James McLaughlin (1821-1911) was one of ten children born to Mary Quigley McLaughlin and her husband, William, in the village of Linsfort Glebe, Parish of Desertegny, County Dongegal, Ireland.

Unfortunately, what awaited James McLaughlin and his siblings was one of the most tragic periods in Irish history, The Great Famine (1845-48) caused by the total failure of the potato crop.

James McLaughlin took a wife in 1844. She was Ann McKinney (or McKenna), also of Desertegny. McLaughlin was a blacksmith who worked in nearby Londonderry and across the North Channel in villages along the southwest coast of Scotland.

He and Ann had three children, a daughter (Mary) and twin boys (Donald and William). All would die of starvation by mid-1848, the year James McLaughlin decided to move his family to the United States. When he left Ireland in April 1848 he had a family of four, Donald having died in infancy. But within weeks of his departure, his other two children passed away, leaving Ann to make the journey by herself in October when she joined James in America.

Her husband had built a log cabin on land he purchased outside the small village of Skaneateles, New York. The village was named for Skaneateles Lake, the smallest and easternmost of New York's Finger Lakes. (The name Skaneateles comes from an Iroquois Indian word, skan-e-a-dice, which means "long lake.")

Also new was her husband's nickname, "40 Acres," for the amount of land he now owned on the west side of the lake, purchased for $100 an acre, in gold. Ann McLaughlin probably was surprised to learn her blacksmith husband was changing occupations. He had decided to devote much of his land to growing teasels, a plant that had been introduced to Skaneateles in the 1830s by the enterprising Dr. John Snook (1777-1857), a native of Somerset, England, who made his living as a chemist and pharmacist. Dr. Snook's claim to fame, such as it was, came from either a cure-all tonic or pills he had marketed (or both). At age 49, he arrived in Skaneateles in 1826 with his family. He and his son, John Jr., both opened apothecary stores, but his main contribution to his new hometown would be made in 1833 when he purchased teasel seeds in England to plant in Skaneateles.

Apparently one reason Dr. Snook settled in Skaneateles was beacuse he felt it had the ideal soil for teasels. The prickly, egg-shaped teasels form on plants that now are widely regarded as pests because, like many other plants and animals imported in the 19th century, they've multiplied and spread unchecked throughout much of the country. Most people regard teasels as weeds, though some are used in ornamental bouquets.

However, they are necessary in the manufacture of wool where teasels are used to raise and smooth the surface of the cloth. The stronger the teasel, the better, obviously. Dr. Snook found an abundance of limestone in Central New York, and limestone soil produces the strongest teasels.

BEFORE DR. SNOOK came along, most industrial teasels were grown in England and France. And while he was successful in growing teasels, Dr. Snook and his son, Thomas, failed to convince woolen mills to abandon the proven English and French teasels in favor of the Skaneateles-grown product. Other Skaneateles teasel merchants would fare much better in this regard. (After Dr. Snook's death, Thomas sold their teasel company to James McLaughlin Jr.)

Much of what follows comes from a small book, "This History of the McLaughlin Family," written in 1979 by the late Edward F. McLaughlin, a great-grandson of James "40 Acres" McLauighlin. Edward F. McLaughlin, a former New York State Supreme Court justice, relied heavily on two letters written by his cousin, Henry W. McLaughlin. Henry wrote those letters in 1978 when he was 77 and a year from his death. He obviously had many ideas racing around in his head, but they often collided in his sentences which are the longest, most difficult to read since, as a college student, I was assigned a novel by William Faulkner. I have translated as best I could, but I suspect mistakes will be made. And I admit – for purposes of simplification and clarification – I edited those parts of his letters that appear in this article.

[NOTE: One of those letters questions the spelling of his great-grandmother's maiden name. It was Henry W. McLaughlin's understanding her name was McKenna, not McKinney. Anyone who traces ancestors knows proper spelling of names is frequently a matter of dispute. This particular example is further complicated because Skaneateles death records list Ann McLaughlin's maiden name as McKenny, a compromise of sorts. Her headstone at St. Mary's Cemetery lists her maiden name as McKinney. Behind it is a story that hints female liberation was alive and well with some Irish women in the 1840s. Henry W. McLaughlin says James McLaughlin's brother-in-law, a man named McKenna, first name unknown, was engaged to a woman named McKinney, but she wouldn't marry until he agreed to take her last name. He did, and as a result his sister Ann also became known as a McKinney. It's a good story, but I've found nothing else to support it.]

It was James McLaughlin's brother-in-law who settled first in Skaneateles, New York. Why? I don't know, but he was reason James "40 Acres" McLaughlin and his wife chose Central New York for their new home. Some siblings would follow, though a few eventually chose to live elsewhere in the United States. My Major family, from County Derry (Londonderry), which borders Donegal, did pretty much the same thing. All three Major brothers who left Ireland in the mid-1800s went to Skaneateles, two of them stayed. (The third moved 120 miles west to Buffalo, New York.)

WITH A PARTNER, "40 Acres" McLaughlin started a business called McLaughlin and Fitzgerald, Teasel Merchants. At first, they sold teasels to several woolen mills in the Syracuse area. Soon they found customers in mills throughout New England.

He kept his 40 acres, but soon after his son, James McLaughlin Jr., was born he moved the family to a house in the village of Skaneateles where he also opened a facility that employed 300 people to trim, sort and pack teasels in huge wooden cases for delivery to woolen mills. A few years later he bought out his partner and changed the name of his company to James McLaughin & Sons.

Many years later, wrote Henry W. McLaughin, "the teasel shop burned down and my grandfather James McLaughlin Jr., who had taken over his father's business, went to Skaneateles Falls and purchased the abandoned Skaneateles Iron Works and Bean Brothers Rolling Mill where railroad spikes and plates had been made. There he re-opened the teasel shop and he enabled his 300 workers to remain on the job by negotiating with Skaneateles Straight Line Railroad to transport the workers from Skaneateles to the teasel shop (about three miles away) and back home at the end of the day." Months later the workers went to work in a new McLaughlin teasel shop on Fennel Street in Skaneateles.

James McLaughlin Jr. also expanded his business to include Glenside Woolen Mills in Skaneateles Falls.

"Across the Skaneateles Creek in Skaneateles Falls was (a section called) Stump City," wrote Henry W. McLaughlin. "Most of the people there were Irish and some spoke Gaelic because my grandfather went over to Buncrana, County Donegal, and arranged with a great many of the Irish girls to come to America and work in the woolen mill as weavers. The local priest there told him he was taking all the heart of Irish womanhood out of Ireland."

JAMES McLAUGHLIN JR. was the first American-born child of James "40 Acres" and Ann McLaughlin. How many more children they had in Skaneateles is uncertain, at least in my mind. “This History of the McLaughlin Family” lists only four, all sons. In addition to James McLaughlin Jr. (1849-1914), there were John McLaughlin (1854-1934) and Cornelius McLaughlin (1862-1942) who joined the family business that became known as McLaughlin Brothers, Teasel Merchanrts. It appears John was involved to a lesser extent than his brothers. John McLaughlin became mayor of Skaneateles in 1903 (or thereabouts). I’m sure this was not a full-time job, but it indicates John had more on his mind than the family business, though it seems a majority of the Skaneateles work force at that time was involved in growing, shaping, using and/or selling teasels.

A fourth brother, Dennis McLaughlin (1851-1925), was an engineer who spent several years at the family-owned Glenside Woolen Mills. While John McLaughlin was mayor, he and his brothers ran an electric cable from the village to the mill. In the process they established the Skaneateles Municipal Power Company that provided electricity for the village and nearby area. Henry W. McLaughlin said this gave Skaneateles the reputation of being "the town that did not pay taxes” because revenue raised by the power company paid for all town expenses.

[NOTE: Such thinking must run in the family. When my father, Stanley "Buster" Major, was mayor of Solvay, New York, he followed the advice of Everett W. Lutzy, supervistor of the village's water and light department, and arranged to obtain electrity from the New York Power Authority via an electric plant in Massena built as part of the St. Lawrence Seaway project completed in 1957. Solvay was one of the first villages to go online. As a result, residents of the village and parts of the Town of Geddes serviced by Solvay Electric began paying much less for their power than did the rest of Onondaga County. After moving to Bluffton, South Carolina, six years ago I entertained the idea of returning to the Syracuse area. I mentioned this to a man at a local restaurant – I enjoy the expressions on people's faces when I say I prefer living in snow country – and it turned out this fellow had moved to Bluffton from Syracuse. "If you do go back," he said, "be sure to buy a house in Solvay or Lakeland. You won't believe how much you'll save on electric bills."]

As mentioned on the Family Trees page devoted to the descendants of James "40 Acres" McLaughlin, the 1880 United States census lists three other people as living in the household headed by James McLaughlin. They are Daniel McLaughlin (1856-1881), Margaret McLaughlin (1859-??) and Hugh McLaughlin (1860-1918). The book on the McLaughlin family doesn’t mention them. However, records of St. Mary’s Cemetery in Skaneateles indicate Daniel is buried in a family plot along with James McLaughlin Sr. and his wife, Ann. I’m still looking for more information on these three who may have been children of James McLaughlin Sr. or possibly children of McLaughlin relatives who remained in or returned to Ireland.

BUT LET'S get back to teasels. I confess I have no desire to become an expert on the subject. What I need is "Teasels for Dummies," preferably the comic book edition. I have yet to find anything that explains the economics of the teasel business in terms I can understand. Additionally, there's something about teasels that puts me in mind of that old James Garner movie, "The Wheeler Dealers," in which he helps his stockbroker girlfriend Lee Remick successfully deal with a New England company that made widgets. To me, teasels are synonymous with widgets . . . except that teasels are still used to process wool.

I did find an article by Charlotte Coffman in the Textiles and Apparel Newsletter (April 2000) that said the first Skaneateles teasel grower was named William Nipper and that by the mid-1860s the crop sold for $5 per thousand, but dropped to 40 cents by the 1890s. The article didn't explain how many teasels a typical woolen mill might use in a year, nor how much mills were willing to pay teasel merchants. (It seemed to me there wouldn't be room in this business for a lot of teasel merchants, so I foolishly assumed McLaughlin Brothers might have been number one in their field. Perhaps they were, but I did come upon an article that said another Skaneateles businessman, Walter Hamilton Kellogg (1860-1934), called himself "America's Teasel King.")

Farmers became increasingly upset by the low price placed on their crops. Henry W. McLaughlin writes that "in 1922 a Skaneateles Teasel Farmer's Co-operative was formed, but only lasted five years because of the way it was manipulated; hundreds of teasel farms lost money – and also lost interest in continuing to grow teasels."

This movement, however brief, apparently upset owners of several American woolen mills. They reverted, McLaughin says, to what was called the 'wire nappers' which did not produce the desired nap on the woolen cloth."

An interesting tidbit about a teasel farmer was provided by James Dougherty of Skaneateles, whose family intersects with mine through two marriages, one each to a Major and a McLaughlin. He has done a lot of research on his Dougherty/Doherty family tree and occasionally forwards his findings to me, such as copies of several articles from Skaneateles newspapers in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Here's one such article, dated July 23, 1896:

If that previous article is correct, then Neil Doherty only received about $400 for work that thirty years earlier would have netted him $5,000.

[NOTE: Many newcomers to Skaneateles or people who passed through the village in the late 1800s or early 1900s were unaware that what was being grown was intentional. Wrote Henry W. McLaughlin, "Years ago strangers remarked about the lazy farmers around Skaneateles allowing their field to be overgrown with thistles."]

WHATEVER THE STATUS of the farmers, McLaughlin Brothers, Teasel Merchants must have been prospering, perhaps in part because they grew many of their own teasels. As for James McLaughlin Jr., he married Mary Jane O'Neill in 1871. They had four children, but two of them, Dennis and Theresa, died in childhood. Their surviving children were Charles J. McLaughlin Sr. (1872-1938) and George McLaughlin (1876-1950). It was Charles McLaughlin who would join the company and help expand his family's teasel business after it gained a foothold in Europe. (George went on to operate Summit View Farm in Skaneateles.)

In the late 1890s his father sent Charles to Leeds, England, then considered the center of the woolen industry in England. James McLaughlin Jr. had made the trip himself a few times; this would be his son's opportunity to prove himself. But that wouldn't be the reason Charles found his first trip so memorable.

According to Henry W. McLaughlin, it was at High Mass in Leeds' St. Ann’s Cathedral that his father Charles met his future bride, Sarah Ann (Sally) Meegan (1874-1959). Her father, Henry Patrick Meegan, was born in Carrickmacross, County Monaghan, Ireland. After growing up in Ireland, Meegan went to England where he met and married Jane Linsley, a Quaker who converted to Catholicism. They had three sons, Walter, Thomas and Henry, and six daughters, Sarah Ann, Marie, Rose, Jane, Martha (known as Patty) and Elicia. Walter Meegan was a Leeds artist who spent time in the United States. His great-granddaughter, Christine Ensor of Worcestershire, England, emailed to ask what information I had about Sarah Ann Meegan. She told me her great-grandfather for while had a studio in New York City. (If you Google Walter Meegan you'll find several examples of his work.)

Charles J. McLaughlin and Sarah Ann (Sally) Meegan were married in 1899 at St. Ann’s Cathedral, and on their honeymoon sailed from Liverpool, England, to Londonderry, Ireland. (It isn’t mentioned in the book or in Henry W. McLaughlin’s letters, but I’m guessing they went from Londonderry to Linsfort Glebe to visit Charles McLaughlin’s relatives or to trace roots).

Afterward they left Londonderry for New York on August 26 aboard a steamship called City of Rome. The ship ran into fog off the Grand Banks of Newfoundland and struck an iceberg. However, a piece of ice had been spotted earlier, alerting the ship’s captain who reversed engines in time to minimize impact; City of Rome was able to continue its journey.

The couple settled in Skaneateles, New York, in a house next door to what became a famous village landmark, Krebs Restaurant. Their son Charles J. McLaughlin Jr. was born in Skaneateles in 1900, their second son, Henry W., was born in Skaneateles a year later.

IN 1903 the family moved to England when James McLaughlin Jr. decided he needed a permanent presence in Leeds. He assigned Charles Sr. to establish and operate a branch office there. Within months Charles was visiting woolen mills throughout Europe, trying to convince their owners that Skaneateles teasels were superior to those from England and France. Charles also crossed the Atlantic several times to visit the home office in Skaneateles. In the meantime, his family was getting larger. Seven daughters and one son were born between 1903 and 1916.

James McLaughlin Jr. died in 1914 and I believe his brother Cornelius took over as head of McLaughlin Brothers. I am making this assumption because of a 1917 Skaneateles business directory that lists Cornelius McLaughlin as the person to contact if you're in the market for teasels.

There was a huge lawsuit involving McLaughlin Brothers, Teasel Merchants and the men who purchased Glenside Woolen Mills. I’ve read – at least, tried to read – the book’s explanation of this lawsuit, but confess it went over my head. In any event, Dennis McLaiughlin left Glenside, moved to Syracuse, 20 miles away, and became a contractor who built many houses on the west side of the city.

Lawsuit aside, McLaughlin Brothers continued to grow. In the early 1900s the company opened branches in Copenhagen, Denmark; Aix-la-Chapelle, France (a town that was Aachen, Germany during the Franco-Prussian War), and Lodz, a Polish city then under Russian rule. According to Henry W. McLaughlin, one of the McLaughlin Brothers’ biggest customers was Thornton Woolen Mills, an English-owned company in St. Petersburg, Russia. This company employed 10,000 people and made cloth for use in the uniforms of the Russian army and its 6,000,000 soldiers.

Here is what Henry W. McLaughlin said about his father’s experience in Russia:

“He stayed at the Hotel Anglaterre in St. Petersburg where he met an American selling Oldsmobile cars and one day they heard bugles blowing which means everybody get off the streets so they both went out of sight behind a door of a building and looking out down a wide road they saw thousands of civilians chained together dragging themselves down the road where on each side of the column of civilians were Cossack-mounted cavalry with swords and sidearms and whips. They lashed the straggling column of chained men who were on their way to the Siberian salt mines.

“My father also experienced riots or ‘Pogroms’ as they were called which were massacres of the Jews in which thousands of Jews were slain and their places of business were wrecked and the occupants slain. The Russians said it was to teach the Jews a lesson not to take advantage of the Russian people.

“A further experience my father had was in 1908. While visiting the Thornton Woolen Mills five miles down the River Neva from St. Petersburg he met with the superintendent of the finishing room where woolen uniform cloth was finished with teasels on the 100-teasel cynlider gigs. The finishing room was under the supervision of four overseers who each had supervision of 25 of the teasel cylinder gigs. My father met individually with each of the overseers and one of them was Yosif Vissarionovich Djugashvili who later became Josef Stalin, Soviet dictator.”

Henry W. McLaughlin also wrote that about 200 miles from St. Petersburg his father attended the Neva Novgored Fair, which he says was very famous at the time. Goods were exchanged, no cash was involved, everything was bartered. He says one of the most popular items at the fair were Persian rugs from Iran, formerly Persia. Teasels were used in the making of some of these rugs, and Charles J. McLaughlin wanted to barter teasels for Persian rugs, but his father vetoed the idea. Henry didn’t elaborate on the idea, but I assume Charles was talking about a large exchange, thinking Persian rugs could be sold for big profits in the United States.

HENRY ALSO SAYS Mary McLaughlin briefly stayed with the McLaughlin family in Leeds during World War I. Mary McLaughlin, by this time a nun known as Sister Mary Antonia, was a first cousin of James McLaughlin Jr.

She had left Skaneateles for a convent in a Belgium town called Willebroek, near Antwerp. When World War I broke out in 1914, the German Army entered Belgium and destroyed the convent with artillery fire. Most of the nuns, along with many Belgium citizens, fled to England. During Sister Mary Antonia's stay in Leeds she helped reunite Belgian families that had been separated by the war.

Her Order of Nuns was disbanded and she returned home to Skaneateles in 1916 and wrote a book about her experiences, “From Convent to Conflict.” I had a pleasant surprise when I Googled the title and discovered I could download the book free of charge.

"WORLD WAR I ended, but it had wrecked havoc with the McLaughlin Brothers teasel business in Leeds," wrote Henry W. McLaughlin, starting a most intriguing paragraph that covered a period his father was stuck in the United States, unable to get permission to return to England. "No (McLaughlin) teasels were used for the British Army or Navy cloth and the large orders for teasels from the Swedish woolen mills were lost due to the British War Office advising my mother, who in my father's absence was running the McLaughlin Brothers business in Leeds, that all shipments to Sweden were stopped because the British had discovered that the centers of the cases of teasels headed for Swedish woolen mills were loaded with rubber that was then shipped to Germany which was in dire need of rubber for their war effort."

Sounds to me like the makings of an espionage movie. Unfortunately he doesn't explain who might have been responsible for aiding the enemy.

As for Charles J. McLaughlin Sr., well, he returned to England at war's end, but only to fetch his wife and children and take them back to the United States, this time buying a home in Syracuse. There he established his own teasel business. He purchased as many Skaneateles teasels as he could, and prepared them for sale to woolen mills in the United States, Canada, Denmark, Sweden and Iceland.

After Charles J. McLaughlin Sr. died in 1938, his son Henry W. carried on the business, which, he said, briefly revived as World War II approached. Teasels were used in the manufacture of woolen broadcloth upholstery for most automobiles and for military uniforms and blankets. Henry somehow kept the teasel business going for several years.

In reading Henry W. McLaughlin's explanations of how the teasel business died – or was killed – I was reminded of the sharp political difference between my relatives, among both McLaughlins and Majors. My father and my McLaughlin grandmother were Democrats, most of the Skaneateles family members Republicans. Henry W. McLaughlin clearly was the latter, blaming Harry S Truman and a later Democrat-controlled Congress for driving nails into the coffin of the United States woolen business which was buried, he said, in 1960. What was needed, he said, was a higher tariff on imports because the British, in particular, were flooding the U.S. market with woolen goods at prices we couldn't match because the English mills were using cheap labor from Pakistan.

As I said, I have no intention of becoming a teasel expert, so I'll let Henry W. McLaughlin have the last word on the subject. Teasels are still used in the manufacture of woolen cloth, but in 1978, when Henry wrote his letters, he claimed there was only one woolen mill left in the United States, in Dublin, Georgia. I believe there are others, including one in Faribault, Minnesota; in any case United States woolen mills are few and far between. In 1870, when James McLaughlin Jr. turned 21, he had every reason to believe there was a future in teasels. That year, according to one estimate I found, there were 2,400 local woolen mills in the United States.

Ninety years later, the last of the Skaneateles teasel merchants, Henry W. McLaughlin, retired and moved to Orlando, Florida.

AS FOR THE OTHER children of Charles J. McLaughlin Sr. and Sarah Ann (Sally) Meegan:

Charles J. McLaughlin Jr. (1900-1980) was born in Skaneateles, but grew up in Leeds. He attended Rosary Parochial School in Leeds and St. Michael’s Jesuit College. During World War I, according to “This History of the McLaughlin Family,” Charles was forced, as a consequence of an agreement between England and the United States, to either join the British army or return to the United States and enlist in the United States Armed Forces. He chose to join the U.S. Navy and was placed in the Machinists Mates School in Charleston, South Carolina.

After the war he moved to Ohio where he became general manager of the Cleveland Laundry Company. He married Ann James and after he retired from the laundry company turned to real estate. He and Ann lived in Shaker Heights and had two sons, Charles J. McLaughlin III and John Richard McLaughlin.

Dorothy Ann McLaughlin (1903-1986), like all her sisters, was born in Leeds. She remained single and operated a gift shop in Dewitt, New York, just outside of Syracuse. She lived in Syracuse at 124 Delaware Street where the McLaughlin family had settled after their return from England.

Jane McLaughlin (1905- ) married Thomas W. Hall. They had two children, Thomas W. Hall Jr. and Judy.

Martha Eloise McLaughlin (1906- ) was a dietitian at Good Shepherd Hospital in Syracuse and later in the Syracuse school system. She remained single and after retirement had a second home in Orlando, Florida, eventually settling there full-time.

Kathleen McLaughlin (1908- ) married John Vincent Connor and after his death married William Dobrien (or Dobrianan or Dobrenin or Dobrinin; I've found four references to Kathleen, each has a different spelling of her second husband's last name. And while she is always referred to as Kathleen, it may be her middle name since British birth records list her as Sarah Kathlelen McLaughlin.)

She lived in Pica Rivera, California, but in the 1996 obituary for her brother Lachlan and the 1997 obituary for sister Mary, Kathleen is listed as living in Orlando, Florida. She had six children: Barbara (who died in childhood), John V. Connor Jr., Constance, Norma Judith, Charles and F. Joseph.

Mary Alexandria Victoria McLaughlin (1911-1997) married John O’Leary and lived in Syracuse. She retired in 1967 as a licensed practical nurse with the Visiting Nurses Association. She and her husband had two children, John David O’Leary and Mary Kathleen O’Leary who married Dr. Murray Grossman.

Beatrice Ena McLaughlin (1913- ) married Joseph Ball. They had no children.

Patricia McLaughlin (1915-1993) was a clerkical worker for 25 years with the Onondaga County Sheriffs Department and lived in Syracuse. She married John Lynn and they had four children, John, Barbara, Timothy and William, who became an FBI agent out of Cleveland, Ohio.

John T. McLaughlin (1916- ) was born in England and became an electrical enginner for the Tennessee Valley Authority, residing in Knoxville, Tennessee. He married Georgia Ingersoll. They had two children, John Bruce McLaughlin and Doris Sue McLaughlin.

Lachlan Douglas McLaughlin (1921-1996) was born in the United States after his family had returned from England. After graduating from Syracuse University he entered the U.S. Navy in 1942 as an aviation cadet. He was in a unit that became known as “The Boys From Syracuse,” and was assigned to a squardon aboard the carrier USS Lexington in the South Pacific. He eventually achieved the rank of Lieutenant Commander.

Afterward he received his masters in mathematics from American International College in Springfield, Massachusetts and became a teacher in Wilbraham, Massachusetts. He was a communicant and sang in the choir and in theater productions at St. Cecilia’s Church in Wilbraham.

He married Marie Mahoney and they had three children, Lachlan D. Jr., Mary Roy and Thomas. Like several members of his family, Lachlan McLaughlin spent his last years in Orlando, Florida.