The House Past Hackett Road

      Heading towards Palmyra on the old Plank Road, now called Route 21 in Manchester, just past Hackett Road and on the left, sits an old wood framed house fronted by pillars.  In the photograph above is Mary Lyons Ryan, a native of County Roscommon Ireland, standing on the front porch of that house, probably around 1910 given the style of her clothing.

Thomas Ryan c. 1915

     Mary was the wife of Thomas Ryan who was born in Walworth, New York in April of 1861 to Andrew Ryan and Bridget Hogan, both immigrants from Tipperary.  As a small boy, Thomas had actually lived for a few years in Manchester until his father Andrew purchased a farm in Perinton, New York.  That farm home still stands today, at the end of Ryan Road in that town.

     Thomas was a farmer by trade and worked the Plank Road farm for years, selling it in 1919.  In the1920 census of Manchester Village, Thomas can be found living at 29 North Main Street with Mary and their eighteen year old daughter Mildred who would be killed in a car accident just two years later.  Also in the household was Mary's fifty year old brother Edward Lyons.

     In his later years, Thomas worked as a janitor in the Lehigh Valley RR bunkhouse.  Mary passed away in 1936, and Thomas spent his final years living with his widowed daughter Marie

Mildred Ryan

Galbraith and her son John at the North Main house. Thomas died in October of 1940 and is buried in St. Rose's Catholic Cemetery in Shortsville next to Mary and Mildred.