In writing about the Fortune sisters of Socorro, I wondered how the Fortune family made it to New Mexico. As you might expect, it’s an interesting story.
Laurence Fortune and Bridget Murphey were both born in County Wexford, Ireland—Laurence in 1777 and Bridget in 1790. They married sometime around 1815 and would have five children: James (1816), Mary (1821), Patrick (1826), Moses Benedict (1830), and Thomas (1832).
The Fortunes were living in the town of Blackwater when the Potato Famine struck in 1845. Two years into the Great Hunger, Laurence Fortune died, and Thomas may have perished then as well (records are incomplete). So, like many Irish at the time, the surviving Fortunes decided to emigrate to America. Sometime between 1847 and 1849 they landed in New York, but by 1850 they were all living in St. Louis, Missouri . . . everyone except Patrick Fortune.
Patrick Fortune, the grandfather of Lucy Fortune, was in his early 20s when the Fortunes arrived in the States. Rather than follow his mother and siblings to St. Louis, he joined the US military—the 1st Cavalry Regiment, better known as the 1st Regiment of Dragoons—and was sent to the West.
The Dragoons were filled with men from around the world. The 1850 Census for Bernalillo, New Mexico Territory, in which Patrick Fortune’s name appears, shows fellow soldiers from Prussia, Ireland, Canada, Scotland, Mexico, Hungary, Holland, Germany, France, Denmark, England, and almost every state in the Union. At the time Fortune served, they were tasked with protecting the Camino Real, which stretched from Mexico City to Santa Fe.
According to Patrick Fortune’s story, originally published in the El Defensor Chieftain, Saturday, August 7, 2010:
One of the early supporters of the Lemitar church was Patrick Fortune, an emigrant from Ireland. In 1849, he enlisted in the US Army in New York with the expectation of traveling to the gold fields in California. Instead, his regiment of dragoons ended up stationed from Albuquerque to Doña Ana [near Las Cruces, NM]. For five years, he spent much of his time on various garrison duties in Lemitar and Socorro.
Upon his discharge, he remained in the Lemitar area, marrying Irish-born Teresa Stapleton in 1861. Mr. and Mrs. Fortune, both being Irish-Catholics, became very involved in the Lemitar Church. Patrick donated money, time, and labor in continually improving the church from plastering and painting the walls to building pews and furniture. Patching leaks in the flat dirt-filled roof was a constant job.
The Fortunes had one child, Edward, born in Lemitar in 1863. The following year, Patrick took ill with pneumonia and died at only about 37 years of age. Mrs. Fortune survived him by many years, passing away in 1914.
Due to his premature death, prominence in the community, and service to the church, Patrick Fortune became the first person to be buried near the altar inside the Sagrada Familia church. Patrick’s son, Edward, married Maria Guadalupe Baca in Socorro. Their first of eight children was daughter Jennie Fortune, born in 1895.
Teresa Stapleton, who had also fled the Potato Famine, arrived in the New Mexico Territory from Ireland in 1853, alongside brother Robert Hay Stapleton. He had planned to emigrate alone, but according to a family history, Teresa proclaimed, “I will not let my brother go alone. I will go with him,” or words along that line.
Robert Hay Stapleton was also a 1st US Dragoon, and appears on an August 1849 schedule of the military post at Albuquerque; Patrick Fortune appears on the same schedule:
So this is how Patrick Fortune met Teresa Stapleton. They were married at the “Lemitar Church”—officially the Sagrada Familia de Lemitar Church, Los Dulces Nombres—on June 14, 1861, 165 years ago today. As mentioned above, when Patrick Fortune died in 1864 he was buried inside the chapel.
The Sagrada Familia de Lemitar Church, Los Dulces Nombres, today.
Teresa (Stapleton) Fortune was left to raise 1-year-old Edward on her own; she never remarried. The 1880 Census shows them living together in Socorro, eight miles south of Lemitar. Edward Lawrence Fortune married Maria Guadalupe Baca at the San Miguel de Socorro Mission in 1886, and together they would have eight daughters—Teresa (1888), Juanita “Jennie” (1895), Maria Priscilla Margarita (1896), Adelina Lucia “Lucy” (1898), Elizabeth (1901), Florence (1904), and twins Emma Donna and Josephine (1907)—and one unnamed son who died at birth.
At age 88, Teresa (Stapleton) Fortune died in Socorro on January 19, 1914, and was buried (I believe) in the town’s San Miguel Cemetery. She was not buried in the Lemitar Church where her husband was interred. That parish had established its own cemetery, but there is no record of Teresa Fortune being buried there.
Patrick Fortune’s final resting place could have been lost in 2010. That year, the west wall of that adobe structure collapsed during renovations, and the church had to be completely rebuilt:
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