My grandfather was a policeman in New Haven, Connecticut. And his father was a policeman, too.

My mother never met her grandfather Patrick Cassidy. He died in 1917. He was only 54 years old.

My grandpa was just 17 years old at the time; he dropped out of school to help support the family. He had six siblings. Little Ginny was only two years old and Walter was eight.

Here’s a photo of Grandpa with his mother, Anna, and youngest sister, Ginny.

Patrick Robert Cassidy was born in Ireland in 1863. I must state here at the start that there were lots of Patrick Cassidys born in Ireland, so researching his story beyond family lore has been quite a challenge. On Ancestry.com, there’s even a note from another Cassidy family, warning that their Patrick Cassidy is not our Patrick Cassidy (sadly, theirs died as a young child).

Patrick was born and raised in Dublin, Ireland’s capital city.

Patrick attended college there, studying civil engineering. He was accepted into the Royal Irish Constabulary and became a Dublin police officer. In a typed page of family history, Grandma Cassidy noted that Grandpa had told her, “You had to be well educated … Grandpa likened it to Annapolis Academy here. Also you had to be [at least] six feet tall.”

A few years later, after marrying Anna Elizabeth Reilly of County Cavan, Patrick left the Royal Irish Constabulary and immigrated to America.

Grandma Cassidy continues: “It wasn’t easy for an immigrant to get a position … as a civil engineer in those days, so he joined the police force in New Haven, as he was well equipped to do a real good job from his work in the same field in Dublin.”

Patrick started as a supernumerary on March 2, 1897. Exactly three months later, he was ordered to regular duty.

On October 12 of that year, Patrick made the papers with this rather incredible rescue story:

Grandma described her father-in-law (from stories Grandpa told her) as being ” … a firm believer in physical fitness” and “a humanitarian,” both which came into play that Sunday evening.

Officer Cassidy was promoted to patrolman on October 8, 1898. The next year, he rose a grade and got a raise. Twenty-five cents a day, which amounts to about $40 a week in today’s economy.

Good thing. Another baby was on the way!

The Cassidys already had two sons and a daughter. Jack was born in 1893, Christy two years later, and Ethel in 1898.

Anna gave birth to my grandfather, Francis Raymond Cassidy, on June 28 1900.

Little Frank had curly red hair. Here he is circa 1906.

Patrick and Anna went on to have three more children: Marcella (1903), Walter (1909), and Virginia (1915).

Sadly, Patrick’s life ended on September 13, 1917. He was just 54.

Family lore told us he’d died while on duty. For some reason, the New Haven newspapers at the time are not available online, so I didn’t have any way to verify the story from here in Indiana. When I took the question to the New Haven and Fair Haven groups on Facebook, the advice came quickly:

Have you contacted Tony?

Tony is a retired New Haven police sergeant. He’s put together the history of officers who died in the line of duty while serving the NHPD. Patrick Cassidy wasn’t on the list.

Despite that clarification, Tony wanted to find out what happened. He made an appointment to stop by the New Haven Free Public Library to search microfiche for the story behind my great grandfather’s death. (As a side note, Mom worked at this library for a few years while Dad served in Korea.)

Here’s what Tony found:

Since Patrick had been laid to rest at the Saint Lawrence cemetery, Tony headed over there. I had to grin when he messaged me later that “they weren’t very friendly” to drop-by requests, so he left. He drove by the address listed in the paper as the family home and took this photo:

But Tony wasn’t done yet. He made an appointment to return to the cemetery and eventually found my great grandparents’ resting place.

Tony sent me several photos of the cemetery, which will help us find the Cassidy gravestone ourselves when we can travel again.

Many thanks to the New Haven and Fair Haven Facebook groups for their help and encouragement as we pieced together this bit of family history from more than 900 miles away.

And endless gratitude to Tony. Perhaps the most poignant moment for me during these weeks of research was at the end of the letter Tony mailed along with copies of the obituary and photos from his visit to the cemetery:

“I said a short prayer for a brother officer.”

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