On May 17, 1899, Patrick Sullivan married Mary Jane Carroll in Yonkers, New York, despite the objections of Patrick’s family, who believed he was marrying below his class. But their dreams of living a long life together came to an end when Patrick died unexpectedly on August 13, 1911, leaving Mary destitute with four children and a fifth who was born three weeks after Patrick’s death.

Shunned by Patrick’s family, Mary and her children fought off starvation in a tenement in Yonkers for several months. Then one evening, she was visited by her two brothers, John and Barney, who insisted her entire family move into and share their meager home at Six Moquette Row. There, the children were raised by their grandmother, mother, and their two loving uncles.

A story for the ages, “Six Moquette Row,” by author John F. Sullivan, narrates the true story of how one family’s love and a shared devotion to one another turned what would have inevitably been a horrific tragedy into an incredible success?a story that now totals more than eighty descendants.