Dorchester Illustration World War One Service Member biography: Thomas Joseph Muldoon
At the Dorchester Historical Society, we are in the process of a year-long project to commemorate the 100th anniversary of World War I. Using a collection of photographs we have of WWI Dorchester residents, we will be featuring servicemen in a number of short biographies throughout the year. At the culmination of the project, we hope to produce an online exhibit that highlights these men and their service to our country.
Our next biography features: Thomas Joseph Muldoon.
Written by Donna Albino.
Thomas Joseph Muldoon was born at 28 Fuller Street in Dorchester’s Ashmont section on November 22, 1893, to Patrick Muldoon and Ellen Ward. Married in Boston in 1887, Thomas’s parents had emigrated to the United States from Ireland in the early 1880s, his mother probably from Galway. Thomas was the eldest of five siblings: Margaret (1896), Mary Ellen (1898), Catherine (1901), and John Francis (1904). Only Thomas, Mary, and John survived to adulthood; Margaret died at age 1, Catherine at age 2. Thomas’s birth home would be the first of four Fuller Street addresses at which he lived for most of his life.
In 1896, when Thomas was three, the Muldoons moved to 20 Fuller Street. At this time, his father Patrick became a laborer for the Sewer Department, where he likely remained until the end of his life. The 1900 census found the family at 46 Fuller, where they stayed for another two decades. Around 1914, Thomas took a job as a stenographer and clerk for the Boston Transit Department, a position he would hold through at least 1948, the latest date available for his work. Transit was his employer on his World War I draft registration card, where he noted that he “partially” supported his parents and brother.
Thomas enlisted in the U.S. Army on December 4, 1917, at Fort Slocum, NY, and was stationed at Camp Joseph Johnston near Jacksonville, FL, starting December 15. By 1918, Camp Johnston had earned the distinction of being “the largest of all the Army’s Quartermaster mobilization and training camps,” home to the nation’s second largest rifle range and a YMCA and school available to soldiers. Promoted to corporal on August 27, 1918, then to sergeant on October 8, 1918, Thomas served in the Officer Service Company 1 in the Camp Quartermaster Corps and was discharged in St. Louis, MO, on January 9, 1919. Back home, Thomas resumed work for the Transit Department. In June, thanks to a department-wide payroll increase, his weekly salary rose from $20 to $21.92. By 1920, the Muldoons had again relocated to a new address on Fuller Street, number 3. With Thomas’s sister newly married to a police officer and living in Milton, the Muldoon household then comprised Thomas, his parents, and his younger brother, John.
For 20-plus years after the war, Thomas’s work as a stenographer for the Transit Department would take him to either 14 Cypher Street in South Boston or the seventh floor of 1 Beacon Street in Boston, with one exception: In 1920 and 1921, he worked at the Supply Department at City Hall Annex, possibly making use of knowledge acquired during his service in the QMC. In 1922, Transit’s annual report listed Thomas among its “clerical force” at the Cypher Street Stockyard, a facility that also employed ironworkers, mechanics, and other such skilled workers.
Thomas was a steadfast member of Dorchester’s Thomas J. Roberts American Legion Post (now in Hyde Park). In 1925, with monetary donations to the post’s charitable funds lagging, he was assigned to a committee dedicated to increasing fund-raising across Dorchester. (Also on the committee was Levi Lecain, another veteran profiled in this series.) In 1927, Thomas was installed as post commander, directing a vast Memorial Day celebration that incorporated all of Dorchester’s several American Legion posts. Even after his term ended, Thomas remained active in the post, managing the funds for its annual Christmas drive in 1929, which served Codman Square’s neediest families.
When the 1930 census was enumerated, the Muldoon brothers, both single, were living with their parents at 3 Fuller Street. Both Thomas and John were recorded as World War I veterans, but this seems unlikely in the case of John, who was born in 1904 and would have been just 15 at the war’s end. Their father died in 1933.
In the 1940 census, Ellen appeared as the widowed head of household of 3 Fuller Street. Thomas, age 46, continued working for the Transit Department, while John, 36, had taken a job as a laborer at the Baker Chocolate Factory. In addition, Ellen’s cousin, a 46-year-old hairdresser from Ireland named Mary J. Gannon, lived with them. She died later that year. On his registration card for World War II’s “Old Man’s Draft,” Thomas listed his brother, not his mother, as his contact.
Thomas’s mother died on October 8, 1948. After this, Thomas vanished from the paper trail until his own “sudden” death in Boston in 1960. He never married. Thomas was survived by his brother, John, who would die in 1966; their sister Mary had predeceased Thomas by just over a month. His funeral was held at the Milton Funeral Home, and, as had been done for his parents years before, Solemn High Mass of Requiem was offered for him at St. Gregory’s Church on Dorchester Avenue, a mile away from where the Muldoon family had last lived together.
SOURCES:
Ancestry.com. 1900 United States Federal Census [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2004.
Ancestry.com. 1910 United States Federal Census [database on-line]. Lehi, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2006.
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Ancestry.com. U.S., World War I Draft Registration Cards, 1917-1918 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2005.
Ancestry.com. U.S., World War II Draft Registration Cards, 1942 [database on-line]. Lehi, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2010.
“Boston News Briefs and Personal Paragraphs: Milton.” Boston Globe, July 13, 1936.
Boston Transit Dept., Annual Report of the Transit Department, for the Year Ending January 31, 1921 (Boston: Printing Department, 1921).
City Record, vol. 14 (Boston: Printing Office, 1922), 815.
“Camp Joseph E. Johnston.” Florida in World War I.
Documents of the City of Boston for the Year 1921 in Four Volumes. Vol. II. (Boston: Printing Department, 1922), 31.
“Dorchester District.” Boston Globe, January 22, 1926: 13.
“Dorchester Vets Pay Tribute: Only One Grand Army Man Will Be in Line.” Boston Globe, May 29, 1936: 13.
“18 Dorchester G.A.R. Vets May March in Parade.” Boston Globe, May 27, 1927: 10.
“1948—Ellen Muldoon—1950.” Boston Globe, October 8, 1950: 51.
FamilySearch. Entry for Thomas J. Muldoon, “Pedigree Resource File,” database.
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“For Arlington-St Subway Station… Salaries Increased.” Boston Globe, June 19, 1919: 2.
“Gannon.” Boston Globe, May 15, 1940: 26.
“Greater Boston News Briefs and Personal Paragraphs: Dorchester District.” Boston Globe, November 27, 1929: 16.
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List of Authorized Abbreviations: World War I Service Discharge Cards.
“Lynes.” Boston Globe, April 2, 1960: 6.
Massachusetts Vital Records, 1840–1911. New England Historic Genealogical Society, Boston, Massachusetts.
“Muldoon (Catherine A.).” Boston Globe, October 8, 1903.
“Muldoon (Ellen).” Boston Globe, October 9, 1948: 13.
“Muldoon (Margaret).” Boston Globe, June 10, 1897.
“Muldoon (Patrick).” Boston Globe, January 27, 1933: 31.
“Muldoon (Thomas J.).” Boston Globe, May 30, 1960: 50.
Officials and Employees of the City of Boston and County of Suffolk with Their Residences, Compensation, Etc., 1920 (Boston: Printing Department, 1920), 220, 335.