Thomas Tubridy ~ My Great, Great Grandfather – Show Shoe, PA
The name Tubridy originates from the old Irish word Tiobraide. In Gaelic, the word tiobraid means a well or a spring. O Tiobraide are the descendants of Tiobraide. This sept (Irish clan) originated in Munster, an old Irish Kindom in the southwest of Ireland before the Anglo-Norman Invasion of that country in the 12th century.
Tubridy name*
One school of thought says the surname Tiobraide is associated with a group of people that lived near a well – perhaps one with some significance (spiritual, etc.). The name appears in several places in the Annals of the Four Masters, a compilation in the 1600s of older writings and a chief source of early Irish history. An early form of the name was Tipraiti, which appears in these writings in the 2nd and 8th centuries. Later, the name takes the form Tipraite and Tibraide, which appears in the 14th-century Book of Lecan. It also appears as Tybryth around this time in the tax records for County Carlow.
More common forms, including Tubridd, Tubritt, Tubbred, and Tibrud, started to appear after the 1600s. During the Irish diaspora of the 1800s, the name Tubridy (and less often Tubrid and Tuberty) was spread to the New World, including America and Australia, and to England.
Legends
There have been several legends involving Tiobraide over the years.
In the Four Annals, Tipraiti Tireach was one of many legendary Kings of Ulster who lived in the second century. The name Tibraide Tireach appears in an early tale about a single unborn child who escaped death from a massacre of the nobility. The name is wrapped up in a legend with other families that concerns the arrival of invaders from the Spanish peninsula in the 1500s. The tale of the so-called Black Irish as descendants had unusual black hair.
I first heard this tale in the late 1990s from Rebecca Tubridy in Australia. According to the legend, a Spaniard who survived the sinking was swept ashore on the West Coast of Clare and was given refuge by a woman surnamed O’Riada, hiding in a dry well near her house. As the man could not speak either English or Irish, he was known as “O’Tiobraide,” meaning in English “of the well of Reidy(O’Riada).”
As a small child, I remember hearing that Thomas Tubridy had to flee Ireland to escape the authorities. When he immigrated, the Great Famine had started in Ireland due to the potato blight that swept Europe at that time and England’s heavy-handed economic policies. The story goes like this, ‘he had to swim from the shore to a boat to escape getting caught.’ I may have inserted ‘swam to the boat with a broken arm’ to impress my friends. Regardless, it was a tough time, and I’m sure glad he got out!
Descendants of Thomas Tubridy
My Father started doing genealogy work on the Tubridy-Horton family in the 1990s after retiring from a career as a bonafide rocket scientist. So he did an excellent job with the early internet and had many of the pictures I have of the family. I recently picked this up and was amazed at how much is online now with Ancestry.com and other sites. This is what I have learned…
Thomas Tubridy 1819-1873
Thomas Tubridy, a native of Doonbeg in County Clare on Irelandβs west coast, immigrated to the United States. In 1844, at the age of 26, he married Ellen Dillen, who was only 16 years old. The ceremony took place in Kilkee, a town located further south along the coast. Six years later, in 1850, the couple welcomed their first son, Francis.
The small family, consisting of Francis (Frank) and Catherine, immigrated to the United States shortly after Frankβs birth. Catherine was born in Vermont in 1852, as recorded in the 1870 census. After that, they relocated to Centre County, Pennsylvania. The rest of their five remaining children were born in Snow Shoe, Pennsylvania.
The next child was a son, Michael, who died in 1869, right before the 1870 census. The remaining children were three girls – Susan, Jane, and Anna – followed by the last child, Thomas Anthony Tubridy – my great-grandfather. He was 12 years younger than his older brother Francis.
In the 1870 census, his occupation is listed as a farmer. They settled in Center County, Pennsylvania. They resided in the areas surrounding and between Snow Shoe and Moshannon. Gillentown, a village near Moshannon, now serves as the trailhead for the old railroad bed.
This region, approximately 200 miles east of New York City, was the site of a rail line constructed in 1884, nearly nine years after Thomasβs passing. This line served as a means to supply the rapidly expanding eastern coast with coal from the Clearfield Bituminous Coal Company. Notably, many of Thomasβs male descendants, including my grandfather, engaged in mining activities within this area.
Thomas Anthony Tubridy
Thomasβ father passed away when he was ten years old. At the age of 27, he married Elizabeth βLizzyβ NcNearny. Her father was Irish, and her mother was born in Pennsylvania. Together, they had two children: an older daughter named Ellen, who never married, and my grandfather, Edward Bernard. Tragically, Elizabeth passed away less than two years after Edwardβs birth. In the 1990 census, Thomas was living with his older sisters, Kate and Annie. Itβs possible that they ran a local grocery store in town, as both sisters were listed as grocers.
In the 1900 census, his occupation was listed as a coal mine operator, and their residence was Gillentown. I believe this position allowed him to send my grandfather to college at Penn State. He remarried Julia Agnes Gleason sometime within the next nine years. Although she is older, they had their first child, Mary, at the age of 37, and their son, James Thomas, two years later. Notably, James Thomas did not have any male children.
Thomas, who lived to the ripe old age of 72, passed away in Moshannon in 1935. He was laid to rest alongside his daughter, Ellen, and his second wife, Julia, in Saint Maryβs Catholic Cemetery, nestled in Snow Shoe.
Edward Bernard Tubridy 1893 – 1966
In the 1990 census, he is listed as Eddie, residing with his father, older sister Ellen, and two aunts. Between then and the next recorded census, his father remarries, his half-sister Mary and half-brother James are born, and he enrolls in nearby Penn State University as a Mining Engineer major. Penn State was situated in State College, approximately 30 miles south.
While attending Penn State, he briefly served in the Army during the final stages of World War I. His military records indicate that he was inducted in August 1818 and honorably discharged in June 1919 as a Private First Class.
Initially, he was part of the US Pioneer Infantry Regiments, which were akin to regular army troops but also received combat engineering training. It was said that they performed tasks that regular infantrymen were too proud to undertake and engineers were too lazy to do. However, the records show that he spent the majority of his time deployed to the Army Corps of Engineers. Given the severe shortage of engineers during World War I, itβs possible that he was part of a program possibly arranged through Penn State as part of his studies there. This could explain the relatively short duration of his enlistment and the diverse assignments he received. Upon returning from France at the warβs end, he resumed his studies at Penn State.
In the next ten years, he married my Grandmother, Sarah Ellen Horton, and relocated to the Coxton Mining Camp near Harlan, Kentucky, where he worked as an engineer in the mines. My Father was born there in 1929. By 1935, they had moved to Weeksbury, Kentucky, which was slightly further northeast.
By 1940, they had relocated to a new mining town called Wharton, situated in West Virginia. In 1942, they made another move, this time to Grant Town, which was located further north, near the Pennsylvania border. At some point during this period, he began working for my Uncle Edward Shaw.
Edward Shaw and his family resided in Morgantown, where he held a position of upper management at a local coal mine. His wife, Mary, was the older sister of my mother, Betty. Mary had played a significant role in raising her younger sisters, including Betty. After assisting her in caring for her young children, Betty chose to stay with the family and secured a job at the local post office. My mother and father met around late 1952. My grandfather and father were invited to the Shawsβ home to watch a World Series baseball game on their newly acquired television set.
After that, he retired and relocated to Gate City, Virginia, where my grandmother had relatives. I have some recollections of visiting him in the early 1960s, primarily of him smoking a pipe in his comfortable chair. He imparted a valuable lesson to Rick and me by demonstrating how to tie our shoelaces by adding an extra knotβa technique Iβve continued to use throughout my life. He passed away in 1966.
Edward Horton Tubridy 1929 – 2002
Dad finished high school in Grant Town in 1947 and then went to the University of West Virginia, where he graduated with a degree in physics in 1951. During his college years, he was involved in ROTC and managed to secure his service in the nascent United States Air Force. The Korean War broke out in 1950 while he was still in school, and he believed that joining the Air Force would increase his chances of survival compared to serving as a Lieutenant in the Army, where he would be a prime target for the enemy.
After graduating, he joined the Air Force in 1951 and was stationed at the Holloman Air Force base on the newly established White Sands Missile Testing Range near Alamogordo, New Mexico. This was where significant early work on the space program was conducted, particularly in the areas of guidance and control. His duties there involved testing the missiles, which ultimately shaped the trajectory of his professional career.
He left the Air Force after fulfilling his two-year requirement and was discharged as a 1st Lieutenant. Subsequently, he joined Goodyear Aerospace as a Flight Test Engineer, working on the Matador missile. Goodyear had entered the space race through their pioneering work with blimps during World War II. Initially, he was stationed in Dayton, Ohio, where he met my mother.
After their marriage, they relocated back to New Mexico, where I was born in August 1955. However, his tenure there was short-lived as he soon secured a new job with General Dynamics in San Diego. In this role, he played a pivotal part in designing and manufacturing the renowned Atlas rocket, equipped with nuclear warheads, which were meticulously loaded into launch tubes across the United States. He joined the team as an Engineer, specializing in telemetry, instrumentation, and electrical systems.
My brother Rick was born there in 1957. Shortly after he was born, the whole family moved to the relatively unknown town of Cocoa Beach. Patrick Air Force Base is located just south of there and was instrumental in launching the first rockets from the Cape Canaveral Air Station that opened in the late 1940s. Some early rockets, primarily based on German V2 rockets, were launched over the Atlantic Ocean. It quickly became one of the key players in our space race with the Soviet Union. Until 9/11 – there was a “Rocket Garden” in front with many of the missiles Dad worked on during the day. These are now in the more extensive ‘Garden’ at Kennedy Space Center.
Dad worked the early test launches of the Atlas, the first of which were spectacular failures. Finally, at the end of 1958, they successfully launched Big Annie – the first Atlas to span over 5000 miles. He supported several programs from there, including the final 4 Mercury astronauts and the SATAR satellite launches.
The following program was Gemini, based on the competitor’s Delta Rocket. My Dad saw the writing on the wall and made his final job change in 1964, joining North American Aviation, later North American Rockwell. With this, he moved from working on rockets to spending the rest of his career working on spacecraft. They had the contract for the Apollo Command and Service Module, responsible for man’s only landings on the moon.
Dad was part of that team and rose to the management ranks during the program. I remember he worked many long hours during the 1960sβfrequently on the weekendsβand would get calls at any time of the day that he needed to deal with.
He worked on several programs after that, including Skylab and the ApolloβSoyuz mission launched in the summer of 1975. At the end of that program, he moved to southern California with Mom and brother Dave, who had not graduated from high school yet. They moved briefly to Irvine near the North American Rockwell offices. They had designed the world’s first (mostly) reusable spaceship – the Shuttle. They were now ready to build in a hangar at Palmdale Air Force Base in the desert northeast of Los Angeles.
Within the year, they relocated to a home in Lancaster, next to Palmdale. Dad worked with the team to install and test the guidance and navigation systems before transferring the Shuttle to Florida. It so happened that I moved to California the same summer to go to college. They stayed in Lancaster until 1978 when I graduated.
They moved back in 1978 to buy a lovely house on the golf course. Dad finished his career supporting the Shuttle program. He received much recognition for his work and the prestigious Silver Snoopy Award in 1989. This is an exceptional award, as the astronauts gave it to the team members who made the shuttle possible.
After Dad’s retirement in 1992, they moved back to the family home (which had been rented). He passed away in October 2002.
Dad became interested in sailing after moving here in the late 1950s. We had several sailboats, but the one I remember the best was a wooden sailboat named Argo, after the Greek hero Jason and the Argonaut’s boat.
I fondly remember sleeping overnight in the boat, where he would read us parts of the tales at an early age.
Later, he learned to fly, and we took several family trips flying in a rented plane to the Bahamas and our relatives. He loved to play bridge. He and Mom played with other couples and always played at lunch with other rocket scientists. He kept that up in retirement, playing weekly at the local senior center. My Dad was always interested in learning and did much reading- fiction and non-fiction.
He always had his eyes on the stars. He was a Steely-Eyed Spaceman!
Future Generations
I have two younger brothers, Rick (Richard Philip) and Dave (David Brian). Rick and I are 18 months apart, and Dave is slightly over 4 years younger than I am. Both had very successful careers, graduating with degrees in Ocean Engineering in the 1980s.
After graduating from college, Rick found a job at the Space Center. He worked his whole career on the Space Shuttle program, retrieving the solid rocket motors after launch and designing ground support equipment. Rick married Myhra Wimer in 1997. She also worked at the Cape. They lived in Cocoa Beach for 20 years before moving to Rockledge, where they have a beautiful home a short walk from the Indian River.
Dave married Lisa Heslett in 1983. She was a classmate, and they both found jobs at the Naval Surface Warfare Center in Panama City, Florida. They raised two sons, Adam and Carl. They have a beautiful home on St Andrews Bay and another near Highlands, North Carolina.
Their son, Adam Bernard, was born in 1986. He is married to Zeynab Abdulgadir and lives in Seattle, Washington. He has a master’s degree in Economics, works for HUD, and is an economist. She is a director for an organization that manages philanthropic spending by large corporations in the Seattle area.
Their younger son, Carl Leland, was born in 1990. He is married to Kariline Bringe and lives in La Crosse, Wisconsin. He graduated with a degree in mechanical engineering and works for a company that builds refrigeration equipment. She is an Orthopedic surgeon at the Mayo Clinic. They have two children: my grand-nephew Theodore Armand, born in 2021, and brand new grand-niece Georgiana Marisa, born in 2024.
* Note
Much of the information on the Tubridy name is from the Wikipedia ~ Tubridy page, which also shows how Gaelic names are formed. I researched the Coat of Arms and am dubious about what is shown there to be correct. According to my research, the Coat of Arms was not an Irish custom, and when used, they frequently were different for different family groups.
Update
I visited Snow Shoe, Pennslyvania on our 2022 Excellent Adventure trip. You can find some more photos there.
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