Anita Sheahan Coraluzzi calls her site “Indigents, Miscreants, Madams and Madmen” because it contains transcribed records from 19th century almshouses, asylums, courts, and prisons in Philadelphia.

“I had a very long think with myself before I did that,” admits Coraluzzi, a former house cleaner who gave up her lucrative business for the low pay but endlessly exciting life of an ancestor detective. “What brought me to that point was that I got to thinking about the first wave of famine immigrants—where were they, how did they survive? I got tired of reading about all the rich white guys like the Biddles who settled in Philadelphia. All well and good, they built the city and the banks and the railroads and the commerce. But where were the regular working Joes? I was digging through the city archives one day and, oh well, here they are.”

What she was reading were documents from places like the Philadelphia Children’s Asylum in West Philadelphia, where orphans were cared for by wetnurses and poor women until they were old enough—seven—to be indentured to local craftspeople. And the Pennsylvania Hospital for the Insane. And the Almshouse Prostitute Register. “Now, there was a small notation in Dennis Clark’s book [Irish In Philadelphia] that said that some women purposely used Irish names because they were too embarrassed to use their own,” cautions Coraluzzi. “They went to the Almshouse because it was the only place to go if you had gonorrhea or syphilis. There were no antibiotics then.”

But there were doctors. In 1729, the city had raised 200 pounds to buy property between Third and Fourth and Spruce and Pine Streets for an almshouse. Officially, it was the Philadelphia Almshouse but it was known locally as “Green Meadows”—apparently one of the first attempts at “spin” in colonial times. Though its main purpose was to house the poor, it was also established with the intent of providing medical care for the sick. It became an erstwhile hospital that admitted patients even after the construction of the first official hospital in the city, Pennylvania Hospital, in 1752.

Coraluzzi acknowledges that some people may not want to find their ancestors in those particular records. In fact, she worked for a week on one set of documents for a fellow genealogist in Ireland who decided not to post them online because one involved a murder. “She said, ‘Oh, I can’t post this, it’s shameful!’” Coraluzzi recalls. “I said, ‘Jean, it was 153 years ago.’ And she said, ‘Sure and the family still lives there.’”  She laughs.

This genealogical Nancy Drew has no such puritanical notions about shame when it comes to family history. “The world has to know that these people were there,” she insists. “When I looked at all these records I saw the potential. For some people, it might fill in the blanks. If an ancestor disappears, is suddenly not in the census or the city directories, maybe they’re crazy or in jail. Realistically, many of the Irish had someone in the family who drank or gambled. I mean, they were what they were.”

Her own family history (a seventh generation American, she says, “my guys got here in 1866 and bred like rabbits”) precludes finding her own relatives in a prison or madhouse. “The Sheahans were a religious lot,” she says. “My great-great grandfather was involved in Gesu Parish and the Holy Name Society, a quite upstanding citizen who went on to have six kids. He worked in the haberdashery department at Strawbridge’s. Most of my family were staunch union plumber guys.”

In fact, it was her own quest to learn about her Cork ancestors that propelled her into becoming a full-time genealogist who now pores over yellowed documents looking for details of other people’s immigrant families. “If you can have a calling, this is it for me,” she says. “I live and breathe this stuff. I can’t not do it. I get a client’s papers and I immediately start putting it together. It’s like working a puzzle. I can’t stop thinking about it.” 

In the beginning, she did everything without a computer which forced her to get familiar with the vast collections of records in Philadelphia. “We are so lucky because there is a wealth of material here,” she says. Despite the “odd box of marriage records that were destroyed because pigeons broke in and were roosting in them,” documents are in fairly good shape and easy to access, once you know what you’re doing, she says.

After you’ve checked out the possibility that one of your ancestors was the black sheep in your family, follow Coraluzzi’s insider tips for digging up even more dirt on your favorite Irish immigrants.