Joseph P Garland

Bridget & Joseph in 1918 Joseph P Garland

Joseph P. Garland did not have things easy. His parents came from Ireland. He was born on Manhattan's lower east side in 1888 and his father died in 1890 and his mother in 1897. He grew up in a Catholic orphanage on Madison Avenue. By 1910, he again lived on the lower east side. In 1917, he told the draft board that he worked as a clerk in what was then New York City's diamond district, on Maiden Lane near Wall Street. Bridget Dermody was also born in 1888 on the lower east side. Her parents were from Illinois, but her grandparents were from Ireland. Her father died when she was young, but her mother remarried, and she became a Campbell. By 1910, she lived only a few blocks from Joseph. They married on June 15, 1918 at St. Rose of Lima Church near where they lived. It was a heavily Irish neighborhood just at the southern side of the ramp to the Williamsburg Bridge, which opened 1903. Joseph entered the Army on that same day. He was discharged in January 1919. This is what we know. This story attempts to piece together how they came to be a couple.