Elizabeth “Lizzie” McCavitt was one of the 8 McCavitt children born to James and Bridget in the years spanning 1883-1895. Her younger sister Mary -my great-grandaunt- left County Down and settled in Chicago as a young woman. Elizabeth’s emigration story also takes her to the United States, but she ends up in the West, in Great Falls, Montana.

Leaving Ireland

Lizzie left Ireland in 1912, when she was roughly 23/4. Unfortunately I can’t find any emigration/immigration records for her. However, there is a lot on her future husband, Henry.

In November 1919 Lizzie married Henry Fitzpatrick in Dillon, Montana, a railroad and gold/silver mining town in the far southwestern corner of the state, in the mountains near the Idaho border. Henry was also from the north of Ireland, his family was from near Kilkeel. He emigrated in 1911, sailing from Liverpool to New York in December that year, on the RMS Campania. He petitioned for citizenship when he got to Chicago six weeks later.

When he got to Montana his military draft registration card from 1917 indicated that he worked as a farmer. He was of medium build, 5’11”, with black hair and gray/blue eyes. He had applied for a draft exemption due to the fact that he was supporting both of his parents. Records show that he in fact enlisted in the US Army in late 1918 when he was around 28, and served as a private in the 13th Infantry (Co. 34th, 9th Bn., 166 D.B. Co I 13th Inf) for just under a year. In 1942 he had to register again, this time for the Second World War, following Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor. Lizzie and Henry’s son John applied for a military headstone for him after his death in 1958.

Henry later became a miner (Census 1930, Butte Directory, 1940), probably of copper.

The Fitzpatrick Boys

Lizzie and Henry had three sons: James Henry, John Edward, and Patrick Daniel.

1940 US Census: Patrick is in 8th grade; John was 16, not yet working; James. was 19, a miner with 3 years of high school education.

Not long after this census, James died aged 19 from pulmonary tuberculosis, after 4 months’ illness in the Montana State Tuberculosis Sanitorium in Galen, MT.

The fantastic black and white picture above is of Lizzie McCavitt Fitzgerald with her two surviving sons, John (left) and Patrick (right). They both enlisted in the US Navy, John served through 1945, got married that autumn and had two children; Patrick joined up in 1944 and was released in 1946. He went on to have a career in the merchant marine, with travel records showing that he ventured to Hawaii and all up and down the west coast of the US. He passed away in 1999, five years after his brother John.

Their father Henry had died in 1958 in Butte, Montana aged 65. He was survived by Lizzie, who passed away at 73, in 1961.