World War I Mystery: Private Sam Patti and Kathleen Houlihan found each other…somehow…

I started researching my genealogy in 2007 after reading Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms. I became fascinated by one story in particular: the WWI love story of my maternal great-grandparents.

My great-grandfather was born Salvatore Patti in Sicily. In 1914, he and his brother Bartolomeo immigrated to the United States and went to Detroit. Salvatore became Sam.

He was not yet an American citizen when he voluntarily joined the U.S. Army during WWI. He served as a medic in France and survived the war, including a gas attack that put him in a military hospital.

Private Sam Patti’s letter to his Commanding Officer requesting permission to marry Kathleen Houlihan in while stationed in England during World War I.

My great-grandmother, Kathleen Houlihan, was living in Winchester, England. She was the English-born daughter of Irish parents from County Cork. Her father had served for decades in the British Army as a Quartermaster Sergeant, and four of her brothers served in WWI.

Three came home.

Somewhere amid all of this, Salvatore from Sicily and Kathleen from Winchester found each other.

I still don’t know exactly how.

What I do know is that on December 21, 1918, Sam wrote his commanding officer from Camp Hospital No. 35 in Winchester asking permission to marry her.

I still have the letter. It’s the second photo. “Request that I be given permission to be married to Miss Kathleen Houlihan of 22 Brassey Rd., Winchester, England.”

The Army’s answer: “Forwarded. Approved.”

And finally: “There is no objection to this marriage.”

Fourteen days later, on January 4, 1919, they married at St. Peter’s Church in Winchester.

The first photo is their marriage certificate.

Their story is one of the reasons A Farewell to Arms affected me so deeply – a young man far from the country of his birth, war-torn Europe, a woman in England, and a love story unfolding while the world was coming apart.

Except my family’s story had a different ending.

They survived the war. They married. They came to America.

And generations later, their great-granddaughter in Detroit is still holding the certificate and trying to discover exactly how they found each other.

I started looking for that answer in 2007.

I’m still looking.

⇒  Read the entire post on the x.com website.
External Web Site Notice: This page contains information directly presented from an external source. The terms and conditions of this page may not be the same as those of this website. Click here to read the full disclaimer notice for external web sites. Thank you.