Carnegie’s Maid: A Novel

November 4, 1863

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

I walked with purpose. I hadn’t a clue where I was headed, but I couldn’t afford any hesitation that marked me as weak. Even in our small Galway village outside of Tuam, we heard rumors of immigrants who, upon landing in America, had been victimized by sharpers, unscrupulous men engaged in all manner of trials, plots, and chicanery. I’d talked a brash game to my family and friends when Mum and Dad decided I’d be the one to emigrate, but now, I wondered how I would fare in this strange land.

Except for the cry of seagulls and the clop of horses, this harbor didn’t sound anything like the harbors in Galway. The fishmongers called out their wares in a language I knew was English but sounded like gibberish, and news peddlers cried out the day’s news with the same inflection. Except for the salty air and scent of horse droppings and fish, the smell was unlike home as well. Arriving passengers stumbled around me as they regained their land legs, and the air was thick with the stench of their bodies. Unwashed for weeks in turbulent seas, even the sea air couldn’t freshen them. Even the beggars recoiled from the stink of my fellow passengers.

For the first time, in this mass of humanity, I really understood how alone I was in the vast land.

A voice drifted through the din. “Clara Kelley?”

The name was unmistakable. It was my own.

I listened hard, but I didn’t hear it again. I wondered if, in my loneliness, I had imagined it. I decided that I must have. No one expected me here.

“Clara Kelley? I’m looking for a Miss Clara Kelley from Galway,” the voice bellowed louder.

I followed the voice. It belonged to a tall, clean-shaven man wearing a bowler hat and a houndstooth topcoat finer than I’d seen in some time. Before I got too close, before I identified myself, I stopped and watched him. Was he one of those runners we had heard about from our farming neighbors, the O’Donnells? A fellow Irishman had approached their nephew Anthony at the New York City docks, promising him a pleasant room at a reasonable rate, only to settle him in a rat-infested tenement room in the Lower East Side of the city that was already inhabited by nine other immigrants, at a rate many times more than what he had been told. When Anthony couldn’t meet the exorbitant payment, the runner tossed Anthony out onto the street, keeping his stored trunk—his only belonging in the New World—as final payment. The O’Donnells and Anthony’s poor parents had not heard from him since his last letter describing the machinations of this evil runner. This terrible fate wasn’t the worst an immigrant could expect. I overheard the O’Donnells whispering to my parents about a girl from a neighboring village traveling alone to Boston who encountered a runner who exacted a far worse penance from her than the confiscation of her luggage.

This man didn’t look the part. In fact, my little sister, Cecilia, would have called him posh, especially as he was leaning against a highly polished black livery coach with two dappled gray horses attached. And anyway, how would a runner know my name?

The man caught me watching him and asked, “You wouldn’t be Miss Clara Kelley, would you?” His American accent was thick and flat, but I made sense of him.

“Yes, sir.”

He stared long and hard at my face, clothes, and rucksack. “A Miss Clara Kelley who was on board the Envoy?”

“Yes, sir,” I answered with a half curtsy.

He looked surprised. “You’re not what I expected,” he said with a shake of his head. “But Mrs. Seeley knows her business. It’s not my job to judge.”

I was about to ask him why he was looking for me and who was this Mrs. Seeley when he said, “Come on, miss. Climb into the carriage. We’ve been waiting for you for well over an hour. Long after the rest of second class exited from Lazaretto. God alone knows what sort of dawdling you were up to. Now we’re well behind schedule to Pittsburgh. And Mrs. Seeley does not like us to be late, particularly since she’s paying extra fare to get you to Pittsburgh safely by coach.”

I knew there were confusing assertions imbedded in the man’s words, but all I heard was “Pittsburgh.” Was he truly offering to take me to Pittsburgh? The industrial city over three hundred miles from Philadelphia was my planned destination. Back home, we’d heard the city had work aplenty, and it was the one place in this boundless country where my family had relatives. Not close kin, mind, but a second cousin close enough to reach out to once I found employment in a textile mill or in one of the big homes that needed domestics.

I’d squirreled away the rest of the pounds and pence Mum and Dad had given me to secure the passage to Pittsburgh. I’d assumed I would have to cobble together the cheapest route I could find, some combination of rail and canal rides and wagon, since the train route didn’t extend all the way from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh. But now a complete stranger was offering me a continuous horse-drawn carriage ride across the Allegheny Mountains and seemingly not asking for payment. Would I be a fool to decline? Or would I be a fool to accept?

I had a choice. I could tell this man the truth. That I was not the Clara Kelley for whom he was looking. That Clara Kelley was a common enough name. That the second-class passenger Clara Kelley for whom he was waiting probably never made it off the ship ferrying her here from Ireland if he had not yet come across her. Cholera and typhoid took many of us from all classes of travel. Illness did not discriminate. It was perhaps the one thing that did not.

Or I could become that other Clara Kelley. At least until I got to Pittsburgh.

I stared at the black carriage, trying to decide. On board the Envoy, I had promised myself that I wouldn’t wait any longer, that I would take my future in my own hands when I could.

The man opened the door to the carriage for me. “Come on, miss.”

I glanced up at him and said, “My apologies for the delay, sir. It won’t happen again.” And then I climbed up the steps into the carriage.