Lament for Upstate New York

Upstate New York used to be known for religious revivals. For about a century, it has mostly been known for economic decline.

Researching my family’s history, I saw that the first Dougherty in my lineage to have made the trek was Robert Dougherty, my grandfather’s grandfather, who immigrated from Ireland in the worst year of the famine — Black ’47 — to Wurtsboro, N.Y., in Sullivan County. He was seven years old. He started his life helping on a neighbor’s barge until he could buy his own. He made enough of a living as a boatman to build a large home along the Delaware and Hudson Canal. Robert and his wife, Sarah Malone (from County Clare), filled that home with ten children and a barn with a few horses. Then came the New York, Ontario and Western Railway. The family enterprise closed, and the family started to disperse. Many of those children moved to the cities.

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Michael Brendan Dougherty

Michael Brendan Dougherty is a senior writer at National Review Online.

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Upstate New York used to be known for religious revivals. For about a century, it has mostly been known for economic decline.

Researching my family’s history, I saw that the first Dougherty in my lineage to have made the trek was Robert Dougherty, my grandfather’s grandfather, who immigrated from Ireland in the worst year of the famine — Black ’47 — to Wurtsboro, N.Y., in Sullivan County. He was seven years old. He started his life helping on a neighbor’s barge until he could buy his own. He made enough of a living as a boatman to build a large home along the Delaware and Hudson Canal. Robert and his wife, Sarah Malone (from County Clare), filled that home with ten children and a barn with a few horses. Then came the New York, Ontario and Western Railway. The family enterprise closed, and the family started to disperse. Many of those children moved to the cities.