Michael Hurley

Michael Hurley was born in Ireland about 1838 and emigrated to Merthyr-Tydfil, South Wales. There he met and married a young widow named Julia Leary (or O'Leary) and they had at least two of their children (Michael Hurley, Jr. and John Patrick Hurley (later Sr) in Wales. Between the birth of these boys, there may have been a Margaret who did not survive. There is a record of a baptism to a person by that name in Wales with a Michael and Julia Hurley as parents, but there is no record of a Margaret beyond that timeframe.

Michael, Julia, Michael, Jr., and John Patrick, emigrated to the United States sometime before 1870, probably between 1867 and 1869. Records of the family as passengers or arriving immigrants have not yet been found. Before he died, Edward Leo Hurley told Terrence Hurley that Michael stayed briefly in Boston, then Upstate New York, before moving on to Pittsburgh, PA.

Michael's occupation is listed as "puddler". A puddler is someone who works pig iron into wrought iron by heating and stirring the metal ore in an oxidizing atmosphere in order to purify it.

In 1870, Michael and his family are found living in Pittsburgh. The family is in the Pittsburgh area in 1880 as well, but apparently lived in the Youngstown, OH, area for some time between 1870 and 1800, as that is where Jeremiah and Julia Hurley were born.

Michael died on April 21, 1898, and is buried in St. Michaels Cemetery in Pittsburgh, PA.