and Jane
Eastburn. On her mother’s side, they were George May
and Catherine “Katie” Gormley. Each family had a
unique and interesting history, some English, some
Irish, but all were from the British Isles. Some arrived
in America much sooner than others.
The first relatives to immigrate were the
Hoopes family, who came to the Delaware area in
1683 with William Penn and other Quakers. The
Eastburns, also of the Society of Friends in England,
arrived in Philadelphia from Yorkshire England in
1713. On Aunt Catherine’s mother’s side, the
Gormleys came to the Hockessin area from County
Tyrone, Ireland, about 1882, while the Mays arrived
from Wales around 1890.
Bayard Hoopes was born Aug. 7, 1896, in
Kaimensi, Del., near Stanton. His father, Jefferson
Hoopes, passed away when Bayard was only 8 years
old. Bayard graduated from high school in 1918,
possibly Salesianum. Aunt Catherine always said the
clergy in school called her father Aloysius. To our
generation of Aunt Catherine’s family, he was known
as Pop-Pop and his wife as Mom-Mom.
Immediately after high school graduation,
when Pop-Pop was 21, he had to register for the army
as World War I dragged on in Europe. In August 1918,
he reported to Camp Meade in Maryland. Three of
Pop-Pop’s future wife Margaret May’s cousins
(Charles, Francis and Joe Gormley) also served. All
four Hockessin residents were awarded the Victory
Medal on July 9, 1920.
Pop-Pop held many jobs during his life. One
of his first was at an ice station in Wilmington, around
Aunt Catherine’s family soon after the end of World
War II: her parents Bayard and Margaret (May)
Hoopes, with their other children George, left, Ann
and Franny, who had been a POW during the war.
Lancaster Avenue and Union Street. By the time he
married Mom-Mom, he worked for the Marshall
Brothers in their paper mill in the village of Yorklyn,
where the mills had such a tight grip on the town that
they owned two-thirds of the homes. Yorklyn’s tiny
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